Panelists

Multimodal Moments & Making Composition(s) Move​
​Sunday, October 9  7:30-8:30 pm

Cassie Brownell, Michigan State University

Cassie J. Brownell is a doctoral student in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education and a Graduate Fellow in the Residential College of Arts and Humanities at Michigan State University. As a former elementary educator in post-Katrina New Orleans, Cassie centers issues of educational equity and justice in her work. Through engaging with elementary students and teachers, Cassie’s scholarship works to reimagine writing in the English Language Arts classroom. By working with and learning alongside elementary students, Cassie seeks to sustain and strengthen more open forms of composing within ‘academic’ spaces. As a co-recipient of a 2015 CEE Research Initiative Grant, Cassie’s most recent collaborative project--#hearmyhome—explores how writing with and through sound might inform how youth and teachers attune towards difference.

Matt Hall, The College of New Jersey

Matthew Hall is an Assistant Professor of Literacy in the Department of Special Education, Language and Literacy at The College of New Jersey. He primarily teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on methods of literacy instruction in elementary and middle school. Matthew received his Ph.D. in Teaching and Learning from New York University in 2013. He studies multimodal composing practices with a particular emphasis on non-traditional forms of collaborative writing.  Prior to pursuing his doctorate, Dr. Hall worked as a literacy coach and a public school teacher in New Jersey. He holds certifications in General Education, Special Education and Education for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. 

Rohit Mehta, Michigan State University

Rohit Mehta is a Ph.D. candidate in Educational Technology at Michigan State University, working on the intersections of multiliteracies, transdisciplinary teaching and learning, and educational technology. His research centers on what it means to be literate today, looking at practices of reading, writing, and meaning-making in multimodal texts, especially in visually-rich environments. He takes multiliteracies and transdisciplinary approaches to his work, which means that he actively and consciously seeks multiple ways of meaning-making for learners from multicultural backgrounds using multimodal texts to engage and communicate across multiple disciplines. For the same reason, he is also interested in better understanding the intersections of science with art, humanities, and other disciplines, and vice versa. Therefore, he actively works on creating more trans-disciplinary learning experiences and appreciation for multiple disciplines among learners. ​

Jon Wargo, Wayne State University

Jon M. Wargo, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Reading, Literacy, and Literature at Wayne State University. An inaugural International Literacy Association (ILA) 30 Under 30 recipient, Wargo examines how writing moves through the haptic project of multimodal composition. Grounded in issues of equity, access, and justice, Wargo's research interrogates how this textual (re)mediation facilitates cultural change as youth work to design more just social futures. From nuancing the particulars of digital youth lifestreaming, to examining how elementary teachers use technology as a tool to remediate learning in practitioner-inquiry, Wargo's scholarship has appeared in journals such as New Media and Society, the Journal of Language and Literacy Education, and Enculturation.

 National Writing Project Initiatives: College Ready Writers Program & Letters to the Next President 2.0 
Sunday, October 23  6:00-7:00 pm

Rachel  Bear, National Writing Project

Rachel Bear was a high school English teacher in Idaho for 8 years. She then spent two years as co-director of Idaho Core Coaches, leading a team of 9 instructional coaches who designed and led professional development focused on implementing Idaho's college and career-readiness standards and building capacity for teachers to lead professional development in their schools and districts. She has worked on several programs
with the National Writing Project, including serving for 3 years on the NWP leadership team for the i3 College-Ready Writers Program. She was hired full-time by the National Writing Project in August of 2015. Her work there focuses primarily on the CRWP SEED College-Ready Writers Program, along with a few other small projects.

Linda Denstaedt, Oakland Writing Project, Michigan

Linda Denstaedt is Co-Director of the Oakland Writing Project (University of Michigan), which is an affiliate of the National Writing Project. She co-authored The Creative Writer's Craft: Lessons in Poetry, Fiction, and Drama, (Glencoe/McGraw Hill) and other texts on grammar, writing and reading comprehension. Her classroom work was featured in Publishing with Students (Heinemann) and a television commercial series, Public Schools Work. Michigan Council Teachers of English named her Creative Writing Teacher of the Year in 1996. A founding member of Michigan Classroom Discourse Group (University of Michigan) and a National Board Certified teacher, she directs retreats for educators, designs staff development seminars, and presents regularly at state and national conferences on writing and action research.  

Casey Olsen, Montana Writing Project

Casey Olsen is in his fourteenth year teaching English at Columbus High School in rural Montana. Olsen is a Montana Writing Project teacher-consultant and was a 2015 Montana Teacher of the Year finalist. He serves on the College-Ready Writers Program leadership team for the National Writing Project.

Dawn Reed, Red Cedar Writing Project

Dawn Reed is an English teacher at Okemos High School in Okemos, Michigan, and is a co-director of Red Cedar Writing Project at Michigan State University, a site of the National Writing Project. Dawn earned her master’s degree in Writing and Rhetoric with a specialization in Critical Studies in Literacy and Pedagogy from Michigan State University. She conducts professional development for teachers focused on technology integration and the teaching of writing. She is co-author of Research Writing Rewired: Lessons that Ground Students’ Digital Learning (Corwin Literacy 2015) and Real Writing: Modernizing the Old School Essay (Rowman and Littlefield 2016), and has published in various journals, books, and websites. Follow Dawn on Twitter at @dawnreed.