Join West Virginia teachers, writers, & leaders as we explore how we honor & respond to our students’ voices, identities, and communities.
About This Event:
Now, more than ever, our students, schools, and communities face enormous challenges.
How do we respond? How do we honor our students’ voices, identities, and communities? How are you creating equitable learning spaces and more just communities? How do you respond to your students as learners? Your colleagues as collaborators? Your community as an extension of your classroom?
Join teachers, speakers, and writers from across the country as we gather in Morgantown to explore, share, collaborate, and engage in these questions to build stronger schools and classrooms and a stronger West Virginia.
This year’s conference will take place on April 17-18, 2020 and will feature both concurrent and plenary sessions with some of the most dynamic teachers from West Virginia and around the country.
In addition to classroom-tested practices presented by elementary, middle, and high school teachers join us to explore literacy, learning, and responsiveness with these extraordinary featured speakers:
Keynote speakers…
– Silas House: a nationally bestselling author of six novels–Clay’s Quilt, 2001; A Parchment of Leaves, 2003; The Coal Tattoo, 2005; Eli the Good, 2009; and Same Sun Here (co-authored with Neela Vaswani) 2012, and Southernmost (June 2018)–as well as a book of creative nonfiction–Something’s Rising, co-authored with Jason Howard, 2009; and three plays: The Hurting Part (2005), This Is My Heart for You (2012), and In These Fields, with Sam Gleaves, 2016.
Dr. O’Brien’s long and distinguished career has brought her numerous awards and honors, including Doctor of Laws honoris causa from Trinity University, Doctor of Humane Letters honoris causa from Georgetown University, the Public Humanities Award from the D.C. Community Humanities Council, and the Folger Shakespeare Library’s 2008 Shakespeare Steward Award. Prior to her first appointment at the Folger, she spent a number of years teaching high school English in the DC Public Schools, and since then has taught undergraduate courses at Georgetown University.
– Corinne Viglietta: Folger Education Assistant Director
“At heart, I am a high school English (ELA) teacher because I learned so much about my craft, pedagogy, and about the depth of my passion for teaching during my ten years in the classroom in Irving, TX. From there, I experienced a brief time at a community college while completing my doctorate in English and Rhetoric, completing my doctoral residency at the University of London through Texas Woman’s University. And although I have spent the bulk of my career at university (University of North Texas and Harvard Graduate School of Education), I spend a great deal of my consulting and research time in high schools around the country–working with students, teachers, administrators.”
Prather is a writing teacher at the School for Creative and Performing Arts, a magnet arts program at Lafayette High School in Lexington, Kentucky. A classroom teacher with 21years of experience teaching writing at both the secondary and post-secondary level, Liz is also a professional freelance writer and holds a MFA from the University of Texas-Austin.
Liz is the author of Project-Based Writing: Teaching Writers to Manage Time and Clarify Purpose, and Story Matters: Teaching Teens to Use the Tools of Narrative to Argue and Inform.
– Amy M. Alvarez: Teacher and poet
Alvarez’s research interests include: Affrilachian Poetics, Hip Hop and Gender, and Contemporary Black and Latinx Poetry in North America and the Caribbean. Her poetry has been published or is forthcoming in Sugar House Review, Rattle, Black Renaissance Noire, The Wide Shore, The New Guard Review, and elsewhere. Her poem “Alternative Classroom Senryu” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Amy holds an MFA in Poetry from the Stonecoast Program at the University of Southern Maine. She is a native of Queens, NY.
Plus a wealth of engaging workshops from teacher leaders!
West Virginia Council of Teachers of English 