2014 Journal of Language & Literacy Education Conference

“Literacy and/for Social Justice: Inspire, Engage, Create, Transform”

Georgia Center

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Due by Oct. 1, 2013

As educators, students, researchers, community members and others expand notions of what “literacy” means, they must also increase efforts to ensure that literacy opportunities are equitable for and welcoming to all.

The JOLLE Conference theme this year, “Literacy and/for Social Justice: Inspire, Engage, Create, Transform” emphasizes the role of literacy, both as a means of incorporating social justice into curriculum and as a method for performing socially just practices.  This theme welcomes wide-ranging notions of how one might define or practice literacy, and of how one’s understandings of literacy might include or address issues of social justice.   The JoLLE@UGA Conference established itself last year as being action-oriented, bridging theory and practice, informed by research and practice, and also inventive and creative.

Submissions
We invite practicing teachers, researchers, professors, community organizers and students to explore the following: How are you addressing social justice through literacy? In what ways are you learning about social justice issues from literacies found in schools, communities, or other places?  In what ways do forms of social justice shape literacy?  In what ways do literacies shape understandings of social justice?

Proposals for the conference should be submitted online at:
http://jolle.coe.uga.edu/conference/

Fecho

Bob Fecho, professor and head of the department of language and literacy education in the College of Education and co-director of the Red Clay Writing Project, which has been providing professional learning opportunities for teachers in northeast Georgia since 2003, is featured in as this week’s (Oct. 7-11) Focus on Faculty on the UGA Home Page.

Smagorinsky

Peter Smagorinsky, a Distinguished Research Professor of language and literacy education in the College of Education, has been named recipient of the 2013 David H. Russell Research Award from the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE).

The award honors an outstanding work of scholarship or research in language, literature, rhetoric or learning, published during the past five years. Smagorinsky is being recognized for his book titled, Vygotsky and Literacy Research: A Methodological Framework. He will receive the award at the NCET annual convention Nov. 21-24 in Boston.

Smagorinsky was named the 2013 Outstanding Reviewer for Review of Education Research, the journal of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and Outstanding Reviewer for 2013 by the editors of the American Educational Research Journal - Teaching, Learning, and Human Development. He was named an AERA Fellow in 2010.

Alvermann

Donna Alvermann,  the O.C. and Elizabeth Aderhold Professor in Education and UGA Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education, will be the keynote speaker at Florida State University College of Education’s inaugural 21st Century Literacies Lecture Series on Sept. 19.

The title of her address is: “21st Century Literacies: What Our Students Can Teach Us If We’re Willing Learners!”

“Insights from my own work in 21st century literacies suggest that teachers at all grade levels, school library media specialists and youth librarians have much to learn from students’ literacy practices both in and out of school,” said Alvermann. “However, unless we attend to young people’s uses of digital, visual, aural, and print texts in relation to popular media culture, we stand to miss and/or misinterpret what it means to communicate effectively in an era described by some as ‘a sequel to literacy.”

Literacy Lecture Series Brochure 2013

Chu

Tiffany Chu, simultaneously working toward both her bachelor’s degree in English and master’s degree inn English Education, is featured as an Amazing Student on the UGA Home Page for the week beginning September 13.

Smagorinsky

University of Georgia Distinguished Research Professor Peter Smagorinsky continues his Great Georgia Teacher series with a profile of Dave Winter of Atlanta’s Grady High School in the  “Get Schooled” blog of the August 9 edition of the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Neumann poses in photo from a 2011article in the Marietta Daily Journal

College of Education alumnus Ryan Neumann, an English teacher at Pope High School in Cobb County, is receiving national recognition for a book he wrote about his experiences as a teacher during the first five years of his career.

Neumann (MEd ’06), of Atlanta, was named recipient of the 2013 James N. Britton Award for Inquiry within the English Language Arts from the Conference on English Education, a division of the National Council for Teachers of English for his book titled, What Had Happened.

The self-published book is a collection of observations based on his experiences teaching English at South Cobb High School in Austell, before he moved to teach at his alma mater. The book’s title comes from students’ excuses for not completing assignments.

“The cover of the book describes its contents as ‘a work of friction,’ which refers primarily to his decision to change people’s names to protect their anonymity but also is an attempt to capture how he felt when writing certain parts of the book. Ryan writes from his first-person perspective and focuses on the absurdities of the teaching life—the contradictions, the inconceivabilities, the students, the colleagues, the community,” said Peter Smagorinsky, Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education and Neumann’s former professor at UGA. “He relates how it feels to be a teacher, in and out of the classroom.”

Neumann will receive the award Nov. 22 at the 2013 NCTE Annual Convention in Boston.

Kristyl Tift, right, participates in a discussion with the audience after “Teachers Tell All: Theatre for Social Change in Our Educational Communities” at the Cellar Theater on the UGA campus.

Teachers took to the stage Friday on the University of Georgia campus, dramatizing issues they and their students face in Georgia classrooms, reported a story in the July 20 Athens Banner-Herald.

The audience was mainly teachers enrolled in UGA summer classes, like the teacher-actors in Friday’s skits, which were created and performed by students in a summer school class taught by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, a professor of language and literacy education, and Emily Sahakian, a professor in UGA’s theatre and French departments.

Alvermann

Donna Alvermann, Distinguished Research Professor of Language and Literacy Education, is featured this week in the UGA Home Page’s Focus on Faculty section.

Smagorinsky

Peter Smagorinsky, UGA Distinguished Research Professor, writes about the Common Core State Standards in the “Get Schooled” blog of the  July 8 Atlanta Journal Constitution.