Early childhood Education assembly board members 

Jennipher Frazier is a Literacy Coach at Jackson Creek Elementary School in Columbia, SC. She has her PhD in Language and Literacy, with an emphasis on teaching and coaching through a culturally relevant lens, from the University of South Carolina. She believes that children should have a safe space to learn about themselves and others. 

Liz Murray has worked as a teacher and teacher mentor in early childhood classrooms for over twenty years. She is currently a research partner and teacher mentor with the Bay Area Writing Project and a research partner with ViệtSpeak, a Vietnamese bilingual advocacy group in Melbourne, Australia. Her research ties together bilingual education, early childhood education and family and community engagement. 

Danelle Adeniji, Ph.D., is a recent Curriculum and Instruction graduate from the University of North Texas. Dr. Adeniji’s primary research is situated through a queer, Black, and Afrofuturist lens, which intersects with early childhood, teacher education, and literacy development. Their research illustrates the way traditional teacher education programs can draw from a queer Afrofuturistic lens to co-construct curricula and pedagogical practices, where everyone has access to dream and see their future. As a queer Afrofuturist Black feminist teacher and researcher, Dr. Adeniji aims to continue these collaborations and support teachers and students as they wade through politically driven policies and practices stripping them of fundamental humanizing rights. 

Carmen llerena, board member

Carmen Lugo Llerena is an early childhood educator at Central Park East II in East Harlem and a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is committed to providing her students with spaces to learn through exploration and play, while nurturing a sense of civic responsibility. Carmen’s research focuses on childhood culture, and the ways young children develop emotional literacy and make meaning of the world through play and the appropriation of popular culture. Carmen lives in New Jersey with her husband John and their sons Nico and Lucas.

chris hass, board member

Chris Hass is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Early, Elementary, and Reading Education at James Madison University. His teaching and scholarship focus on culturally relevant teaching, social justice education, and student activism. Prior to moving to higher education, he spent twenty years as a classroom teacher, advocating for student and teacher rights at district and state levels. Chris is currently the "Civic Literacy" column editor for Language Arts.

Isauro M. Escamilla is an Assistant Professor in the Elementary Education Department at San Francisco State University where he has taught graduate and undergraduate courses on children’s language development in multilingual settings; teacher inquiry in early childhood education; and more recently, language arts and Spanish Heritage Language in elementary education.  He has authored articles and book chapters on teacher action research with a focus on supporting emergent bilingual children. 

Kamania Wynter-Hoyte, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of South Carolina. Her scholarship is anchored in countering anti-Blackness in teacher education and early childhood spaces. 

Kindel Turner Nash is the Spangler Distinguished Professor of Early Literacy at Appalachian State University. Nash’s work centers on culturally sustaining and humanizing early literacy practices and transformative approaches to teacher preparation. Her third and latest book, Culturally Sustaining Practices for PreK-3rd Classrooms: The Children Come Full, was co-authored with three extraordinary classroom teachers, Alicia Arce, Roderick Peele, and Kerry Elson, with cover art by Erik J. Sumner. 

roderick peele, board member

Roderick Peele has been an elementary educator for 10 years and currently is a 4th grade educator at Northern Parkway Elementary in Uniondale, NY. He is also the co-author of Culturally Sustaining Language and Literacy Practices for Pre-K-3 Classrooms. Mr. Peele was part of NCTE’s PDCRT from 2019-2021 and was also the ECEA’s 2022 Social Justice Educator. His daily life is rooted in what Professor Kaba Hiawatha Kamene calls Values, Interests and Principles (VIPs), a set of values mirroring culturally relevant, sustaining and responsive pedagogies. Mr. Peele leads a weekly book club PLC where educators come to learn and share their knowledge and understandings of varying educational topics. 

WINTRE Foxworth- johnson,

board member

Wintre Foxworth-Johnson is an Assistant Professor at the University of Virginia’s School of Education and Human Development. There, Johnson is a faculty affiliate of the Center of Race and Public Education in the South (CRPES) and Youth-Nex: The UVA Center To Promote Effective Youth Development. In 2022, she received the NCTE Language Arts Distinguished Article Award. Her work has also been published in the Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, and Education Week.