DescriptionLiterary essayists develop claims about texts that are both defensible and contestable. While young people are quite used to developing claims that can be defended with text evidence, they often struggle to make claims that reflect original thinking and a unique readerly perspective—in other words, claims that can be contested by other readers. In this workshop, teachers engage in a literary essay immersion to identify the purposes, features, and techniques of literary essays and then compose their own model literary essays through a series of guided micro-lessons. Through this work, teachers identify instructional methods and develop teaching points that enable young literary essayists to make claims that are both defensible and contestable. The workshop ends with an inquiry into common struggles of young literary essayists and constructed practice leading one-on-one literary essay conferences. text goes here

In this workshop, teachers draw on the rich tradition of scholarship in Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy and critical literacy to develop guiding principles for teaching reading and writing in culturally sustaining and critical ways. Teachers begin by examining their own curriculum and pedagogy to find opportunities to not only recognize but also center, nurture, and enrich the languages, literacies, and funds of knowledge their students bring with them to the classroom. Teachers then unpack and analyze a series of texts—including canonical academic texts, multimodal texts, and popular texts—to see how power, position, and perspective operate intertextually. Finally, teachers work collaboratively to reimagine the relationships between themselves, their students, and the texts they teach. This session directly addresses the intersections of multiple dimensions of culture and identity (race, gender identity, sexuality, class, ability, language, and religion), and it is designed as much for teachers working in predominantly white institutions as it is for teachers working in more racially diverse schools or in communities of color.

The power of a novel-based reading curriculum lies in the opportunity it creates for young people to engage in shared reading experiences. Working together, young people can unpack, untangle, and take on the significant issues at stake in a novel; grapple with the questions it calls us to ask about life, human nature, and society; and recognize and appreciate the great care the author in took in crafting the novel. As teachers committed to developing our students into lifelong readers, we recognize the many risks of centering our instruction around shared novels. It is easy to forget, for example, that we want young people to develop knowledge, strategies, and habits they can take with them and apply to any novel they read, not just the shared novel under study.

In this interactive workshop, teachers learn how to design novel-based units that make use of and balance five lesson types: knowledge-building lessons, close reading lessons, strategy lessons, independent reading lessons, and Socratic seminars. Teachers apply the principles of backward design and liberatory design to make intentional decisions about lesson types and reading structures so that students can both experience class novels in all their beauty and complexity and develop transferable strategies and habits. Teachers also learn how to develop differentiated scaffolds and strategies that allow all students to participate meaningfully in the shared reading experience.