WORKSHOP CONTENT STRANDS
Promoting Effective Practice
Evidence-based practices and approaches for improving literacy instruction and student reading in and out of the classroom.
Let’s Get Aligned
Partnering for impact, building collective vision, and working together to support literacy across school, home, and community.
Parents in the Driver’s Seat
Centering parent leadership, parent-driven models for learning, and parent-school-community partnerships.
Literacy and Social Justice
Justice, healing, and identity.
Leadership for Literacy
Cultivating literacy leaders and champions. Supporting system-level change.
FEATURED PLENARY SESSIONS
LITERACY: A LIBERATORY, CIVIL RIGHT
Dr. Julie Washington
Professor @ UCI
Reading is the centerpiece of education in the United States from the time of school entry. Reading is recognized as essential for a successful future, and as such is regarded as a civil right. As a result, reading is being introduced at younger and younger ages. Despite this, fewer than half of children who are poor, brown, black and male are reading at grade level in 4th grade. The role of instruction, language variation, and deficit thinking are discussed in this training, including recommendations for improving outcomes going forward.
OUR STORY, OUR PURPOSE
Rene Benavides & Mark Isero
of VTA Collective
Too often in conversations about literacy, we pass over the sense of why it’s important. Rarely are we given the opportunity to connect with our personal sense of why we do this work. In this session, we will engage in reflective writing to reconnect with our personal motivations to support the development of literacy as a priority in our work with young people. We will engage in storytelling connected to our why, ground together in a guided practice, and engage in aspirational thinking about the future we long for and who it is we need to be to get there.