Breakout Sessions & Descriptions

"Bearing Witness": A Unit Planning Project on Elie Wiesel's Night

Jinan El Sabbagh with OSU students; Oklahoma State University

This classroom presentation centers on essential questions: 1) What is memoir as a genre of writing? As literature? 2) What does it mean to “bear witness” from the perspective of the writer and from the perspective of the reader? 3) How do our lived experiences (biases, privileged and marginalized identities) impact our response to memories (of ourselves and of others)? We start with an overview of the Night unit plan, including timeline, objectives, and resources. Then, 1-2 Secondary ELA preservice teachers share their specific lesson plans that they planned and taught to the class. This course is their final methods for the program and their first time unit planning in its entirety. Their portion will discuss their planning process, what “angle” they chose, and why, based on their assigned chapter, and also their reflections on the process. This collaborative unit planning centers humanizing and culturally and historically responsive pedagogies (Muhammed, 2023) and is grounded in Teach Like a Writer (Donovan & Jensen, 2025). In addition to Night, we also read excerpts from Brown Girl Dreaming (Woodson, 2014). This text was foundational for a broader conversation on the genre of memoir. Through this novel, students familiarize themselves with craft moves, including scene, summary, and musing. Participants will be able to share their thoughts on unit planning, provide advice, and share specific experiences on unit planning, Night and memoirs in general. They will also come away with resources for unit planning in a methods course as well as in the Secondary ELA classroom.

A Blueprint for Bookworms: Creating an Independent Reading Era

Robin Pelletier; Pinecrest Academy of Nevada Sloan Canyon

This infographic and accompanying video will walk educators through an independent reading program. This independent reading practice has evolved over time. For this era, students start with a “fan of reading” mini-reseach project by completing a reading research webquest on the benefits of reading. This activity can be scaffolded with sentence stems and credible sources provided or it can be more challenging with students having to complete a credibility report on their resources. Students walk away with a literal fan and background knowledge on why they should be a “fan of reading”. Students then engage in a booktasting in which they are exposed to many different YA titles and “judge a book by its cover”. In the end, students wind up with an independent reading To Be Read (TBR) stack. This activity can be scaffolded by reading level of books used, the genres, the amount of books and can fit into stricter curriculum requirements. Every other Friday, students meet with their book clubs or literature circles to discuss their reading. Think of these as mini-Socratic Seminars. They can be scaffolded to have student roles or can be challenging with groups of students by genre. Speed discussions are also a fun option. At the end of your independent reading program, assessment is usually done.  At the end of this “poster,” you will find 4 project ideas. This is a start to finish independent reading era with student examples and feedback provided in the video.

A Study in Underage Crimes?: YA Sherlock Holmes Stories

Heather Wright & Nathan Logan Perry; Gardner-Webb University

In 1887, the first of Sir Arthur Conanon Doyle’s stories featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes, “A Study in Scarlet,” was written. The character of Holmes had a lasting impact on the detective genre and our view of detectives. From continuations, re-tellings, and adaptations, via TV shows, films, books, and short stories, we’re constantly re-imagining the world of Holmes across genres. One genre that’s particularly interesting in which Homes has exploded in is that of young adult literature. Two strong examples of Sherlock adaptations in YA literature are Brittany Cavallaro’s 2016 A Study in Charlotte and James Ponti’s 2024 The Sherlock Society. Rather than running through the streets of London as a grown man, these protagonists are leading their adventures as teens/preteens. With that age difference comes affordances and constraints, given the combinations of YA literature and detective fiction. What happens when a teen/preteen protagonist is dealing with police, cases, possible crime scenes, suspects, and possibly even more dangerous matters (all while navigating a development of self, a healthy social construct, and proper brain growth)? Things could get precarious. This analysis looks at the protagonists of A Study in Charlotte and The Sherlock Society as they navigate their detective adventures, looking specifically at the possible legal situation the characters get into, whether those situations are addressed directly, indirectly, or not at all.

Beyond the Banned List: Classroom Strategies for Engaging Preservice Teachers in YA Censorship Conversations

McKenzie Rabenn & Sonja Brandt;  Universities of Wisconsin & University of North Dakota

Beyond the Banned List: This Classroom Practice Session shares instructional approaches from our university-level Children’s Literature courses that prepare future educators to navigate the rapidly shifting landscape of YA book challenges and censorship, highlighting ways to help preservice teachers confront book bans thoughtfully, ethically, and confidently. We demonstrate strategies for opening productive, open-ended conversations with future teachers about how challenged texts can become opportunities for critical thinking, exploring multiple perspectives, and examining how book bans shape student agency, identity development, and intellectual freedom. Participants engage in activities helping preservice teachers distinguish professional selection practices from censorship, analyze current YA titles appearing on ALA challenge lists, and “turn controversy into curriculum” through examples such as Dr. Seuss’s illustrations, Laura Ingalls Wilder’s documented history, and frequently challenged YA novels including The Hate U Give, All Boys Aren’t Blue, and The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. We integrate our research findings on preservice teachers’ evolving attitudes toward censorship. Drawing from reflective responses to questions about perceptions of book bans, censorship’s role in future classrooms, and the most influential components of our teachings, we illustrate how structured engagement with YA texts can shift beliefs and build educator readiness. This session concludes with adaptable assignment designs, discussion routines, and resource lists that attendees can bring back to their own university courses or secondary ELA classrooms. Throughout, participants actively engage in hands-on strategies that model how YA literature can illuminate issues of censorship while empowering emerging educators to teach boldly, knowledgeably, and inclusively.

Bravery Borrowed, Stories Born: YA Memoirs and the Making of Young Writers

Cindi Koudelka;  Aurora University

This session explores how young adult memoirs can mentor adolescents in claiming voice, courage, and craft as developing writers. Drawing on Kin: Rooted in Hope, Pushing Hope, How the Boogeyman Became a Poet, and We Survived the Night, the presentation demonstrates how these texts invite readers into powerful acts of remembrance, identity work, and narrative possibility. Grounded in Louise Rosenblatt’s transactional theory, the session emphasizes how meaning emerges through the dynamic relationship between reader and text; paired with Paulo Freire’s principles of critical literacy, it positions memoir reading and writing as opportunities for students to reflect on their lived experiences, question dominant narratives, and author their own stories with agency. Participants will receive a brief overview of each memoir before learning about four potential paired writing activities to use in the classroom -- 5 Influences Handprint, Six-Word Memoirs Road Maps, and hexagonal thinking to help students experiment with crafting voice, sensory detail, and personal truth in preparing for their own memoir creation. Participants will specifically engage in one of those activities as a hands-on model to bring back to their classrooms.These interactive strategies demonstrate how YA memoirs can serve as catalysts for adolescent writers to experiment with form, honor their identities, and transform lived experience into meaningful memoir. Attendees will leave with ready-to-use lessons, mentor text connections, and a deeper understanding of how memoir work cultivates empathy, agency, and authentic writing in the ELA classroom.

