2010 Conference
Preview
PRE-CONFERENCE SESSIONS Thursday October 28
Pre-conference sessions
will feature Ernest Morrell, associate
professor of education at UCLA and Lester Laminack,
author of professional books as well as children’s literature.
GENERAL SESSION SPEAKERS—OCTOBER 29 & 30
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William G. Brozo is a Professor
of Literacy in the Graduate School of Education at
George Mason University
. He has taught reading and language arts in junior and
senior high school in the
Carolinas
.
He is the author of numerous articles
on literacy development for children and young adults. Some of his books include, To Be a Boy, To Be a Reader: Engaging Teen and Preteen Boys in Active Literacy
(International Reading Association); Readers, Teachers, Learners: Expanding Literacy
Across the Content Areas (Merrill/Prentice Hall);
Content Literacy for Today's
Adolescents: Honoring Diversity and Building Competence
(Merrill/Prentice
Hall) and Supporting Content Area Literacy with Technology: Meeting the Needs of
Diverse Learners.
Dr. Brozo
also writes a regular column for the International Reading Association's
Thinking
Classroom entitled "Strategic Moves," and is a past member of IRA's Commission
on Adolescent Literacy and current member of the
PISA/PIRLS Task Force. He presents
on ways of enriching the literate culture of middle and secondary schools, enhancing
the literate lives of boys, and making teaching more responsive to the needs all
students.
Sponsored by Pearson.
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Ernest Morrell
is an associate professor in the Urban Schooling division of
the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at the
University
of
California
at
Los Angeles
. Prior to this appointment, Morrell served on the Teacher Education faculty at
Michigan State University
. His work examines the possible intersections between indigenous urban adolescent
literacies and the “sanctioned” literacies of dominant institutions such as schools.
Particularly, he is interested in the discourse of popular culture; adolescent literacy
practices in non-school settings; critical research methodologies; critical literacy
education; and urban teacher development. Morrell teaches courses on literacy theory
and research, critical pedagogy, cultural studies, urban education, and critical
research methods in addition to his methods courses for prospective English teachers. Sponsored by The Collaborative Center for Literacy
Development.
http://www.ernestmorrell.com/professor.html
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Nell K. Duke, Ed.D.,
is an associate professor of teacher education and educational
psychology, an affiliate of the program in school psychology, and co-director of
the Literacy Achievement Research Center (LARC) at
Michigan State University
. Duke is the recipient of the International
Reading Association Outstanding Dissertation Award, the National Council of Teachers
of English Promising Researcher Award, the International Reading Association Dina
Feitelson Research Award, and the National Reading Conference Early Career Achievement
Award. She is co-author of the books Reading and Writing Informational Text in the
Primary Grades: Research-Based Practices; Literacy and the Youngest Learner: Best
Practices for Educators of Children from Birth to Five; Beyond Bedtime Stories:
A Parent’s Guide to Promoting Reading, Writing, and Other Literacy Skills From Birth
to 5; and co-editor of the book Literacy Research Methodologies.
Duke teaches preservice, inservice and doctoral courses in literacy education at
Michigan State
.
Sponsored by Scholastic.
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FEATURED SESSION SPEAKERS—OCTOBER 29 & 30
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Frank X Walker,
is a founding member of the Affrilachian Poets, he is the
editor of America!
What's My Name? The "Other" Poets Unfurl the Flag and the
author of four poetry collections:
When
Winter Come: the Ascension of York; Black Box;
Buffalo Dance: the Journey of York;
and Affrilachia.
A Kentucky Arts Council Al Smith Fellowship
recipient,
Walker
's poems have been converted into a stage production by the University of Kentucky
Theatre department and widely anthologized in numerous collections. He is a former
contributing writer and columnist for Ace Weekly
and the first
Kentucky
writer to be featured on NPR's This I Believe. Sponsored by the KY Department of Education.
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Terry Thompson is a literacy coach
at a Title 1 school just north of
Houston, Texas
, where he trains teachers and works with readers and writers in grades K-5. He
has served as a classroom teacher, basic skills teacher, Reading Recovery teacher,
reading interventionist, and state testing coordinator. Terry holds a master’s degree
in psychotherapy and cognitive coaching and travels throughout the country consulting
with classroom teachers and literacy specialists. He is the author of Adventures
in Graphica (2008 Stenhouse) and was a presenter at the International Reading
Association Conference in
Atlanta, GA
in May, 2008.
