Bass

Johnson

Two University of Georgia College of Education graduate students—Tobie Bass Trudeau and Lindy Johnson—received the 2013 Bulldog Vision Award for their work in creating an inaugural international conference in language literacy education.

Out of 692 student organizations on the UGA campus, one Bulldog Vision Award is given each year by the H. Gordon and Francis S. Davis Student Organization Achievement & Recognition (SOAR) Award program to a student or group that has demonstrated outstanding leadership and vision. The award recognizes a student or group that has helped their organization and community envision the future, identify paths to success, and implement their vision for the betterment of their organization and community.

Johnson, a third-year doctoral student from Provo, Utah, and Tobie Bass Trudeau, a second-year doctoral student from Columbus, both majoring in language and literacy education, were recognized for conceptualizing and creating the Journal of Language and Literacy Education (JoLLE)’s inaugural national conference last spring.

The pair focused the first JoLLE Conference on the theme of Activist Literacies. More than 120 people participated in the conference with presenters coming from Australia, Canada and across the United States. The conference was deliberately linked to community organizations and activists from outside the scholarly community, and included classroom teachers and K-12 students.

The two visionaries also collaborated to create the Spring issue of JoLLE. They reviewed submissions, designed and produced an online issue that represented and perpetuated the rich flow of ideas and interactions that happened during the 2013 JoLLE “Activist Literacies” Conference. The issue will be published in May and will feature three keynote speakers from the JoLLE Conference. It will also include reflections from practicing members of the local community and selected papers from the many breakout sessions at the conference.

Johnson taught high school English in Boston Public Schools before coming to UGA. Her research focuses on helping teachers integrate new media literacies into their classrooms. Currently, she serves as Principal Editor of JOLLE.

Trudeau served as co-conference chair at the JoLLE 2013 Spring Conference.

The award was presented at the group’s annual award dinner April 10.

Registration cost is $100 and includes workshop materials, parking pass, certificate of completion and refreshment break.

Instructor: Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor, associate professor of language and literacy education, UGA; Featured speaker at the 2012 Georgia TESOL Conference

Aderhold Hall
Room 308
110 Carlton St.
Athens

Website

Press release

Cahnman-Taylor

Workshop topics include greetings, authentic conversational practice, home-school communication with and without an interpreter, and language learning strategies for all ages. The afternoon is filled with engaging small group workshops where participants acquire Spanish through folk art-making, Mexican bingo, compete in fun rounds of “Latino USA” trivia, and salsa dance. No prior knowledge of Spanish is necessary for this workshop.

Registration cost before April 5 is $200 and includes workshop materials, parking pass, certificate of completion and refreshment breaks.  Registration after April 5 is $250. Attendees should bring $10 cash for lunch for the Spanish Emersion luncheon to be held at an authentic restaurant.

Instructor: Melisa “Misha” Cahnmann-Taylor, associate professor of language and literacy education, UGA; Featured speaker at the 2012 Georgia TESOL Conference

Georgia Museum of Art
90 Carlton St.
Athens

Website

Press release

Lamar Dodd School of Art
Floor 3, North Bar

Press release

Alvermann

Donna Alverann, Distinguished Research Professor of language and literacy education at UGA, is quoted in an April 22 article on Mind/Shift on how to correct mistaken beliefs. Alvermann notes that in study after study, “students ignored correct textual information when it conflicted with their previously held concepts.”

Mind/Shift is a website featured on National Public Radio network that focuses on the future of learning in all its dimensions – covering cultural and technology trends, groundbreaking research, education policy.

The exhibit is organized semiannually by Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor, a professor in the department of language and literacy education, who also hosts an arts-based research seminar. Each exhibition features new pieces and a new group of people.