Breaking Rural/Urban Stereotypes with Stories

Suzanne Morgan Williams (YA Author) & Moira Peckham;  Simon & Schuster & Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI)

When we think about marginalized readers’ inclusion, it’s easy to forget isolated rural readers or urban teens with few opportunities outside their neighborhoods. Left to fabricate each other’s worlds based on social media and popular stereotypes, teens may not see our commonalities - crisis, dreams, fun, loss, love, and friendship connect us. Exploring that connection through stories builds empathy. In this panel, YA author, former teacher, and school presenter " Y“, and Program and Communications Manager, “X”, focus on rural marginalization, urban underserved schools, and how students’ writing from their own experience, their access to books, and valuing their own stories combats those feelings of isolation. X grew up on a farm and now lives in Los Angeles. Author Y grew up in a city but, in her research and presentations, has visited dozens of rural communities. Her book, BULL RIDER, resonates with rural readers. Her newest YA novel, SEEING DAYLIGHT, should do the same. Y will share a simple writing exercise that honors teens’ personal experiences no matter where they live. X will discuss how books cross geographic/cultural divides and give examples of how book distribution programs she manages encourage empathy. Y will compare similar experiences she’s had with readers in rural and urban schools. Both panelists will share how student-made videos about books can and have influenced public policy. There will be time for questions and sharing at the end of the panel. This should include participants in the panel discussion.

Challenging the School-to-Prison Nexus: Critical Race Content Analysis of YA Literature as a Means of Building Preservice Teacher Critical Consciousness

Cassie Sheets-Kavanagh & Maggie McConnaha;  Michigan State University

The school-to-prison nexus describes the interlocking ways schools and the carceral state harm multiply marginalized youth (Annamma, 2016; Meiners, 2011). Teachers must become aware of how they either perpetuate or disrupt the school-to-prison nexus to promote all youth flourishing (Winn, 2011). Young adult literature that illustrates systems of oppression can be one vehicle to support teachers in planning to work against the carceral state (McConnaha, 2025). Building off our collective experiences working in youth prisons, youth publishing, and social justice teacher education, we, two white teacher educators, used critical race content analysis (CRCA) to examine two YA texts that illustrate the school-to-prison nexus, Punching the Air (Zoboi & Salaam, 2020) and Charisma's Turn (Couvson, 2021). CRCA invites examination of children's literature about People of Color through a critical race theory lens, asking questions like "How are dominant ideologies/deficit perspectives challenged? How does resistance emerge?" (Pérez Huber et al., 2023, p. 2451). Our examination of the texts involved an iterative process of memoing and coding. Our first finding illuminates how two Black, teenage protagonists agentively navigate and resist the school-to-prison nexus, sustained in part through engagement with Black literary narratives. Our second finding focuses on the role teachers play in supporting or hindering the protagonists’ agency. In this session aimed at teacher educators, we describe CRCA as a valuable tool for fostering critical consciousness and how these two YA texts can springboard opportunities to deepen PSTs' ability to critique and imagine transforming oppressive systems (Souto-Manning, 2009).

Class and Identity in Young Adult Literature: Approaches to Teaching Stargirl, The Hate U Give, and With the Fire on High

Allison Estrada-Carpenter;  Texas A&M University

This classroom practice session looks at three different approaches to teaching class and identity in 21st- century Young Adult (YA) Literature in the undergraduate classroom. My work on Jerry Spinelli’s Stargirl draws from my earlier research on making the middle-class white novel visible for students. I then move on to a discussion of Angie Thomas’s The Hate U Give and the complexities of mixed-class friendships and relationships in YA literature. Finally, I address Elizabeth Acevedo’s With the Fire on High and the importance of community and positive depictions of working-class teenage parents. Through this session, participants can see how class and identity issues are portrayed in the field and how they are complicated by additional factors such as race, ethnicity, and parenthood. Additionally, I will have time at the end for participants to share how they approach teaching class and young adult literature in their own classroom.

Collecting the Fragments: Developing a Cohesive Scholarly Approach to YA Literature Featuring Disabled Black Protagonists

Tolonda Henderson; Fairfield University

Research relevant to YA literature featuring disabled Black protagonists is currently fragmented. While some scholars have studied disability and adolescence in books with white protagonists and others have studied disability and Blackness in narratives centered on the lives of adults, the complex intersection of Blackness, disability and adolescence in literature remains undertheorized. This research session excerpts from my dissertation, a work in progress which seeks to build a theoretical framework with which to study novels such as Anger is a Gift (Oshiro 2018), Who Put This Song On? (Parker 2019), and All the Noise at Once (Davis 2025). My hope is that my work will inspire researchers and teachers to consider the ways in which multiple intersectional vulnerabilities impact the way a story unfolds.

Creating Meaningful Space for Indigenous Young Adult Literature

Beth Spinner;  Ferris State University

In her book Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults, Kimmerer (2022) asks “What homemade ceremony or honoring could you create in your family, school, or workplace that cultivates a sense of respect and gratitude for the land and water where you live?” (p. 55). This question is what this Classroom Practice Session seeks to answer. Teaching ideas for using Indigenous young adult literature and co-creating land acknowledgements with students will be presented. Specific texts featured include Rez Dogs (2021), Braiding Sweetgrass for Young Adults (2022), Marrow Thieves (2017), Firekeeper’s Daughter (2021 ), and others. Because literature has the power to expose readers to other perspectives (Rosenblatt, 1983) and it is essential for students to learn about their identities as well as identities of others (Muhammad, 2020), this session begins by sharing specific Indigenous young adult texts university students read and reading activities that were used in the presenter’s classroom. Germán (2021) suggests students research the land on which they learn as a way to build community. The presenter will share how her class read their school’s land acknowledgement and used specific resources to write their own land acknowledgements. Throughout the process of reading and writing land acknowledgements, the class was reading and discussing the Indigenous young adult literature that provided additional perspectives and information that students applied to the process. In the session, participants will leave with specific ideas for Indigenous young adult texts and practical ways students might create or use a land acknowledgement while or after reading the book.

