Featured Speakers

After a decade of teaching high school English, Chris Crowe went on to teach YA literature, creative writing, and English teaching courses at the university level. He’s currently a professor of English at Brigham Young University. In addition to a variety of other professional activities, he has served as president of ALAN and as editor of English Journal’s YA literature column. He has written books about YA literature (including two about Ohio author Mildred D. Taylor) and books for YA readers. They include Mississippi Trial, 1955 and Getting Away with Murder: The True Story of the Emmett Till Case. His newest book is a children’s book, Just as Good: How Larry Doby Changed America’s Game; it will be released in spring of 2012

Visit his website at http://www.chriscrowe.com.

Join author Roland Smith as he takes you to Kenya, Brazil, Burma, and other exotic locales from his award winning Young Adult adventure novels. He will talk about where he gets his ideas, his research techniques, and the specific steps he takes to write his novels. Roland Smith is the author of over 30 books--novels, nonfiction books and picture books. He is a former research biologist and species coordinator for the endangered red wolf that has been successfully released back into the wild. He was also instrumental in the release of the gray wolf into Yellowstone National Park.

His book include Z is for Zookeeper, Elephant Run, the IQ Series and many more. Visit his website at http://www.rolandsmith.com.

Nancy Frey, Ph.D., is a Professor of Literacy in the School of Teacher Education at San Diego State University. Before joining the university faculty, Nancy was a public school teacher in Florida where she taught students at the elementary and middle school level. She worked at the state level for the Florida Inclusion Network helping districts design systems for supporting students with disabilities in the general education classroom. She has co-authored books on literacy such as Language Learners in the English Classroom, published by NCTE, Improving Adolescent Literacy: Strategies at Work and Reading for Information in Elementary. 

Vist Nancy Frey's link at NCTE http://www.ncte.org/consultants/frey# She is our NCTE co-sponsored speaker.

Sara Kajder is an assistant professor of English Education at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). A former middle and high school English teacher, she received the first National Technology Fellowship in English/Language Arts. A nationally-known consultant and speaker, she is also the author of The Tech Savvy English Classroom.

Visit her at http://bringingtheoutsidein.com. This site is designed to accompany my book, Bringing the Outside In: Visual Ways of Engaging Reluctant Readers. This work is about really seeing kids and providing ways of using out of school literacies (i.e., digitial video or podcasting) to move our more reluctant middle and high school students to be more successful and engaged readers and writers.