In the Classroom: Reading the World Webinar Series

Drawing from the work of Walter Ong, William Cope, Mary Kalantzis, and scholars of the New London Group, Angela Stockman will offer expansive definitions of writing and text beside invitations to approach reading as an embodied and richly multimodal experience. Tangible tools and strategies will be offered beside case studies that demonstrate their use, preparing all participants to return to their classrooms ready to apply this new learning.

Does your classroom ever feel stuck, or out-of-tune? Meaningful teaching is something educators strive for each day. Educators also know that there is no such thing as a perfect classroom. Despite our best intentions, our classrooms sometimes feel like they're stuck, or out of tune. In this webinar, Antero Garcia will explain why we should allow students to play an integral role in turning classrooms into spaces for greater engagement and innovation.

What can teachers do when students balk at doing the assigned reading? Why do so many students have difficulty staying with a book for more than a few minutes? In this webinar, Carol Jago will demonstrate instructional moves that help students increase their reading stamina and develop greater confidence in themselves as readers. Based on current research in adolescent literacy, she will offer texts and tasks designed to engage today’s teenagers while enlarging their capacity for comprehending what they read.

Results from the 2024 NAEP Reading Assessment are dire. Instead of making up lost ground after the pandemic, student scores continue to slide. Most alarmingly, the achievement gap continues to widen. In this webinar, Carol Jago will outline the latest news from the Nation's Report Card and offer a way forward. She will demonstrate methods for increasing reading skill while stimulating students' desire to read. A rigorous curriculum can be a joyful one. You will come away with techniques, tools, and texts that can turn the tide.

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The ERWC community is pleased to kickoff its Spring webinar series with a very special guest, Daniel Summerhill. In this session, Daniel will explore the connection between rhetoric and poetry and his work to transform language for the purposes of social action, community building, and truth-telling.

Daniel B. Summerhill is Professor of Poetry/Social Action and Composition Studies at California State University Monterey and the inaugural Poet Laureate of Monterey County, CA. He is the author of Divine, Divine, Divine (Nomadic Press), a semifinalist for the Charles B. Wheeler Prize. Summerhill holds an M.F.A. from Pine Manor College (Solstice). He received the Sharon Olds Fellowship and was nominated to Everipedia’s 30 under 30 list.

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Session resources

Welcome Anne Whitney as she joins our three-part webinar series on writing in the classroom. Anne will introduce the key elements of NCTE's "Principled Approach to Writing" and discuss how they impact writing instruction.

Dr. Anne Whitney is a former high school English teacher. Her research addresses writing and how writing works in school and life. This work has included studies in elementary, secondary, college, and professional development settings and non-school contexts such as churches.

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Session resources

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In this webinar, the presenters focus on strategies for finding rhetorical affordances. Affordances are elements of a text that can be used as models for teaching. Rhetorical affordances highlight the ways that authors construct their text in relation to an audience. This webinar will focus on how text such as Audre Lorde’s “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action” from the “Language, Gender, and Culture” module point to the rhetorical affordances that authors of color use to make their arguments. Additionally, the webinar will demonstrate how seeking rhetorical affordances in Joy Harjo’s “How to Write a Poem in a Time of War” from the “Poetry for the People” module can demonstrate to students the value of considering primary, secondary, and tertiary audiences.

Presentation slides

Nadia will share her research into "authentic" writing instruction and offer strategies for building a robust writing program at the high school and middle school levels.

Nadia Behizadeh is an associate professor of adolescent literacy in the College of Education & Human Development’s Department of Middle and Secondary Education. She is also a co-director for the Center for Equity and Justice in Teacher Education. In addition to her scholarly activities, Behizadeh teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in educational research and theory, English language arts methods and content literacy.

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The fall 2023 webinar series continues this month with an exciting presentation from Felicia Rose-Chavez who will present "a new approach for a new millennium--a blueprint for a twenty-first-century writing workshop that concedes the humanity of people of color so that we may raise our voices in vote for love over hate." This session will include select readings from Rose-Chavez's book "The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop: How To Decolonize the Creative Classroom." Can't wait to see you there!