Creating Place-Conscious Pathways: Identity and Belonging Across Borders in YA Literature

Leilya Pitre, Maggie Tregre-Richoux, René Saldaña (YA Author), and Padma Venkatraman (YA Author);  Southeastern Louisiana University & Texas Tech University

This panel brings together scholars, authors, and educators whose work explores how place, geography, and cultural identity shape adolescent experiences in YA literature. Aligned with the Summit’s focus on “Investing, Creating, and Problem-Solving,” the session demonstrates how regional and transnational narratives foster nuanced understandings of youth identity, belonging, and resilience. The opening presentation centers adolescence in South Louisiana’s bayou communities. By examining YA literature grounded in coastal life, intergenerational memory, and culturally specific rites of passage, this work highlights how place-based texts reveal social class tensions, regional identity, and the negotiation of tradition and modern adolescence. The second presentation turns to the Texas–Mexico borderlands through a poetic memoir written for young readers. This narrative illustrates how a young Mexican American boy’s experiences of family storytelling, bilingualism, school challenges, and finding books that reflected his identity shaped his journey toward authorship. The memoir offers rich insight into rural life and representation for marginalized and reluctant teen readers. The third presentation explores South Asian diasporic identity through the work of a YA novelist, emphasizing the ways geography, history, and cultural hybridity shape adolescent experience. The presenter will also exemplify ways to invest in the classroom activities that create safe spaces for discussing survival, belonging, and layered cultural identities. The final presentation examines Ukrainian YA narratives of war, displacement, and forced migration, analyzing how adolescents navigate cultural loss, fractured family ties, and the search for home. This work underscores how global conflict narratives can cultivate empathy and trauma-informed literacy practices. Together, the panel provides multimodal strategies, research-based frameworks, and a concluding dialogue on creating inclusive, place-conscious YA networks of scholars, writers, and educators.

Creating Socially Just YAL Classrooms

Maite Urcaregui, Samuel Lee, Kylie McCue, Gerardo Palacios, & Elizabeth Rivera;  San José State University

Our panel session explores how to use young adult literature to engage in discussion around social justice, intersectionality, and pedagogy. It draws from knowledge we created in our upper-division young adult literature seminar at a large state university and will primarily feature the insights from undergraduate student English literature and English teacher prep majors, who will present portions of their final projects. Together, we will explore how to create socially just Young Adult Literature (YAL) classroom libraries, lessons, and syllabi for multiple levels: middle school, high school, and college and university settings. In their book chapter “Curating Socially Just Classroom Libraries for Middle Grade Readers,” Kristie W. Smith and Erica Adela Warren argue that “there is a curricular responsibility for 21st-century teachers to engage students in civil discourse around historical and contemporary social injustices,” and posit YAL as “a pathway for exploration and conversations for these civil discourses” (90). At the same time, they recognize some of the contemporary challenges teachers and students must navigate, such as book bans and the targeting of critical race theory and diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this presentation, undergraduate students will become the teachers and will share their ideas for how to navigate these contemporary constraints while still envisioning more just, diverse, and inclusive YAL classroom libraries, lessons, and syllabi. Some of the texts discussed will be Malinda Lo’s historical fiction, queer romance Last Night at the Telegraph Club; Laurie Halse Anderson’s survivor’s novel Speak; and Elizabeth Acevedo’s novel in verse The Poet X.

Cultural Expectations and Narrative Agency: The Eldest Daughter in Nigerian Literature

Emmanuella Smith;  Oklahoma State University

This study explores the influence of cultural expectations on narrative agency in Nigerian children’s and Young Adult literature, specifically focusing on the lived experiences of eldest daughters as a “second mother”. Grounded in Critical Literacies (Luke, 2012) and Nigerian Sociocultural Context (Nwosu et al., 2016) this presentation shows how literature mirrors real-life hierarchies where young women carry heavy domestic and emotional responsibilities. This research highlights how the traditional roles are woven into narratives, using texts include Atinuke’s Anna Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus, Ibi Zoboi’s Nigeria Jones, and Nnedi Okorafor’s Akata Witch to show how ingrained, often unconsciously traditional roles are quietly built into stories, influencing women’s autonomy. This presentation will feature a one-page poster visualizing the “second mother” archetype with a 2–3-minute video that explains recurring themes such as domestic labor and cultural expectations shaping eldest daughters’ roles in literature.

Disrupting Deficit Language: Youth Literature as Mentor Texts for Teacher Candidates

Nicole Amato; Cal State University-Channel Islands

Teacher candidates in most states across the US must pass state-mandated teacher performance assessments to obtain their teaching license. Performance assessments such as EdTPA, CalTPA, and university-designed portfolios often ask students to plan instruction that builds on their students’ cultural and linguistic assets. In California, candidates taking the CalTPA must write thick descriptions of 3 focus students – identifying their strengths and needs, interests and hobbies, and cultural and linguistic assets. To do this effectively, candidates must know how to identify and name cultural and linguistic assets, revise deficit language, and create tools and assessments that creatively capture this information. This classroom practice session will model how to use youth literature as mentor texts (Fletcher, 2011; Marchetti et al, 2021; Anderson, 2022) with teacher candidates preparing to complete high-stakes performance assessments. This work joins scholars in the field who suggest YAL is a space where teachers can learn to seek language and models of practice for social justice and equity work (Bach et al, 2011; Glenn, 2012; Rodriguez, 2016; Miller et al, 2020; Jones et al, 2021). Specifically, this session will model how to scaffold asset-based writing of students’ cultural and linguistic strengths using Jo Jo Makoons and The Used to Be Best Friend (Quigley, 2021) and I’m Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter (Sanchez, 2017). Drawing from Gholdy Muhammad’s framework for historically responsive literacy (Cultivating Genius, 2020), teacher candidates engaged in critical analysis of both the student and teacher characters within each text, and then used their analysis to write an asset-based description of the characters.

Fatphobia, Foucault, and Resistance in the English Classroom

Jennifer Broome & Katherine Higgs-Coulthard;  St. Mary’s College

This presentation examines the ways that fatphobia affects students and how resistance to these effects are possible. The medicalization of fat and fatness has led to a situation where the dominant discourse around obesity has engendered negative effects on larger bodied or fat students (We choose the word “fat” in this chapter in a nod to fat studies, which seeks to change traditional, negative narratives around body size and obesity [Bordo, 2023; Rothblum & Solovay, 2009]). Because schools are often sites of fatphobic discourse and research shows the negative effects of this discourse on students (Eriksson & Horton, 2025; Li & Peters, 2024; Rich et al., 2020; Amato, 2019; Glock et al., 2016; Cameron, 2015; Clare et al., 2015; Rich & Evans, 2009; Coveney, 2008), it is important to resist dominant discourses within the classroom. We therefore contend in this chapter that negative discourses about fat and fatness can be resisted in a classroom context. The first section of the presentation discusses Foucauldian notions of power, discipline, and the matrix of normal/abnormal to critically examine dominant discourses on fatness/body size and their effects on students (Foucault 1990, 1994, 1995, 2000, 2003, 2004, 2008, 2010). The second part of the chapter concerns one such means of resistance to fatphobic discourses. A thematic analysis of YA texts that positively portray fat protagonists is presented. Four texts are examined: A Constellation of Minor Bears, A Dark and Starless Forest, I’ll Be the One, and Love Is a Revolution. The combination of explicated theory and practical examples supports educators in reimagining instruction that centers a marginalized group (large-bodied/fat students), as well as present an alternative to their fatphobic peers. As such, we offer a nuanced and practical way to enter into resistance of dominant discourses surrounding weight and allow teachers to be part of a solution and support to students.

