Summer Literacy Institutes

ENGL 919.01, Monday-Friday, 8:15am-2:30pm
       “There isn't anyone you couldn't love once you heard their story.”    
                                                    Sister Mary Lou Kownacki 

This course investigates the integral role of storytelling in fostering community, empathy and social cohesion. Students will explore how narratives—both personal and collective—shape identities, convey cultural values, and create a sense of belonging within various communities and classrooms. This class is suitable for teachers working in grades K-12. 

Through a combination of readings, discussions, writing exercises, and collaborative experiences, participants will have the opportunity to create their own narratives and explore how different mediums can enhance the storytelling experience. 

By the end of the course, participants will harness the pedagogical tool of storytelling as a means of fostering engagement, motivation, empathy, social change and more. 

Tomasen M Carey is a Senior Lecturer in the English Department at the University of New Hampshire where she is the Field Coordinator of the Learning Through Teaching Program and Director of UNH Writers Academy for youth. She is the voice behind the blog, Conversation Education (https://conversationeducation.com/) where she shares resources, questions the current state of education, and reflects on her work and her own literary life.

ENGL 920.01a, 8:15am-2:30pm in person plus two additional virtual classes. (3 credit)

The ELA standards can be daunting as a whole—especially if you are trying to simply tackle engagement among your students (and who isn’t?!?). In this course, we will navigate the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) in reading, writing, speaking, and listening, making sense of not only how they fit together, but how they amplify our outcomes for reading and writing achievement. 

With a focus on a Universal Design for Learning, this mindset will lead us to approach literacy full circle, addressing the full intention of the standards while honoring the genius of the learners in your care. 

Participants will: 

• Learn to deconstruct the opportunities the ELA standards present through a lens of multidimensional literacy. (For teachers in grades K-5, we will also consider how these ELA standards can be leveraged for the other content areas.)​​​​​​
• Practice ways humans interact with language through a receptive/generative language model. 
• Develop a broad definition of what it means to interact with text that includes—and transcends—the printed word.
• Construct and share text sets and sample lesson sequences that leverage reading, writing, speaking, and listening. 

Jaclyn Karabinas is an energetic, creative educator who was a classroom teacher until 2014. Now an independent consultant and instructional coach, she is passionate about mixing and matching skill sets from the worlds of educational technology integration, arts integration, and progressive literacy instruction. She holds a Master’s Degree in Arts Integration in Curriculum & Instruction, is a Google for Education Certified Trainer, Heinemann Professional Development Online PD consultant, and UNH Learning through Teaching adjunct.

July 16-18^th, June 25-27^th, August 22-23^rd

UNH-Manchester and on-site in schools

Sponsored by a U.S. Department of Education grant, the SLATE Institute focuses on bringing together teams of ELA, STEM, and EL teachers from the middle-levels. Teachers will work on inquiry in science and writing, as well as building stronger practices for working with multilingual students in their classrooms. Instructors will include experts in literacy, writing, and STEM from UNH. Teacher teams will have time to develop interdisciplinary collaborative curricular units with their teams. One of the goals of the Institute is build student interest in STEM through inquiry, while at the same time, gaining valuable experiences in reading and writing in the Language Arts and beyond. The SLATE Institute is a collaboration between the UNH Leitzel Center, the UNH Community Literacy Center, and the NH Literacy Institutes. Application only and available in schools that are currently part of the SLATE program. For more information, see https://www.unh.edu/leitzel-center/programs/stem-language-arts-teaching…

For grantees only.

ENGL 911.01, 8:15am-2:30pm in person, plus two additional virtual classes. (3 credit)

Shelley Girdner’s poems have been published in several journals, including Narrative, Nine Mile, Hunger Mountain, The Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, and others.She’s been featured on PBS NewsHour Arts Beat. Her collection, You Were that White Bird was published by Bauhan in 2016. She teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire where she has been a faculty member for over twenty years. This is her second summer teaching with the UNH Literacy Institute.

922.01a,  8:15am-2:30pm in person plus two additional virtual classes. (3 credit)

ENGL 920.03, 8:15am-2:30pm in person (UNH Manchester Campus)

Laura Smith, a Principal Lecturer in English at UNH, teaches courses in first-year composition, intro to literature, and English teaching, including Teaching Young Adult Literature.  She appreciates the welcoming and collaborative New Hampshire Literacy Institutes community and loves hearing your YA book recommendations!

922.03a,  8:15am-2:30pm ONLINE (3 credit)

Join Nawal Qarooni, a literacy educator who designs family literacy programming in schools, for a week-long course (3-credit, online) to grow community and family collaborations all year long. Nawal will share a collective care framework developed over decades of research and her work with multi-ethnic children and their teachers. In this course, we will work together to:

• Explore how classroom teaching of English language arts sparks and extends curiosity into students’ home lives, unearthing a deep appreciation for the rich nuance of human experience. 
• Determine what family engagement is and is not; unpack how understanding what constitutes family and engagement affects our communication methods with the students in our care.  

• Elevate the multitude of ways that all families grow their children’s literacy lives – in authentic traditions and rituals- and think through our responsibilities as teachers and leaders of literacy.  

• Discuss where the family intersects with our curricular work, and how we can communicate best with families about how to strengthen and continue their rich literacy legacies.  

Our class days together will be interactive, discussion-based, and tailored to participant input. Teachers and school / instructional leaders will leave with ideas to explore for their communities and schools to draw closer together in partnership to collaborate and support student literacy development. There will be ample space for creating cathartic texts together that will then be used to springboard classroom and family learning experiences. Classroom teachers will return to their classroom with text titles, suggested modes of connecting directly with families, and ways that all their students can see themselves and their fellow community members in the literature.

Registered participants will receive a copy of the professional text, Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Elevating Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care.

Nawal Qarooni is a Jersey City-based educator, writer and adjunct professor who supports a holistic approach to literacy instruction and family experiences in schools across the country. Drawing on her work as an inquiry-based leader, mother, and proud daughter of immigrants, Nawal’s pedagogy is centered in the rich and authentic learning all families gift their children every day. She and her team of coaches at NQC Literacy work with schools and districts to collectively grow teacher practice and children’s literacy lives. She is the author of Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Elevating Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care (Stenhouse/ Routledge 2024). She has worked as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, staff developer, researcher and professor.

In addition, Nawal serves on the Library of Congress Literacy Awards Advisory Board, which funds powerful literacy programming across the country and worldwide. Nawal was a member of the National Council for Teachers of English Committee Against Racism and Bias in the Teaching of English (2021-2024). She evaluates manuscripts for Reese Witherspoon’s LitUp program, which platforms historically underrepresented voices in publishing.