Summer Workshops

pictures of summer 2023 workshop instructors

June 28 - 30, 2023

STRATEGIES FOR CREATING READERS, WRITERS, AND JOYFUL KIDS: HELPING STUDENTS THROUGH TOUGH TIMES AND TOUGH TEXTS (K. BEERS, P. KITTLE, L. RIEF, & I. TAUHEED) NON-CREDIT WORKSHOP $625

June 28-30, 2023

Join Kylene Beers, Penny Kittle, Linda Rief and Islah Tauheed as we deepen our understanding of how students forge identities as confident and capable writers and readers. The purpose of reading, writing, and teaching is to become a community where we feel less alone. Where we find joy. We will create that community in this workshop with you. We will consider what makes texts tough for students and the necessary scaffolds that empower students to engage, interrogate, and deepen their thinking. We will write together, discuss the challenges that students are facing, and gather around books and ideas to further our commitment to clear and effective teaching of all young people.

Who Should Attend

Teachers, coaches, and leaders - the UNH Literacy Institute is for you. The focus is on essential reading and writing strategies for students in grades 4–12. These strategies are critical for ELA/reading, social studies, science, and special education teachers, but all educators are welcome.

Schedule

Your three days will be filled with large and small group learning and sharing. The days begin at 8:15 and end at 2:15. During that time you’ll be writing, reading, and sharing. A critical component of the institute is the writing you will do. Come prepared to focus on your own strengths as a writer so you can return to your school ready to write with your students. And if you aren’t yet sure what your strengths are, then come prepared to discover. You’ll also spend time learning how to help your students become engaged and critical readers of texts – fiction, nonfiction, and digital.

The institute is a packed with learning that will energize you, engage you, and give you needed strategies to share with your students. New Hampshire is a beautiful place to be in the summer. Join your colleagues and the UNH Literacy Institute Team for a needed time of collaborative learning, growing, and re-imagining your teaching.

Faculty

Kylene Beers, a former middle school teacher, is the bestselling author or co-author (with Bob Probst) of numerous books including When Kids Can’t Read/What Teachers Can Do, Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading, Reading Nonfiction, Disrupting Thinking, and Forged by Reading. Kylene is an international consultant on literacy issues, a past president of the National Council of Teachers of English, and has served as an advisor to the National Governor’s Association Education Committee. She is a recipient of the NCTE Halle Award for Outstanding Middle Level Educator and the Exemplary Leadership Award awarded by NCTE’s Conference on English Leadership.

Islah Tauheed (Bronx, NY) is a courageous advocate for teachers. She works toward change by creating safe spaces where people can let their guard down, express their true selves, and receive honest feedback. She is currently an assistant principal in the Bronx, NY, where she enthusiastically strives to create a mutually-beneficial team that uplifts both educators and students to experience curriculum that reflects the diverse background of students in the school community. Islah is a graduate of Teachers College, Columbia University, a former Heinemann Fellow, and member of ASCD’s Emerging Leaders of 2021.

Penny Kittle teaches composition at Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. She taught in public schools for 34 years. She is the author of nine books, including Micro Mentor Texts, Book Love, and Write Beside Them, which won the James Britton award from NCTE. She co-authored both 4 Essential Studies and 180 Days: Two Teachers and the Quest to Engage and Empower Adolescents with Kelly Gallagher and co-authored two books with Don Graves. She co-edited a collection of Graves’ work, Children Want to Write. She is the president of the Book Love Foundation and was given the Kent Williamson Exemplary Leadership Award from NCTE’s Conference on English Leadership and ILA’s Thought Leader Award. She works beside teachers and leaders across the world to empower young readers and writers.

Linda Rief left the classroom in June of 2019 after 40 years of teaching Language Arts with eighth graders. She misses their passionate, powerful voices as writers and readers.

Her latest books include Whispering in the Wind: A Guide to Deeper Reading and Writing Through Poetry (2022), The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students’ Thinking and Writing (2018), Read Write Teach: Choice and Challenge in the Reading-Writing Workshop (2014), The Writer’s-Reader’s Notebook (2007),and Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook (2007).

