WSRA 2022 Annual Wisconsin Literacy Research Symposium
Responsive Literacy Practices in Today's Classroom
Tuesday, June 21, 2022 Noon - 4 PM Zoom
Hosted by Cardinal Stritch University
$99 for educational professionals/faculty, $49 for students
Unpredictable and swift shifts in instructional modalities present challenges and opportunities for literacy educators. The focus of this year's symposium is responsive literacy practices in the digital classroom. We invite you to join us in examining theory and research within the context of literacy instruction in multiple modalities.
Biography
Jen Laffin is a former teacher who grew tired of teaching writing in a way that produced student writers who hated writing. Once she brought her writing experiences into her classroom, everything changed. She left the classroom in 2017 and founded Teach Write, an organization dedicated to helping teachers grow as writers so their students can too. She believes that teachers who write make the best teachers of writing and has made it her life's work to help more teachers do just that.
Biography
Dr. Katie Egan Cunningham is a teacher educcator, literacy consultant, and former elementary classroom teacher with ovet twenty two years of experience in education. She is a Professor of Literacy and English Education at Manhattanville College where she teaches literacy methods, teacher reserch, and children's literature courses. Her work focuses on the intersetions between literacy learning and childhood well-being.
Scholarly Articles/Text
Katie is the author of Start with Joy: Designing Literacy Learning for Student Happiness and Story: Still the Heart of Literacy Learning both published by Stenhouse Publishers. She is the co-author of Literacy Leadership in Changing Schools published by Teachers College Press. Katie is also the co-author of The Classroom Bookshelf, a weekly School Library Journal blog dedicated to children’s and young adult literature. She is currently working on the book Shifting the Balance: Bringing the Science of Reading into the Balanced Literacy Classroom, Grades 3-5 with Dr. Jan Burkins and Kari Yates scheduled to be published in 2023. Katie has degrees from Princeton University, New York University, and Teachers College, Columbia University.
She lives with her husband, a fellow educator, two young sons, and mini Golden Doodle in the woods of Connecticut.
Professor of Bilingual and Elementary Literacy Education
Biography
Lara J. Handsfield is a Professor of Bilingual and Elementary Literacy Education at Illinois State University, where she teaches courses in language and literacy theory and practice. Handsfield completed her Ph.D. in language and literacy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 2005. A former fourth grade teacher, her research critically examines comprehension instruction in multilingual classrooms, discursive and embodied positioning and identities, and how teachers negotiate multiple political and pedagogical demands in their work. Her scholarship has been funded by the Spencer Foundation and has appeared in a variety of academic and professional journals, including Linguistics and Education, Reading Research Quarterly, the Journal of Literacy Research, Research in the Teaching of English, Language Arts, and The Reading Teacher. In 2021 she was named Outstanding University Researcher at Illinois State.