Fictional and Historical Worlds for Young Readers: Engaging in Discourses of Systemic Oppression through Youth Literature

Cheeno Sayuno, V Millen, & Sarah Park Dahlen;  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

We aim to represent scholarship, creative practice, and pedagogy in this panel session, arguing that representations in youth literature are more closely tied to our contemporary reality and the critical approach to reading these texts can help young readers confront, challenge, and address systems of oppression more directly. By exploring fantasy, postapocalyptic, and historical fiction for youth readers, we explore the nuances in confronting issues of diversity in youth literature. The first paper reflects on their experiences in teaching Seraphina by Rachel Hartman in a dragon literature and monster literature course at two different universities. They argue that Hartman’s medieval world offers an accessible entry point to discuss how systems of oppression are built and maintained with students. The second paper dissects the Chuckberry Pascual’s Mars, May Zombie! (Mars, There’s a Zombie!) and its concluding sequel Mars, Maraming Zombie! (Mars, There’s a Lot of Zombies!) in terms of worldbuilding, queer representation, and placemaking of queerness within the post-apocalyptic zombie genre. They suggest strategies to use the works to help queer Filipino and Filipinx American youth process their gender identities through literature. The third paper shares about the process of working with writer Sun Yung Shin to co-adapt Cathy Ceniza Choy’s Asian American Histories of the United States (Beacon Press). Specifically, they share about the revisions they made to both inform and appeal to young adult readers, as well as to update and enhance Choy’s original work. This nonfiction book project contributes to the Asian American histories available for young adult readers.

Folklore and Fantasy in Middle-Grade Climate Fiction

Ashlynn Wittchow & Leah Slaven;  Louisiana State University

In this research session, we will explore how middle-grade fantasy novels use folkloric elements to engage with environmental issues, including the climate crisis. Drawing on ecofeminist theoretical frameworks (Curry, 2013; Gaard, 2009; Warren, 1997), we focus on three recent middle-grade novels: The Edge of the Silver Sea (Mullarky, 2024), Greenwild (Thomson, 2023), and Asha and the Spirit Bird (Bilan, 2019). Our text selection process involved searching both climate-literature databases, including Climate Lit (https://www.climatelit.org/), and social cataloging sites, including Goodreads and Storygraph. In our initial search, we selected texts that met the following criteria: a) written for middle-grade readers, b) centered on environmental issues, and c) belonging to the fantasy genre. Our research team generated our preliminary codes based on an ecofeminist theoretical framework, questioning how folkloric elements in each text shaped human identity, environmental concerns, and the agency afforded to nature in the text. In the course of refining our codes, we identified two clear ecopedagogical themes: a) the role of folklore in bridging nature and culture, and b) its role in fostering intergenerational dialogue around environmental issues. In addition to sharing our findings, our session will aim to bridge theory and practice, considering how these stories can inform classroom practice. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for using environmental fantasy to engage young readers, including activities designed to foster intergenerational dialogue rooted in local folk traditions.

Fostering Belonging through Young Adult Literature

Meghan Barnes & Erica Neal;  University of North Carolina- Charlotte

We present our experiences working with undergraduate English language arts (ELA) Teacher Candidates (TCs) in their literature methods course. In this course, TCs (1) selected a YA novel, (2) developed 3 lesson plans on the book, and (3) taught a portion of a lesson to their peers.TCs were not given any other direction regarding the content of their lessons and teaching. Thus, we entered this study interested in any common themes across TCs’ lessons. After reviewing TCs’ semi-weekly reflections, lesson plans, and teaching segments, we found that the majority of TCs focused their teaching around the concept of belonging.  Bronfenbrenner’s (1989) ecological systems theory helps us to understand schools as spaces that can foster a sense of belonging for adolescents. ELA classrooms are particularly well-positioned to foster this belonging. Specifically, YAL can destigmatize mental health (Eisenbach & Frydman, 2024), resulting in a greater sense of belonging among adolescents experiencing mental health concerns (Shephard & Garrison, 2024). Our TCs’ focus on belonging is significant, given characterizations of their generation as experiencing an unprecedented mental health crisis (McKinsey, 2024). Gen Z has been found to use the internet as a means of combatting loneliness and depression (Crosier, 2024; McKinsey, 2024). We explore how TCs used YAL as means to foster a sense of belonging with students in a non-digital space. We consider how teachers might leverage YAL to combat isolation and loneliness among students and how this new generation of teachers might be uniquely poised to do this work.

Identifying and Analyzing Middle Grade Novels for Math Identity Formation

Lauren Vandever;  Oklahoma State University / Bristow Public Schools

This research session explores how middle-grade novels can serve as powerful tools for supporting mathematics identity formation in middle-grade readers. Drawing from a content analysis of ten contemporary, middle-grade titles, this study examines how characters express, negotiate, and reshape their beliefs about mathematics. Using queer theory as the guiding theoretical lens, the presentation highlights the ways these novels disrupt rigid binaries such as “math person” vs. “reading person,” offering space for more inclusive, fluid understandings of capability, identity, and learning. The session will invite attendees to consider practical applications for classroom instruction, cross-disciplinary teaching, and text selection—particularly in contexts where teachers hope to build math motivation, launch math journaling, or design interdisciplinary projects grounded in meaningful representation. This session is designed for educators and researchers interested in young adult literature, cross-curricular focus, identity formation, and the ways narrative can shape students’ relationships with mathematics.

Middle Grade Novels Featured:

- Danny Chung Sums It Up by Maisie Chan - Solving for M by Jennifer Swender - The Miscalculations of Lightning Girl by Stacy McAnulty

- Violet and the Pie of Life by Debra Green - AfterMath by Emily Barth Isler - Chasing Vermeer by Blue Balliett

- Saraswati’s Way by Monika Schröder - All of the Above by Shelley Pearsall - Hannah, Divided by Adele Griffin

- Very Bad at Math by Hope Larson

Imagining Ethical Futures Through YA Dystopias

Amy Piotrowski; Utah State University

YA dystopian texts often depict ethical issues and adolescents' ethical development. Using the Youth Lens and Noddings' ethics of care, the presentation will discuss ways the protagonists of Shusterman’s Arc of a Scythe series, Le Guin’s Annals of the Western Shore series, and Collin’s Sunrise on the Reaping are given or not given models and pathways to imagine ethical futures. How do adolescents learn to grow into ethical adults when the world they are growing up in is rife with violence and can lack a hopeful vision of the future? The presentation will consider how teens in these series take on the ethical problems they face and implications for today’s teen readers.