In 2021 she was honored with the Distinguished Service Award from NCTE and in 2020 received the Kent Williamson Exemplary Leader Award from the Conference on English Leadership, in recognition of outstanding leadership in the English Language Arts. A recipient of NCTE’s Edwin A. Hoey Award for Outstanding Middle School Educator in ELA, her classroom was featured in the series Making Meaning in Literature produced by Maryland Public Television for Annenberg/CPB. For three years she chaired the first Early Adolescence English/Language Arts Standards Committee of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

July 5 - 7, 2023

STORIES OF FREEDOM 3: EXPANDING THE STORIES WE SHARE IN K-12 LITERACY, HISTORY, AND LANGUAGE ARTS CLASSROOMS (K. BAUMGARTNER & J. BOGGIS) NON-CREDIT WORKSHOP. $350

July 5-7, 2023

Register here!

Fascinating stories about the history of African Americans in New England are now at our fingertips thanks to the work of scholars, librarians, and nonprofit organizations. How can we begin to integrate these powerful stories into K-12 language arts classrooms? Come join us for this three-day workshop where we explore how best to bring these stories into our classrooms and schools.

This workshop explores storytelling, literature, and social studies as digital archival collections continue to grow. We will discuss historical narratives, archival collections, and educational resources that work well in the classroom. We ask two central questions:

What are the stories of freedom that we ought to share?
How can we use archival materials to enrich our reading and analysis of texts written by writers of color?

This workshop brings together teachers and cultural leaders who will also share best practices on incorporating archival materials in teaching language arts and humanities. We'll go on a walking tour of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire and visit the historical site of novelist Harriet E. Wilson, the first African American to publish a novel in North America. Along with these field trips, we’ll share how to analyze documents, from poems to petitions with your students; and we’ll study Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and view documentaries like Shadows Fall North.

Required Readings: • Lisa Ze Winters, “Fiction and Slavery’s Archive: Memory, Agency, and Finding Home,” in Reviews in American History 46.2 (June 2018): 338-344. • Shadows Fall North. Directed by Brian Vawter. Durham: University of New Hampshire’s Center for the Humanities/Atlantic Media Productions, 2016. • Susanna Hargreaves, “A Memorial to a New Hampshire Mother and Author,” in New Hampshire Magazine, https://www.nhmagazine.com/the-memorial-to-a-new-hampshire-mother-and-author/.

Scholarships are available as needed. Please email nhliteracy.institute@unh.edu if you're interested.

INSTRUCTORS: KABRIA BAUMGARTNER & JERRIANNE BOGGIS

Kabria Baumgartner is the Dean’s Associate Professor of History and Africana Studies and Associate Director of Public History at Northeastern University. Her research focuses on African American history, literature, and culture in nineteenth-century New England. She is the author of the award-winning book, In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America (New York University Press, 2019). She previously taught in the English department at the University of New Hampshire, where she was named the 2019 Outstanding Assistant Professor. She has published numerous scholarly articles as well as op-eds in The Washington Post and WBUR’s blog Cognoscenti.

JerriAnne Boggis is Executive Director of the Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, an organization that preserves, celebrates, and honors African American history in the state. She is a writer, educator, and community activist who works to correct the historical record on the racial complexity and richness of New Hampshire’s diverse past. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2022 Social Innovation Leader Award in the non-profit sector by the Entrepreneurs Fund of New Hampshire, the Ona Judge Award by the Human Rights Society in 2021, and named as one of the ten most influential women of the century in New Hampshire by the Seacoast Press in 2020. Most recently, an interview with her was featured in the November 2022 issue of Yankee magazine.

Comments from former workshop participants:

“Kabria’s and JerriAnne’s workshop allows teachers to explore local sites, stories, and literature. Most interesting to me were Kabria’s students’ digital compositions/documentary videos that tell local histories using archival images and materials. They show the amazing work that’s possible.”

“The most powerful piece for me was walking in the footsteps of those before us. It was a living history moment that was incredibly powerful.”

“Kabria is pure magic! Her examples of student’s archival work was powerful! I really think the workshop’s focus on living histories and archival work provides a concrete foundation that weall need to move forward with this tenuous work.”

Scholarships are available as needed. Please email nhliteracy.institute@unh.edu if you're interested.

Like us on Facebook Follow us on Twitter

English