Presenters and their topics include:

• Anticipations. Using student-created picturebooks in a Russian secondary school EFL classroom, Yury Almetev, graduate student, language and literacy education;
• Poetic Inquiry and Its Revelations to an Ethnographic Poet of Multicultural Education, Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor with Kuo Zhang, graduate student in language and literacy education;
• The Interplay of Islamic Culture and the Learning of English, Joseph Daubenmire, graduate student in language and literacy education;
• A process becoming… an exploration in autobiography and journaling, Jeremy DeJiacomo, graduate student in art education;
• Exercising our Art to Exorcise our Fears: An Arts-Based Learning Experience for Teachers, Laurie Ecke, graduate student in educational psychology and instructional technology;
• Integrating performance as reflexive discourse resource in K-12 and university contexts, Ruth Harman, assistant professor, language and literacy education;
• Citizen:  A Narrative Portrait and Visual Narrative of Pa Saw Paw, Susan Harper, graduate student, science education;
• Career Explorations for Kids, Latasha Hutcherson, graduate student, language and literacy education;
• At Least a Thousand Words: A Portrait of the Researcher as a Middle-Aged Man, Brian P. O’Shea, graduate student, educational psychology and instructional technology;
• Un/Seated: Researching Children’s Art Practices; Leslie Rech;
• Anna’s story: Use of hybrid narratives to explore identity change in science education research, Heather Rudolph, graduate student, science education;
• Like Climbing Jacob’s Ladder: An Exploration of the Comprehensive Exam Process, Sara Scott, graduate student, art education;
• Comics-Based Aesthetic Ethnography, James F. Woglom, graduate student, art education;
• Poetic Inquiry for English Language Acquisition, Xiaodi Zhou,  graduate student, language and literacy education.

This hour-long show will feature a discussion with Red Clay Writing Project teachers Lois Alexander, Tonia Paramore, Kelli Bivins and Jaye Thiel.

Allen

The show will introduce the audience to the book, A Critical Inquiry Framework for K-12 Teachers, edited by College of Education faculty member JoBeth Allen and Lois Alexander. The book is a set of portraits from K-12 classrooms that illustrate how teachers used the U.N. Rights of the Child as a framework to engage students in critical inquiry of relevant social issues.

The Red Clay Writing project, based in the University of Georgia’s College of Education, with funding from the U.S. Department of Education, holds an annual summer institute in which nearly two dozen area teachers meet to expand their knowledge and share their experience in learning how to best teach writing.  See more on the Red Clay Writing Project.

Smagorinsky

Peter Smagorinsky, Distinguished Research Professor of language and literacy education at the University of Georgia, who is among the world’s most authoritative and prolific voices for educational reform, called for authentic teacher evaluation in delivering the John S. Oehler Lecture for Educational Leadership at  Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Education  on April 10.

See video of the lecture.

The International Reading Association (IRA) has published the sixth edition of Theoretical Models and Processes of Reading, a landmark reference book on which University of Georgia Distinguished Research Professor Donna Alvermann served as lead editor.

Alvermann, a professor in the College of Education’s department of language and literacy education, said the new edition took about four years to develop.

“The book is on theory and research, but the academic lingo is kept to a minimum so that professionals and graduate students outside the field of literacy education can comprehend the information,” said Alvermann.

The first edition was published by the IRA in 1970 and succeeding volumes have appeared about every eight years since then. It is the only work of its kind, worldwide. The newest edition will have an e-book option for the first time in the history of the TMPR series.

Alvermann

“The International Reading Association stretches far and has a huge membership. I just heard from a colleague in Belgium that her research group has pre-ordered a copy,” said Alvermann.

“Others have asked me to send promotional material to New York University and especially to the Reading Recovery leadership. Reading Recovery works with students who are more than two years behind before they even start formal reading instruction. Thus, some chapters in TMPR6 that deal with language development research will be of use to this practitioner group,” she said.

There will be a special launch of TMPR6 at the IRA’s annual convention in San Antonio on Sunday, April 21, 2013 at 3 p.m. in the Convention Center.

Brief abstracts for each of the 45 chapters are available at:
www.reading.org/General/Publications/Books/bk710.aspx

Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor

The article examines the literature on arts education with minoritized youth within landscapes of structural inequity, scientific rationalization, and a resurgence of the racialization of non-White communities and curricula in schools.  She and co-author Sharon Verner Chappell of California State University-Fullerton, identify strong practices in arts education that aim to achieve social justice with both minoritized and majoritized populations.