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Lester Laminack is Professor Emeritus from
Western Carolina University
where he taught writing workshop, children's literature, and reading. His professional
books include Learning Under the Influence of Language and Literature and
Reading Aloud Across the Curriculum: How to Build Bridges in Language Arts, Math,
Science, and Social Studies. He is also the author of four books for children:
The Sunsets of Miss Olivia Wiggins, Trevor's Wiggly-Wobbly Tooth,
Saturdays and Tea Cakes, and Jake's 100th Day of School. He served
three years as coeditor of the NCTE journal Primary Voices and as editor
of the Children's Book Review Department of the National Council of Teachers
of English journal Language Arts from 2003-2006.
Co-sponsored by Scholastic.
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Richard Taylor teaches English at
Kentucky
State
University
in
Frankfort
. He is the author of five collections of poetry, two novels, and several non-fiction
books. He formerly worked in the Poetry-in-the-Schools Program for the Kentucky
Arts Council, and was a teacher and dean of the Governor's Scholars Program. He
is the author of Sue Mundy, A Novel of the Civil War, a fictionalized treatment
of the life and times of Marcellus Jerome Clarke, a Confederate guerrilla in
Kentucky
during the Civil War. He is currently working on a collection of "rough sonnets"
on Abraham Lincoln called Rail Splitter. He served as
Kentucky
's Poet Laureate from 1999-2000.
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Joe Survant
retired in 2007 from
Western Kentucky University
after 38 years of teaching. The majority of his teaching career he was at Western,
where he helped establish its creative writing program. On a Fulbright Fellowship
in 1983-84, he taught at the Universiti Sains
Malaysia
(in
Penang, Malaysia
). His collection of poems, The Presence of Snow in the Tropics, came out
of that year in
Southeast Asia
. In 1995, he won the State Street Press Poetry Prize where his first collection,
We Will All Be Changed, was published. His second book, a collection of narrative
poems, Anne & Alpheus, 1842-1882, a story of rural life in south central
Kentucky
, won the 1996 Arkansas Poetry Prize from the
University of Arkansas Press
. In 2001, Landmark Books of Singapore published The Presence of Snow in the Tropics.
In 2002, the University Press of Florida published a second collection of narrative
poems, Rafting Rise. He served as
Kentucky
’s Poet Laureate from 2003 to 2004.
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Jane Gentry has published two full-length
collections of poetry, A Garden in Kentucky and Portrait of the Artist as
a White Pig. She has also published
a short volume of local history, Looking Back at Athens, with William M.
Lamb. An English professor at the
University of Kentucky
, she has won the UK Alumni Association’s Great Teacher Award, teaches in the Honors
program, and is advisor to Jar, a student-edited literary magazine.
She has been awarded two Al Smith Fellowships from the Kentucky Arts Council
and has held fellowships at Yaddo in
Saratoga Springs
,
New York
and at the
Virginia Center
for the Creative Arts. She served as
Kentucky
's Poet Laureate from 2007 to 2008.
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Gurney Norman
has been a major force in the literary and cultural renaissance throughout the state
and region. He played a significant role in the founding of the Appalachian Poetry
Project and helped establish the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. A charter
member of the
Hindman Settlement School
's annual Writers Workshop faculty, he continues to be involved in as a Senior Writer-in-Residence.
Norman
's first novel is Divine Right's Trip.
Other fiction
Norman
has published includes Book One From Crazy Quilt:
A Novel in Progress and Kinfolks: The Wilgus
Stories. His recent fiction has appeared in
Appalachian Heritage magazine. A writer and editor of non-fiction
literary criticism,
Norman
co-edited Confronting Appalachian Stereotypes:
Back Talk from an American Region and a collection of essays,
An American Vein: Critical Readings in Appalachian Literature. He has
also written and narrated three documentary films about
Kentucky
's Appalachian region for KET: Time on the River,
From This Valley and
Wilderness Road
. He has been a member of the English
Department faculty at the
University of Kentucky
for 30 years and directs of the Creative Writing Program.
In addition to his writing, editing and university teaching,
Norman
serves an active role as advisor to schools and community-based arts groups in
Kentucky
and the Appalachian mountain region. He is a frequent presenter at education conferences
and enjoys visiting small rural schools where
Kentucky
literature and culture are under discussion.
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For more information about the conference, please contact:
Cindy Parker, Conference Chair
(502) 564-2106
Cindy.Parker@education.ky.gov