Our Keynote Speaker is Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo, Senior Director of the Writing Program; Associate Professor in the Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English (RCTE); Associate Writing Scholar in the Department of English; and Affiliate Faculty with the School of Information at the University of Arizona. In 2021, Shelley was elected Vice President of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and will serve as NCTE President beginning in fall 2023. She researches how “newer” technologies better facilitate communicative interactions, specifically teaching and learning. As well as co-authoring three editions of The Wadsworth/Cengage Guide to Research, Shelley also co-edited Rhetorically Rethinking Usability (Hampton Press). Her scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Composition Forum, Composition Studies, Computers and Composition, C&C Online, Technical Communication Quarterly, Teaching English in the Two-Year College¸ as well as various edited collections. In 2022 she became a Research Associate with The Readability Consortium and a Distinguished Fellow in the Center for University Education Scholarship (CUES) at the University of Arizona. In 2021 she won the Arizona Technology in Education Association’s Ruth Catalano Friend of Technology Innovation Award. In 2018 she became an Adobe Education Leader, in 2014 she was awarded Old Dominion University’s annual Teaching with Technology Award, in 2012 the Digital Humanities High Powered Computing Fellowship, and, in 2010 she became a Google Certified Teacher/Innovator.
The keynote address, Let’s Talk about Reading, Baby: How It Is and How It Could Be, will take place in the morning on Thursday, March 23. Dr. Rodrigo will also lead a workshop called “Teaching” Reading: Let’s Get Over Feeling’ Mad and Sad and Bad that afternoon.
Featured Presenters
Kirsten M. Bradley is a 20-year veteran teacher of Norfolk Public Schools and currently teaches English 12 and Dual Enrollment courses. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from San Diego State University, a Masters of Education in Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Virginia (UVA), a Gifted Endorsement (also from UVA), and is a Nationally Board Certified teacher. Bradley serves as a consultant for the Tidewater Writing Project and previously served on the Leadership Teaching Team for SURN–School/University Resource Network–through the College of William and Mary. Bradley has presented at several Norfolk Public Schools professional development workshops and at the 2018 Mid-Atlantic CCCC conference at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU)
Maurita Lawrence Burden, Ed.S. teaches Dual Enrollment English and English 12 at Manor High in Portsmouth, Virginia. She has been teaching for 25 years and has taught middle school, high school, and college-level English. Maurita’s passion for writing led her to become a member of the Tidewater Writing Project. She is a Teacher Consultant and she developed and created several Professional Developments. Additionally, she teaches English Composition and Literature at Centura College and she is a fourth-year Reading, Language, and Literacy Ph.D. student at Concordia University Chicago. She believes, “If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.” — Toni Morrison
Tracy Spurlin-Saravanan is a high school English and history teacher with Chesapeake Public Schools. She currently teaches English 11, AP English Language, and African American History. She also teaches argumentative writing at Tidewater Community College and has taught conversational English at Zhejiang Wanli University in Ningbo, China. A native of Detroit, she is passionate about the nonfiction narrative genre, argumentative writing, and African American history. With master’s degrees in English literature and education, Tracy is also a writer. In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with family, listening to jazz, writing, and watching Bruce Lee movies.
This year’s featured presenters will lead an interactive roundtable discussion on Friday morning entitled Narrowing the Gap: Transferring Writing Skills from Secondary to Collegiate Audiences
