This session highlights the importance of centering Palestinian stories, often erased or untold, in our everyday spaces—at the dinner table, in the office, and in education spaces—to foster empathy, understanding, and global awareness. Through the lens of narrative and lived experience, we will examine how Palestinian voices can challenge dominant narratives, offering alternative perspectives on resistance, identity, and belonging. In addition to hearing an alternative perspective, attendees will gain tools to meaningfully consider the need to elevate and incorporate these stories in educational spaces, promoting critical thinking and cultural consciousness. By amplifying Palestinian voices, we hope attendees will engage with global struggles for justice, fostering dialogue and action that transcends borders and cultivates a more inclusive, empathetic world. This is not THE whole conversation; it is only the beginning of a conversation.
Blog Archives
ESCAPE THE BOOK!: Escape Rooms and Other Alternative Assessments
This presentation highlights engaging methods such as educational escape rooms and creative response projects in lieu of traditional assessment methods. Escape rooms transform assessment into an immersive experience, where students apply course concepts to solve puzzles, decode clues, and work as a team. These activities reinforce content knowledge while improving collaboration and engagement. Similarly, creative responses—such as digital storytelling, podcasts, visual art, and role-playing—encourage students to connect with material in meaningful and personal ways. Throughout the presentation, examples of these strategies in action will be shared, showcasing how they align with learning objectives and standards. Additional Alternative Assessment ideas will be shared in addition to the Escape Room format.
Agency, Advocacy, and Action: The Art of Shaping Global Citizens and Defining Solidarity
English classes are natural spaces to read the world and expand the walls of the classroom space beyond books and people in the physical space. The opportunity to do so allows for English teachers to shape global citizenship and show their own solidarity through their craft. How do we model solidarity and global awareness and action? How do we leverage grammar and other discipline-related skills and crafts in the name of voice, advocacy, agency and change? As new laws emerge in an attempt to censor and prohibit this work from impactfully and effectively happening in classrooms, equity advocates in schools across the country struggle to engage in liberatory instruction (Love, 2000). This workshop will tackle the challenges of being equitable in school settings by unpacking equity and solidarity through action. Equity work is meeting students’ social emotional needs, building criticality (Mohammed, 2020), getting to know students beyond a surface level (Singleton & Hays, 2008), integrating holism (Safir & Dugan, 2021) in our views of students and the funds of learning they bring into the classroom (Jaber, 2022).
Micro Mentor Texts: Using Short Passages from Great Books to Reach Writer’s Craft
We all want readers and writers to flourish in our classrooms. We want students who see a book as a treasure chest of craft moves—the moves that skilled writers use. They can and will begin to name those moves and use them through passage study and imitation. They will learn a wide range of writing skills from grammar in context, varied sentence patterns—both the art and feel of cohesion and style—as well as all the ways a writer is an artist of words. Come to study and write together.
Transforming Teaching with Student-Facing AI: What Used to Take Days—Like Grading Assignments—Can Now Be Done Instantly, Using Data to Inform Instruction and Enhance Engagement in Literacy
This session will explore how AI tools provide real-time feedback and scaffolding to enhance student engagement and save valuable time! By leveraging AI-powered platforms, educators can offer personalized support that meets students at their level, keeping them motivated and engaged. These tools generate data that drives instruction, allowing teachers to maximize small-group time and focus on targeted support. AI-powered tools like Snorkl, Brisk Teaching, and Notebook LM offer instant feedback, personalized support, and interactive learning experiences. Integrating these tools helps teachers meet the needs of diverse learners in literacy while using data to inform and guide instruction, maximize instructional time, and foster deeperstudent engagement. Exp lore how AI tools enhance literacy through real-time feedback and interactive support, with real classroom examples from grades 3-5. These examples can be easily adapted in classrooms at any grade level and across content areas.
From Margin to Center: Moving Students’ Voices to the Middle of the Page
In research and other text-based writing situations, student voice is often marginalized—the result both of students’ reluctance to claim authority over somewhat unfamiliar topics and of the cold formality of stereotypical academic language. This session will equip teachers with ways to help students gain confidence and authority in their own perspectives while understanding their relationship with other authors and texts, allowing young writers to join ongoing (written) conversations that are meaningful to them.
Family Connections: Celebrating with Family Literacy Night
Join us for an interactive session where we show how we bring parents and students of all ages together to celebrate literacy. Participants will be able to engage in several creative stations and will receive ready-to-use materials plans to take back to your classroom and community.
Discussion Panel on Co-Teaching, Moderated by John Hayward, Naperville Central High School
Co-teaching is becoming a widespread practice to improve student performance. While collaboration is universally considered virtuous, teachers can be territorial in their lessons, with their students, and in their pedagogical judgments. Participants will be asked about their experiences co-teaching. How do co-teachers manage the division of teaching duties? What challenges have teachers experienced and how did they overcome them? What aims has co-teaching accomplished; which aims has co-teaching fallen short in achieving?
Panelists: Brittany Neil, Round Lake Senior High; Katherine Cole, Round Lake Senior High School; Alyssa Staley, Carbondale Middle School; Genevieve Sherman, Zion-Benton Township High School; Kathryn Hoving, Hampshire High School; Kimberly Millard, Hampshire High School
Session materials: Website
Note from Moderator: This doc is shared and editable. If you were not able to attend, you can still participate in the slow chat here. Please contact any one of our panelists to ask questions, offer insights, and further the conversation!
Pushing Back with Love and Joy: Why Queer Representation Matters
Join the presenters as they share their favorite books that center and celebrate Queer Joy in Literature. Despite living in a state that prohibits book banning and mandates instruction honoring the contributions of LGBTQ+ people, our students still have limited access to literature in which Queer joy is represented. This session will highlight joyful, identity-affirming literature that spans all ages in a fast-paced jubilee and discuss how the books can add to cultivating an inclusive classroom experience. A robust list of books with links to purchase from independent bookstores will be provided. Door prizes will be given! Come and make a new TBR list for your classroom.
Interview with Abdi Nazemian
Abdi Nazemian, Interviewed by Andrew J. Rodbro, Warren Township High School
Join IATE’s second vice president, Andrew Rodbro, for an intimate conversation with Abdi
Nazemian. They’ll talk about Abdi’s writing process, his experience in the motion picture industry, the differences in the creative process between novel writing and script writing, his novels, and, of course, his love for Madonna.
