Early childhood Education assembly board members 

Darius Phelps is a PhD Candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is the Assistant Director of Programs under The Center for Publishing & Applied Liberal Arts (PALA) department at NYU  and is a Manager at Brooklyn Poets. An educator, poet, spoken word artist, and activist, Darius writes poems about grief, liberation, emancipation, reflection through the lens of a teacher of color and experiencing Black boy joy. His poems have appeared in the NY English Record, NCTE English Journal, Pearl Press Magazine, ëëN Magazine, and many more. 

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. She is currently working on a bookmaking project with Vietnamese families in an early childhood center in Melbourne, Australia.

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. 

Danelle Adeniji is an advanced doctoral candidate in the Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction Studies program at the University of North Texas. Their research is situated at the intersection of queer, elementary, and urban education. The core values that guide their work are freedom, pro-Blackness, community care, pro-queer Black folks, joy, justice, and storytelling. They believe that the narratives of Black, Indigenous, and other communities of Color must be centered within pedagogical and research practices.

jon wargo, treasurer

Jon Wargo is an Associate Professor of Educational Studies at the Marsal Family School of Education at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Leveraging children and young people's differences as sights and signs for critical literacy learning, his teaching and research focus on understanding and sustaining the heterogeneity of sensemaking in the contexts of community inquiry and social change. Prior to joining the professoriate, Wargo was an early years educator in Denver Public Schools.

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.

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. 

Natasha has a passion to develop and strengthen teachers' instructional practices and has served as a leader in her roles of an elementary Assistant Principal, high school Accountability Specialist, a junior high school Literacy Specialist, and a K-4th grade Reading Coach. She is currently a doctoral candidate at Baylor University. 

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.

stephanie bagley,

board member

Stephanie Bagley has been a leader and educator for over two decades. Stephanie serves as a Curriculum Development Manager for Acelero, Inc. where she leads the creation of equitable, rigorous, and culturally sustainable standards for Birth to 5 learners. Stephanie holds a Master's Degree in Early Childhood Education from Georgia State University, certification in Tier 1 Educational Leadership, and a Certificate in School Management and Leadership jointly from Harvard Business School and Harvard Graduate School of Education. 

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.

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. 

Tran is an Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education at Teachers College, Columbia University. She is a former ECEA board member and a former early childhood & special education teacher/school director. Tran studies children's identity construction as told through their photographs, play, and literacy practices.

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.