In Our Problem-Solving Era

Robin Pelletier with her 6-12 grade students;  Pinecrest Academy of Nevada Sloan Canyon

Tackling educational and reading problems within the secondary community can feel overwhelming and isolating. Some days, it feels like one frazzled, book-wielding educator against the world. This is when that one educator needs back up. And who better to problem-solve with than the future? Yes, this panel connects educators with students so that their creative problem-solving ideas can be unleashed to help tackle these problems and brainstorm solutions. This session will consist of mini-panels of students ranging from 6th grade to 12th grade at Pinecrest Academy of Nevada Sloan Canyon. This session will be moderated by (name here), ELA secondary teacher. This session's goals are focused on creative problem solving in regards to diversity reflected in literature, lack of a school library, adding more diverse YA options into a district-mandated curriculum, and book bans. We will split the panel into four segments of ten minute conversations with different panel members; there will be opportunities to ask each panel questions within each segment. For the last 20 minutes, we will have a question and answer segment. Moderated questions include: How are you building a book culture on campus? What can be done to add more diverse voices to the classroom? What YA book recommendations do you have for the secondary classroom? What can students do to advocate for literature needs in schools? How can teachers and students sustain a commitment to YA literature despite book challenges/bans?

Integrating YA Literature into Secondary Education Program Design

Meg Davis Roberts, Christine Zandstra, Kristina Bardes, & John Alexander;  SUNY New Paltz, Wappingers CSD, & Port Washington UFSD

In this panel session, two professors in a secondary English teacher preparation program and two recent graduates discuss a phased young adult literature project for teacher candidates. We explore how threading a YA requirement throughout coursework infuses YA literature in new teachers’ practices and invests in YA literature as a central component of ELA teacher learning. In this multi-year sequence, preservice teachers (PST’s) read across genres—including realistic YA, speculative fiction, graphic novels, memoir, and middle-grade texts. PST’s complete bibliographic entries evaluating each YA title for instructional relevance, accessibility, and potential incorporation in their future classrooms, whether as whole-class texts or for an independent reading routine. This panel and the program it describes are both grounded in the belief that preparing ELA teachers “to facilitate rich literacy opportunities for young adults” and “to understand their students’ reading processes so that they can guide their students toward connecting with texts in meaningful and personal ways” are key to PST education (Byrne Bull, 2011, pp. 224-225). Panelists highlight how the bibliography sequence supports PSTs in developing adaptable curricular, pedagogical, and interpersonal tools—equipping them to plan meaningful lessons and navigate contemporary issues such as representation gaps. Graduates—now English teachers—share how the bibliography supported their transition into teaching and share their current practices with YA. Session attendees engage with sample artifacts and the details of the program assignment. We will close with a discussion about how others might adapt this model to invest in youth voices and strengthen YA literature pedagogy.

Investing in Student Voice: Using Poetry to Strengthen Writing, Reflection, and Resilience in YA Classrooms

Leilya Pitre; Southeastern Louisiana University

This classroom-practice session explores how poetry functions as a powerful, accessible tool for enhancing students’ writing skills and deepening their engagement with young adult literature. Grounded in the Summit’s theme of “Investing, Creating, and Problem-Solving,” the presentation demonstrates how short, intentional poetry routines support students’ written expression, critical thinking, and emotional resilience. Drawing from classroom-tested approaches, the session shows how pairing YA novels, such as The Leaving Room (McBride, 2025), All the Blues in the Sky (Watson, 2025), and King of Neuroverse (Goodwin, 2025), with poetry-based writing invitations helps students anchor their interpretations in imagery, voice, and point of view. Participants will experience one of the routines firsthand, such as a sevenling, Golden Shovel, or a kenning poem tied to character identity, or a sensory quickwrite that captures the emotional landscape of a key scene. The session highlights how investing in poetry as a daily or weekly practice strengthens students’ broader writing abilities: fluency, experimentation, figurative language, syntactic control, and reflective metacognition. These poetry micro-practices create opportunities for undiscovered readers and writers to take risks, for multilingual writers to draw on lived linguistic resources, and for all students to process complex themes of grief, identity, injustice, and resilience found in YA texts. Attendees will leave with a set of adaptable strategies, sample prompts, and a replicable routine that can be used in middle school, high school, or university-level YA literature courses. By centering student voice and creativity, this session illustrates how poetry can serve as both a writing tool and a healing literacy for today’s adolescents.

Judaism & Jewish Identity in Young Adult Literature 

Abbie Kern;  James Madison University

This digital poster examines the lack of religious representation in young adult (YA) literature, particularly Jewish representations, and the ways that Judaism is still “othered” in literature and society today. Employing the scholarship of Zafonte and Critchfield (2022), Hadley et. al. (2024), and Wright et. al. (2021), I will show how current representations of religion and Judaism in literature, English Language Arts curriculum, and modern society are unwelcome and viewed through a negative, often antisemitic, lens. Further, the importance and educational implications of current Jewish representations — such as how Jewish culture works within a larger modern American identity and how examinations of diverse religions in YA literature are parts of adolescent development and help young adults become engaged citizens — have been established in literary studies (see Johnson, 2023; Riedler, 2021; Dean-Ruzicka, 2017). I employ four Jewish YA literature selections that bridge important gaps in how Jewish identities are represented in YA literature: When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb (2022), Two Tribes by Emily Bowen Cohen (2023), It’s a Whole Spiel: Love, Latkes, and Other Jewish Stories edited by Katherine Locke and Laura Silverman (2019), and The Blood Years by Elana K. Arnold (2023). These selections offer wide representations of Jewish identities that teachers can use to foster appreciation of identity-based differences, including various representations of Judaism within LGBTQ+ communities and how Judaism looks different across cultures, which can help younger readers become more informed and empathetic citizens.

More Than Words: Elevating Multilingual Voices through Building Multiliterate Library Practices

Jade Stevenson;  Pine Springs Preparatory Virtual Academy

Often, schools do not possess the capacity or tools to support their Multilingual Students and end up relying on simplified texts or just translation tools. Walking into a School Library should be a place of wonder and adventure for students, but often we forget that not all of our students have that same experience. This session seeks to reframe how we view our library collection through a multiliteracy lens by supporting students’ diverse linguistic and cultural experiences. In this session, we will equip educators with strategies that promote comprehension, critical thinking, and authentic experiences for our Multilingual students. During the session, educators will be guided through a mixture of real library and classroom library examples, book selection tools, and tech tools that they can use to elevate their collections. By the end of this session, we hope educators will embrace multiliteracy, improve engagement, build confidence, and strengthen academic language development for all learners. Educators will leave the session with actionable steps, templates, and strategies to implement in their classrooms! Books featured during this session include Solito by Javier Zamora, En 90 días lo dejamos by Daniel Barbadillo Dubon and Solis by Paola Mendoza and Abby Sher.