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The Fall 2023 Webinar series kicks off with a very special guest. ERWC, in conjunction with the CSU Chancellor's Office, is proud to welcome Kelly Gallagher to our webinar community. Kelly Gallagher is the author of multiple books, including 180 Days: Two Teachers and their Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents, Readicide, Write Like This: Teaching Real-World Writing through Modeling & Mentor Texts, and Reading Reasons: Motivational Mini-Lessons for Middle and High School.

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Join the ERWC Community as we explore Generative AI as an emergent practice in the English classroom. Marc Watkins, an academic innovation fellow at the University of Mississippi will explore best practices in teaching students AI literacy, AI assistance, and AI aptitude.

We kick off the 2024-2025 webinar series with hope for a new year. September’s webinar series presenter comes to you with ideas for removing the "limits" placed on educators and offers strategies for expanding and developing our approach to planning for academic success.

ERWC welcomes back Matthew Johnson as he shares practical, on-the-ground solutions for making grammar and language instruction more accessible, practical, and connected to students’ reading, writing, and most importantly, the deep well of language knowledge they bring with them already. In this webinar, Matthew will share practices for creating language instruction that comes across clearer, sticks better, transfers easier, and ultimately instills a love of language, all while teaching major grammatical concepts.

Welcome back Matthew Johnson as he joins us for a discussion on some of the biggest issues facing teaching middle and high school students today, and how these changes impact writing instruction.

Matthew Johnson is a father, husband, and English language arts teacher in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He is also a contributing writer for the New York Times Learning Network, EdWeek, and Edutopia and blogs regularly about writing instruction and pedagogy at www.matthewmjohnson.com

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Session resources

This session will examine a cross-curricular approach to developing and maintaining a strong classroom community even in the face of contentious topics. Nichelle will introduce her strategies for promoting civil discourse--an alternative to either avoiding or fighting our way through contentious topics--to foster meaningful, thought-provoking classroom discussions.

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Sarah Zerwin introduces her strategies for improving reading at the secondary classroom level. With nearly thirty years of classroom experience, Sarah offers a wealth of knowledge in addressing one of the greatest challenges confronting ELA teachers today: Engaging students in the reading process.

Assessing students' writing is the most time-consuming task facing the ELA teacher. This webinar offers a new approach--one that values human relationships and the writing process over grades and authority--to developing student writers by focusing on the positive aspects of a writing task. Welcome Seth Czarnecki, an English teacher at Algonquin Regional High School in Northborough, MA, as he shares his strategies for providing unbiased writing assessment.

Literacy strategies acquired in language arts classrooms are not exclusive to language arts; yet students often fail to recognize how to transfer them to other learning situations. Teaching students how to recognize the transferability of skills and strategies is therefore part of the learning process, and it begins with structuring your unit plans. Join the ERWC community as we kick-off our 2022/23 “Language and Literacy” webinar series with Trevor Aleo—co-author of the book “Learning That Transfers: Designing Curriculum for a Changing World”—who will explore the real-world possibilities of teaching for transfer.

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We are excited to welcome Tricia Ebarvia to the ERWC community. Tricia is a lifelong educator, author, speaker, literacy consultant, and expert in curriculum design culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogy, and social justice education. She will be sharing her perspective on improving students' reading, writing, and thinking skills.

Interested in using technology more effectively in the classroom? In this webinar, Troy Hicks--an ISTE Certified Educator--will introduce "'digital diligence'--an alert, intentional stane that helps both teachers and students use technology productively, ethically, and responsibly." Hear his strategies for minimizing digital distraction, fostering civil conversations, evaluating information on the internet, creating meaningful digital writing, and deeply engaging with multimedia texts.

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The central question facing teachers today as they seek to engage students in reading is "How can we help adolescents become critical readers in a digital age?" In this webinar, Troy Hicks will share what he learned in his research into adolescent reading practices in a dozen middle and high school classrooms and the subsequent tools created to assist students in connecting to their reading. Hicks will offer practical tips and highlight classroom practices that engage students in reading and thinking with both print and digital texts, thus encouraging reading instruction that reaches all students.