Page 4 - Washington D.C. Reading Summit Event Guide

KEYnotE SPEAKERS
ERnEst MoRREll is an award-winning author, teacher, and researcher, and is the Macy Professor of English Education
and Director of the Institute for Urban and Minority Education at Teachers College at Columbia University. Ernest is also past-president of the National Council of Teachers of English, a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and an appointed member of International Literacy Association’s Literacy Research Panel.
In 2016, Ernest was ranked among the top 100
university-based education scholars in the RHSU
Edu-Scholar Public In uence Rankings. Ernest was an award-winning English teacher and coach in northern California who now works with schools and after-
school programs across the country to infuse social and emotional learning, digital technologies, project- based learning, and multicultural literature into empowering literacy practices in K-12 classrooms.
Ernest is the author of more than 75 articles and book chapters, and eight books, including Every Child a Super Reader: 7 Strengths to Open a World of Possible, New Directions in Teaching English, Linking Literacy and Popular Culture, and Critical Media Pedagogy: Teaching for Achievement in City Schools, which was awarded Outstanding Academic Title for 2014 by Choice Magazine of the American Library Association. Ernest has earned numerous commendations for his secondary and university teaching, including being nominated ve times for Who’s Who Among America’s High School teachers and receiving UCLA’s Department of Education’s Distinguished Teaching Award. Morrell earned his Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Culture from the University of California at Berkeley where he received the Outstanding Dissertation Award. Ernest also proudly sits on the Executive Boards of LitWorld and the Education for Democracy Institute.
JEWEll PARkER RHoDEs is the award-winning author of Ninth Ward, Bayou Magic, and Sugar. Her writing guides include: Free
Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Authors and
The African American Guide to Writing and Publishing Non ction. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Jewell now lives in California. She is the Virginia G. Piper Chair in Creative Writing at Arizona State University.
Her most recent novel for young readers is Towers Falling, a story about 9/11 set 15 years later. Jewell wrote this
story realizing that so many born after 2001 could not put the tragedy into context. Her work has been published in Germany, Italy, Canada, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and reproduced in audio and for NPR’s “Selected Shorts.”
Her honors include: the American Book Award, the National Endowment of the Arts Award in Fiction, the Black Caucus of the American Library Award for Literary Excellence, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award for Outstanding Writing, and two Arizona Book Awards.