Mythology in the African Diaspora

Jalen Kobayashi; Vanderbilt University

Close your eyes. When I say, “mythology”, what comes to mind? Zeus? Werewolves? Vampires? Of course, maybe you thought about gargoyles. But did you think about river goddesses who cry gold tears? Dancing thunder gods who bring justice to liars and rain to the driest desert? Trickster spiders who can see the future? If the answer is no, then you are in luck! This is West African mythology! Young adult authors have traditionally used mythology to contemporize folklore to reach a teen audience. While stories like Lightning Thief, Harry Potter, and Twilight are magnificent representations of how young adult authors write with mythology, they all have one thing in common: they are white. This makes us wonder, where are our myths? Where are our legends? Authors like Ibi Zoboi, Tomi Adeyemi, Ladarrion Williams and Tarell Alvin McCraney are changing the narrative around mythology, fantasy, and the preservation of cultural lore in the eyes of the present. They retain the Mermaids, trickster spirits, Orishas, and wise ancestors of Nigeria, Ghana, and Benin by creating worlds where young adults have access to their powers– and use them to win any battle they face. By exploring this mythology, they demystify African spirituality and decentralize white imaginations which call these practices “demonic”. Vodou, Santeria, Ifa are seen as traditional, not evil. These stories tell us that we come from somewhere, and that somewhere is powerful. The intelligence of Africans who endured enslavement, colonization, and violence lives on through these stories--mythology becomes resistance.

Normalizing the Conversation: Authors and Teachers Speak to Mental Health Literacy in the ELA Classroom

Brooke Eisenbach, Susan James, Emily Finnegan, Craig Kofi Farmer (YA Author), H.E. Edgmon (YA Author), Alyssa Love, & Marquita Woods;  Lesley University, University of West Florida, & Colorado State University

Since the pandemic of 2020, The American Psychological Association (2020) has recognized that more than 20% of youth will experience a mental, emotional, or behavioral health need each year. Such statistics have warranted a warning by the United States surgeon general of a national crisis regarding the state of adolescent mental health (U.S. Office of Public Health, 2021). Mental health literacy involves four pillars of understanding: destigmatizing mental illness, gaining a basic knowledge of mental health and mental illness, learning means of acquiring and maintaining positive mental health, and knowing how to seek out resources and support (Kutcher et al., 2016). Literature provides an avenue in which students can initiate their understanding of mental health and serve as a gateway into normalizing conversation on mental illness and wellness, and schools offer an ideal location for infusing MHL and education (Mcluckie et al., 2014). Through the inclusion of mental health-themed literature within the ELA curriculum, teachers can address the pillars of MHL alongside commonplace curriculum and state standards. This panel session will provide educators, school-based mental health support specialists, and school administrators insight into ways teachers and school support staff can effectively and organically incorporate MHL into the classroom through YAL. Several Young adult literature authors will share their current work that addresses mental health, while preservice teachers and teacher educators share specific instructional strategies designed to enhance learner MHL alongside ELA objectives.

Practicing a Visual and Verbal Pedagogy

Jason DeHart;  Wilkes County Schools / Independent Researcher

This digital poster presentation explores the role of comics and digital media in my 9-12 and post-secondary teaching practices. This includes work with a student population that encompasses adolescents, preservice teachers, and students from the 9-12 grade span who are working on acquiring English as a second language. From a focus on the complexity of the chosen works (Cohn, 2020), the presentation includes visualized thought on text-pairing and composing for critical literacy. This work has a foundation in New Literacies studies and expands on the critical framework of Vazquez et al. (2019) in linking reading/writing/composing with inquiry and empathy. The digital poster format will allow me to showcase this process with play and interactivity, aligning the focus of the work with the presentation method. Notable titles stemming from interacting with students include When Stars Are Scattered, Plastic Man, Blue Beetle, and titles from Webtoon.

Preparing Secondary Teachers to Design Content-Rich Units With YA Literature

Becca Corso;  Stonehill College

This Classroom Practice Session shares a practical, replicable framework developed in a secondary teacher-preparation course to help emerging educators design content-rich, standards-based units anchored in young adult literature. The approach centers on a signature course assignment, the “Trade Book Unit Plan”, in which preservice teachers select a YA text, broadly defined to include high-quality trade books aligned to their licensure area. Through a sequence of instructional modules, candidates sequentially build a coherent unit of learning that integrates reading, writing, speaking, listening, and discipline-specific content knowledge with YA texts serving as a through-line. This work is grounded in the scholarship of adolescent and disciplinary literacies, and equity-focused teacher preparation, proving how young adult literature can serve as a powerful anchor for rigorous, content-rich, motivating, and literacy-integrated unit design across secondary disciplines. Discussion will explore how YA literature opens pathways into disciplinary literacy, developing preservice teachers as confident curriculum designers, and enriching content knowledge and literacy development in secondary classrooms. The session guides participants through an exploration of the full assignment arc, from the initial student proposal through teaching modules and final unit plans, and will have time to explore sample work, brainstorm applications in their own contexts, and reflect on how YA literature can meaningfully support reading and writing instruction across secondary content areas. Participants will gain adaptable routines, a flexible framework for using YA literature in content-area teaching, and renewed empowerment to embed meaningful reading and writing in secondary classrooms.

Reading Identity Artifacts: Creating Space for Student Voice in YA Classrooms

Matthew Sroka;  Mercer University

This Classroom Practice session focuses on the Reading Identity Artifact, a flexible, student-created tool designed to help adolescents examine their reading histories, preferences, and evolving relationships with books and reading. The artifact invites students to reflect on moments that shaped their reading identities, the genres and texts that matter to them, and the conditions that help (or hinder) their engagement. By making their reading lives visible, students gain language to talk about reading in personal, authentic ways that support deeper engagement with reading and YA texts. The session begins with a brief framing of reading identity as a socially mediated, identity-driven practice shaped by access, choice, culture, and classroom community. Participants will then complete a short version of the Reading Identity Artifact themselves to experience the activity from a learner’s perspective. They will then have the opportunity to share out their artifacts with others in the session. Classroom examples will illustrate how students use artifacts to understand themselves better as readers as well as connect with peers around shared reading experiences. We will also discuss strategies for introducing the artifact at the beginning of a YA unit, revisiting it throughout independent reading, and using it to guide conferences, book recommendations, and instructional planning. Participants will leave with a ready-to-use artifact template, implementation ideas, and practical moves for centering student voice and building stronger reading communities through YA literature.

