Literacy Symposium Features Leading Educators

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Ruby Payne, author of A Framework for Understanding Poverty, will speak to about 600 teachers, literacy coaches and school administrators during the third annual University of Arkansas Literacy Symposium on June 5-6.

A professional educator since 1972, Payne travels the world as an educational consultant, training teachers how to work effectively with children in poverty. She holds a doctorate in educational leadership and policy studies from Loyola. In 1995, she published Framework, which has sold more than 1 million copies.

The symposium’s theme is differentiated literacy for diverse learners. The curriculum and instruction department in the College of Education and Health Professions started the symposium in 2006 to help teachers meet challenges they face in ensuring their students succeed academically.

Teachers come from Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma and, this year, as far away as Tennessee and Pennsylvania to attend the symposium at the Fayetteville Town Center. They receive professional development credit for attending. Registration has already closed.

Other speakers:

• Linda Gambrell, a professor of education at Clemson University and immediate past president of the International Reading Association. Gambrell served as a member of the Board of Directors of the association from 1992 to 1995 and received the IRA Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading Award in 1998. She was elected to the Reading Hall of Fame in 2004. She has written books on reading instruction and published articles in journals such as Reading Research Quarterly, The Reading Teacher, Educational Psychologist and Journal of Educational Research. She is co-editor of Literacy Teaching and Learning.

• Timothy Shanahan, professor of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago and director of the university’s Center for Literacy. He is a former president of the International Reading Association, has chaired the National Literacy Panel for Language Minority Children and the National Early Literacy Panel and was a member of the National Reading Panel. The author of more than 150 books, articles and chapters on reading education, his research focuses on improvement of reading achievement, reading assessment, reading-writing relations and family literacy.

• Justin Minkel, Arkansas Teacher of the Year in 2007 and one of four finalists for National Teacher of the Year. As a second-grade teacher at Harvey Jones Elementary School in Springdale, he brought about achievement in a classroom in which English was the second language for a majority of students. Minkel played an instrumental role in bringing about the proposed Teaches at the Table Act to create a panel of teachers to advise the U.S. House and Senate education committees, and he helped draft the Teachers of the Year’s 10 proposed changes to the No Child Left Behind Act. He speaks to teachers and policymakers around the nation about the importance of creativity, higher-order thinking and teachers’ voices in a time of increasing standardization.