CALL FOR PRESENTERS
2025 ERWC Literacy Conference
Long Beach, CA – Monday, June 23, 2025
Leaning into Liminality: A Return to Language, Wonder, and Inspiration
Click here to submit your proposal. The deadline to submit a proposal is 11:59 p.m., March 28, 2025.
By leaning into liminality, we embrace the confusion and uncertainty of new experiences. Liminality marks the edge of our learning. For the 2025 ERWC Literacy Conference, we invite educators to explore the magic and wonder of in-between spaces–the space between belief and doubt, between reading and writing, between physical and digital worlds, and between childhood and adulthood. Like other threshold crossings, educational experiences that challenge our understanding of the familiar foster growth, criticality, and transformation.
Students encounter multiple forms of betweenness in their educational journeys: transitions between grades, schools, and disciplines–and often between languages and cultures, too. They may also feel in between identities. Threshold crossings (limen is the Latin word for “threshold”) are a defining feature of K12 education. Rather than barriers, thresholds can be doorways to inspiration.
With the publication of new modules featuring integrated and designated ELD for grades 6-8, ERWC embraces the wonder and transformation of another liminal space: middle school. ERWC’s return to middle school expands the curriculum to grade 6 for the first time. ERWC is also on the verge of an additional transition: the creation of full courses for grades 9 and 10. Just as the grade 12 ERWC course serves as a bridge to college, the future grade 9 ERWC course (in combination with the new grade 8 modules) will serve as a bridge to high school.
In this Call for Presenters, we thus seek proposals for sessions that explore ways to support students on the threshold of new stages and spaces of language and literacy learning.
We invite proposals on any of the following topics:
- Threshold concepts and deeper learning
- Translanguaging
- Intersections between human and machine learning
- Strategies for supporting middle school students
- Language practices and power dynamics
- Counternarratives about language and literacy
- Rhetorical affordances
- Interrogating standards and standardization
- Civil discourse
- Civic literacies
- Intrinsic motivation for engaging with reading and writing
- Rhetorical thinking
- Reading and writing in the age of GenAI
- Teaching English learners
- Disciplinary literacies
- Social and emotional learning
- Critical media studies
- Universal Design for Learning
- Collaborative discussion
- Literacy leadership
- Language studies, ethnographies of language, or community-based language
We also welcome proposals on other topics related to our 2025 conference theme, “Leaning into Liminality,” that are of interest to literacy educators.
Submitting Your Proposal:
Please use the link below to submit proposals of 300-500 words. Include a session title and a 100-150-word description for the conference program. Please also include a brief curriculum vitae highlighting your ERWC experience with your submission, a short biography, and a headshot/portrait photograph. You must be a California resident to qualify for travel reimbursement. The deadline to submit a proposal is 11:59 p.m., March 28, 2025.
Concurrent break-out sessions will be 60 minutes long.
Because of limited time slots and potential duplicate topics, proposals will be competitively selected by the ERWC Steering Committee. Proposals accepted for the conference program will demonstrate the following characteristics:
- Connection to the 2025 theme “Leaning into Liminality: A Return to Language, Wonder, and Inspiration”
- Alignment to ERWC 3.0’s key principles and practices, including assets-based instruction and culturally sustaining pedagogies
- Clear objectives that are relevant to ERWC
- Attention to deepening student learning
- Active and appropriate engagement of participants
- An inquiry-based approach
Travel expenses within California and conference registration will be paid for presenters by the California State University. You will be notified of the status of your proposal by April 30, 2025.
Thank you for considering this special invitation! We’re grateful for all you do on behalf of ERWC students and teachers. Please email Dr. Cyndi Paik, CAR/W Co-Director, at erwc@calstate.edu if you have any questions about your proposal or the conference.
To submit your proposal, please scan the QR code below or visit: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/4e3b6467b7594c7c87759117525a1f3a