Reading YAL in Partnership with the Department of Juvenile Justice

Mary Styslinger;  University of South Carolina

Did you know that more youth are incarcerated in the United States than any other developed country in the world—despite having one of the lowest youth crime rates in decades? Youth incarceration rates in the U.S. are approximately twice the global average and well above that of all other NATO member countries (Nam-Sonenstein & Sawyer, 2025). As educators, we need not only be aware that we are living in the “age of incarceration” (Hill, 2013), but also recognize the need to develop constructive responses to it. However, conventional literature and teaching methods are rarely successful with youth who may not have had positive experiences with traditional schooling (Jacobi, 2008; Snyder & Sickmund, 2006). Instead, alternative literacy practices (Jacobi, 2008) are encouraged. Inspired by a need for action, this presentation will introduce participants to a summer YAL reading partnership between a state university and Department of Juvenile Justice. Drawing upon social justice theory and pedagogy, this session will first detail the background and organization of this literacy collaboration, answering such questions as: How is such a YAL reading partnership established and sustained? How are English teacher candidates prepared before reading YAL with students? How do teacher candidates support students’ reading processes? Once the context for the partnership is established, teacher research will be shared which answers the question: What YAL do students affiliated with the Department of Juvenile Justice choose to read and why? This session will engage participants in discussion around the possibilities of reading YAL in partnership with juvenile detention centers and hopefully, inspire others to engage in social action projects in collaboration with DJJ.

Rehearsing Resistance: Using Role-Play to Prepare Teachers for Censorship Challenges

Rebekah Adams;  University of Georgia

As book challenges intensify across the United States, preservice English teachers increasingly enter classrooms unprepared to navigate censorship attempts or advocate effectively for young adult literature. This research session presents role-play scenarios as a pedagogical approach for preparing teacher candidates to respond to book challenges with sophistication, confidence, and strategic thinking. Drawing on spatial pedagogies and rhetorical listening frameworks, I examine how simulated book challenge scenarios function as what I call "rehearsal spaces"—opportunities for preservice teachers to practice advocacy before facing real-world consequences. These role-play activities position students in multiple stakeholder roles (challenged teacher, concerned parent, administrator, school board member, student advocate) to develop understanding of the complex rhetorical, political, and institutional dynamics surrounding censorship. The session addresses three key questions: First, how can teacher educators create pedagogical conditions that move preservice teachers beyond defensive or reactive postures toward proactive, theoretically-informed advocacy for YA literature? Second, what embodied skills and rhetorical strategies emerge when teachers rehearse responses to book challenges in low-stakes classroom contexts? Third, how might role-play scenarios help future teachers recognize the ways censorship operates through institutional structures, community pressure, and affective atmospheres rather than solely through individual objections? Participants will gain insight into designing role-play pedagogies that help preservice teachers develop critical awareness of censorship mechanisms, practice rhetorical flexibility across multiple audiences, and sustain commitment to YA literature despite hostile institutional pressures. This work contributes to ongoing conversations about how teacher education programs can better prepare educators to navigate the current censorship crisis while maintaining robust, diverse, and student-centered YA literature curricula.

Relational Resilience and Scholarly Lifespans: Storying Mentorship and Identity in Children’s and Young Adult Literature (CYAL) Careers

Jaime Lewandowski & Sarah J. Donovan;  Oklahoma State University

The purpose of this Digital Poster session is to disseminate the key findings constructed from semi-structured interviews with 28 established narrator-scholars in the field of children’s and young adult literature (CYAL). Guided by narrative inquiry, the goal of this study was to understand how long-term scholarly identities are formed and sustained in the humanities, and the role that mentoring and collaboration play in shaping scholarly agendas. As each scholar’s work has notably impacted the field of CYAL, we sought to foreground their stories of transformation of self and career and the role of mentorship in their academic journey. Findings illuminated three main themes which highlight the interplay of social, spatial, and temporal elements in shaping scholarly lifespans within CYAL: 1) catalytic experiences that propelled or shifted narrators’ line of inquiry; 2) mentoring as a dynamic process shaped by identity, time, and context; and 3) the intersectionality of scholarly and personal identities in the evolution of narrators’ academic focus. These themes reveal how systems of mentorship and community profoundly influence a scholar’s impact on the field, guiding what is possible and surfacing new avenues of inquiry. They also offer implications for well-being, mentorship, and professional development within higher education, as both faculty and graduate students seek meaningful connections that sustain their intellectual and authentic identities. Conference attendees will benefit from narrators’ storying of relational resilience – the interplay of personal passion, mentorship, and communal support that sustains meaningful, values-driven scholarship despite systemic pressures.

Researching, Writing, and Teaching the Early Years of Famous People: Empowering Critical Analysis through the Youth Lens

Deborah Heiligman (YA Author) & Sharon Kane;  SUNY-Osewego 

What were the leading figures in the history of our disciplinary fields like when they were our students’ ages? Teachers can engage students by introducing them to the early lives of important people they study throughout the curriculum. Scholars have asked us to re-think the construct of adolescence, and have provided a critical tool called the Youth Lens to help teachers and students examine the complexities of the teenage years and early adulthood. The Youth Lens can be applied to biographical texts. Sharon will give a brief overview of the Youth Lens, then interview an award-winning author of YA and New Adult nonfiction, Deborah Heiligman, about several biographies she has written featuring people our students learn about in art, math, social studies, ELA, and science classes. How does she go about researching the early lives of her subjects? How does she think about possible connections between the subjects’ formative years and their later values, actions, accomplishments, and relationships? The author will discuss how she “shows her work” to readers within her latest (2025) biography, tackling the complexities of her subject’s tumultuous life. Participants will have opportunities throughout the session to ask questions; tell about how they use biographies and literary nonfiction in their classrooms; and share their favorite anecdotes about the early years of important people in their curriculum. We will all discuss strategies for engaging students; giving them voice; and inviting them to co-create knowledge and problem-solve as our learning communities explore real-world issues related to various disciplines.

Resonance Practice as a Tool of Empathy-building, Understanding, and Connection

Katharine Covino & Matt McCann;  Fitchburg State University & Eagle High School

Connection and community are so important - in school and in life. But, in today’s increasingly tech-focused society, real and deep connections seem harder to foster than ever. With this in mind, resonance practices are increasingly being used in educational settings to foster relationship building, belonging, community, and connection (Cuneen, 2023; Fairfield, 2016; Felski, 2020; Lee, 2020; McCluskey et al., 2008). Resonance practices, borrowed from anti-racist and transformative education, are not specific to any text or genre. These practices can be utilized by students and teachers at all levels. When used in English classrooms, resonance practice builds deeper understandings through interactions which promote real connectedness between diverse people, stories, and experiences. This session will explore the benefits of embracing resonance practice in teaching through the examination and analysis of an authentic collaboration between high school students and undergraduate teacher-candidates. During the session, the presenters will reflect on their experiences planning and using collaborative resonance practices with their students. They will report on a study in which students at different institutions read, analyzed, and created artifacts related to Satrapi’s (2003) graphic novel Persepolis. The central goal of this session is to demonstrate how students who engage with resonance practice can build empathic relationships and connections by bravely sharing their vulnerability with each other in safe and supportive ways. The secondary goal is to provide methods each attendee can take back to their own classroom in order to benefit their students in similar ways.

