Reaching All Learners Speaker Series
Cultivate your expertise in reaching and responding to the diverse strengths and needs of every one of your students to ensure each child grows up literate in our educational system.
Our exciting lineup of speakers will deepen your ability to plan for and respond to individual learners, strengthen your partnerships with families and caregivers, and find entry points and pathways for accessible writing instruction and growth, including the use of Artificial Intelligence.
These nationally known author-educators will challenge your thinking, inspire you and your students to take action, and equip you with the literature, language, and tools so you can make a difference in your school, community, and the world.
- Classroom Teachers
- Interventionists
- Coaches
- Principals
- Individual Speakers ($199 each)
- Seminar Bundle ($350)
- Discounts available for groups. Email CRRLC@lesley.edu to inquire.
Nawal Qarooni
Melanie Meehan
Patricia Paugh
Growing Community and Family Collaborations All Year Long
Join Nawal Qarooni, a holistic literacy educator who designs family literacy programming in schools, for a day-long seminar to grow community and family collaborations all year long. Nawal will share a collective care framework developed over decades of research and her parenting of four multiethnic children.
In this seminar, we will work together to:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
This day-long workshop 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. 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.
This full-day workshop will be recorded. Registered individuals will have through April 12, 2025, to access this recording. Instructions to access the recording will be sent about 1-2 weeks following the session.
About Nawal Qarooni
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.
Nourishing Caregiver Collaborations: Elevating Home Experiences and Classroom Practices for Collective Care is Nawal’s first book. Prior to her work in education, Nawal was an award-winning journalist.
Extending Pathways and Possibilities for Writers
That every child can write is a critical belief for effective writing instruction. Join renowned author Melanie Meehan to consider and explore options that invite, engage, and inspire writers throughout their unique processes and challenges.
ChatGPT and AI tools have emerged as accessible and sometimes controversial options for content creation. However, these tools offer accessibility for writers, especially when it comes to organizing ideas and expressing those ideas on paper.
In this workshop, you will delve into ways to use technology and AI tools within writing instruction. Blending knowledge and understanding of the cognitive work of writing with traditional and emerging tools, this exciting workshop considers the imperatives of responsive, responsible instruction and critical content creation for learners– both teachers and students.
Participants will leave this session knowing and being able to:
- Consider entry points and pathways for accessible writing instruction and growth.
- Recognize ways that ChatGPT– or a similar resource– can help students learn to write.
- Create prompts and interact with AI in order to empower instruction and accelerate learning.
- Extend and combine opportunities and strengths of various AI platforms, extensions, and resources.
Registered participants will receive a copy of the professional text, Every Child Can Write, Grades 2-5: Entry Points, Bridges, and Pathways for Striving Writers.
This full-day workshop will be recorded. Registered individuals will have through April 12, 2025 to access this recording. Instructions to access the recording will be sent about 1-2 weeks following the session.
About Melanie Meehan
Melanie Meehan is the Elementary Curriculum Coordinator in Simsbury, Connecticut, developing curriculum and assessments, coaching teachers, and working with students to send them into the world as confident, competent writers. Melanie has written several books about writing instruction, co-authors the popular blog, Two Writing Teachers, and co-hosts its companion podcast. Additionally, she consults with school districts and educational companies and tutors writers worldwide.
Learning to be Literate: How to Connect the Current Conversations About Literacy Productively to Your Own Students
A renewed focus on phonics and decoding has been a central topic in public conversations about literacy education. While all can agree the decoding of words is essential, it is one of many skills that are central to an effective literacy education.
Teachers are in the essential position to help young learners think deeply about ideas and language at the same time as they learn to work out the sounds and symbol systems of language. In this workshop, you will learn about a four-part framework to review curriculum, instruction, and students’ needs as well as consider new ideas for classroom practice.
Participants will:
- Examine literacy instruction through the Active Literacy Learning (ALL) framework that encompasses four interconnected dimensions:
- learning the codes,
- reading and writing with purpose,
- building confidence and competence, and
- engaging critically with texts.
- Explore and experience these four dimensions through case studies from classroom practices.
- Review and reflect on current curriculum, instruction, and the diversity of students’ needs.
- Choose a teaching idea related to the framework that you want to know more about and integrate it into a lesson or unit that taps one or more dimension(s).
Registered participants will receive a copy of the professional text, Learning to be Literate: More Than a Single Story, co-written by Patricia Paugh and Deborah MacPhee.
This full-day workshop will be recorded. Registered individuals will have through April 12, 2025 to access this recording. Instructions to access the recording will be sent about 1-2 weeks following the session.
About Patricia Paugh
Patricia Paugh is a professor in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where she teaches literacy methods courses and is graduate program director for elementary education. Pat’s scholarship is centered on issues of early, critical, and disciplinary literacy in early childhood and elementary education, primarily through collaborative research with teachers in urban classrooms. She is the co-author of four books; the most recent is: Learning to be Literate: More Than a Single Story. Her university work builds on twenty-years as a first grade and elementary reading teacher.
Independent Learning Policy & Recordings
Each full-day workshop will be recorded. Registered individuals will have through April 12, 2025, to access a recording. Instructions to access the recording will be sent about 1-2 weeks following the session.
While series recordings will be available to those who have registered, attending in person will bring added value. Live attendance provides the opportunity to directly interact with speakers, ask questions based on your classroom, school, and community to explore specific implementation directions for moving forward.
Cancellation Deadline & Refund Policies
Cancellation Policy: There is a $75 cancellation fee. We request any books sent prior to cancellation to be returned.
For Complete Bundle attendees, the cancellation deadline is October 17, 2024.
For Individual Seminar attendees, the cancellation deadlines are:
- Patricia Paugh – October 17, 2024
- Nawal Qarooni – January 9, 2025
- Melanie Meehan – March 5, 2025
If you request a cancellation after the above date deadlines, you will not be issued a refund.
Cancellations must be submitted in writing. Substitution requests are acceptable.
Please e-mail CRRLC@lesley.edu.
Requirements for Participation
In order to receive your certificate of attendance, you will be asked to complete a digital one-page insight form. We will provide more information about this process after each session. Please allow our team 2-3 weeks to process your certificate.
Early Literacy Success: Building Language, Sounds, and Print Knowledge in PreK
Children in PreK come to school with many different experiences with language, sounds, and print. This two-day workshop will bring to life what very young learners need to know and understand about letters, sounds, and words and how you can support their learning by building on what they already understand.
Early Literacy Success: Building Language, Sounds, and Print Knowledge in PreK (Webinar)
This session will focus on how to provide rich, engaging experiences with language, sounds, and print in the PreK classroom.
Quick Tips for Test Prep: Supporting Your Students for Success!
Are you working to support your students to excel on standardized tests? In this 2-day training, learn how to deepen students’ understanding of the demands of standardized tests so they can respond confidently and successfully!