Returning to Our Roots of Reading & Writing For Pleasure to Cast Vision for the Future of English Education Using YAL

T. Hunter Strickland;  Augusta University

Based on over a decade of research in young adult literature (YAL) methods in secondary English/Language Arts (ELA) and English education, this session will explore a growing global emphasis on reading and writing for pleasure pedagogies as a part of national curricula in English. Countries like The United Kingdom, Australia, Finland, and New Zealand, among others, have shifted away for standardized measures of accomplishment in English education in favor of a pedagogical focus on pleasure as a core belief about the purposes of reading and writing for all learners (Cremin & Scholes, 2024). This foundation of pleasure, outlined in national standards for ELA in these countries, is used to then help students build skills in reading and writing and transfer those skills to learning in all content areas. In the United States, we associated with the NCTE ELATE Commission on the Study and Teaching of Adolescent Literature have begun the shift back towards joy in reading (Miller & Lesesne, 2022) in ELA and often use YAL as a key aspect of teaching adolescents and their teachers how to approach the study of reading. Further, writing methods and pedagogies have also started to shift away from standardized measures of writing as the only valuable way of teaching writing. This session, therefore, will discuss the foundational research done in YAL methods over the past decade as well as how pedagogies on reading and writing for pleasure can be used to further shift students’ conceptions of English into lifelong joyful habits.

Slow Violence and Youth Agency in This Is the Year

Sean Connors;  University of Arkansas 

Intersectional environmentalism “acknowledges how social justice and environmentalism are intrinsically linked and how both must be considered to achieve environmental justice” (Thomas, 2022, p. 32). Research consistently shows that, in contrast to affluent white communities, Indigenous peoples, Black communities, and other marginalized groups disproportionately bear the burdens of environmental degradation (Taylor, 2014; Washington, 2019). Nixon (2011) terms this harm “slow violence”: a “violence that occurs gradually and out of sight,” characterized by “delayed destruction…dispersed across time and space” and “typically not viewed as violence at all” (p. 2). Using Gloria Muñoz’s (2025) This Is the Year as a case study, this presentation explores how teachers and students can apply the concept of slow violence as a critical lens for analyzing climate-themed YA fiction. In the novel, seventeen-year-old Julieta Villarreal grieves her sister’s death amid a Florida increasingly reshaped by climate change. The devastation her community faces does not stem from a single disaster; rather, it results from the cumulative effects of sea-level rise, chronic flooding, and environmental decline—conditions that disproportionately impact already vulnerable families and are rooted in structural inequities. Through offering a close reading of the novel, the presentation demonstrates how This Is the Year exemplifies YA climate fiction’s capacity to illuminate slow violence while affirming the agency of youth as critical witnesses and emerging advocates for environmental and social justice.

Teaching Novels Featuring Intergenerational Themes and Relationships to Address Ageism (Both Directions) and Other Social Justice Issues

Sharon Kane & Bird Cramer;  SUNY-Osewego & Peachtown School

We’ll begin by asking participants to briefly write about times they have experienced or witnessed ageism; or to give an example of how their own or a student’s loneliness, sadness, grief, or depression was helped by an encounter or relationship with someone in a different age group. We’ll present brief booktalks for recent titles featuring intergenerational themes or characters. Panelist One will offer middle grade titles: The Trouble with Heroes (Messner); As Brave as You (Reynolds); and Not Nothing (Forman). Two feature youths sentenced to community service or reparation projects, with the goal being rehabilitation and transformation. The protagonists are surprised to find that older people are helping them heal AND are benefiting from knowing them! Panelist Two will introduce YA and New Adult books suitable for older teens and adults: The 100 Years of Lenni and Margot (Cronin); My Friends (Backman); and How to Read a Book (Wood). These present teenaged and twenty-something characters who find solace, wisdom, compassion, and practical assistance from older people. The adults in turn find meaning, purpose, and love. Participants, perhaps using the optional discussion questions we’ll provide, will co-create knowledge and problem-solve by sharing ideas and strategies for using literature to help heal trauma, assuage grief, and provide hope for readers of all ages. They’ll explore crucial relevant issues including divisiveness, exclusion, marginalization, ageism, the Youth Lens, and mental health crises in youth and elderly populations. They’ll envision community initiatives to bring youth and older people together through books.

Teaching Social Class Literacy through YAL

Sophia Sarigianides, Rebecca Ashley, & Alexis Demers;  Westfield State University, Canton High School, & West Springfield Middle School

How do you address social class in the YA texts you teach? What kinds of literary analysis do your students develop as a result of your approach to social class? How do you help students share vulnerable, classed details in class and/or in writing? In this presentation, a middle, high school and college teacher educator share strategies for teaching about social class through YAL. Presenters' approach to social class focuses on the feelings, thoughts and beliefs of living classed lives. Presenters will introduce concepts like class injury and cultural capital to apply to YA texts like The Giver and Piecing Me Together to deepen literary analysis and to build students’ understandings of social class. We will share strategies that we use to help our students transfer learning from the YAL to their lives in ways that feel safe. We will also share what students say about the impact of learning about social class this way. Our presentation will be interactive, inviting participants to apply new social class vocabulary and to name examples from the world and their lives. Questions for discussion at the end of our presentation, which include Which key social class concepts stood out to you the most? What do you notice about the scene analyses of the YAL with the social class literacy lens that would be missed without it?, are designed to help teachers and teacher educators begin to apply their learning from the session right away to their existing curricula or envisioned new curricula.

The ‘Write Time’ for Multimodality in the YA Classroom: Exploring Possibilities through Author Studies, Advocacy, & Criticality

Bryan Ripley Crandall, Susan James, Kathleen Morris, Emmi Lawson, & Ava Hricko;  Fairfield University & University of West Florida

This panel proposes conversation on how young adult literature launches possibilities for another generation of readers and writers with digital tools to initiate writing opportunities for young people. Drawing on the power of courageous and critical friendships (Presenter 2 & Presenter 3, 2023) and how young adult texts influence writing instruction (Presenter 1 & Author, 2023), three panelists share multimodal projects created to showcase the ways young adult literature expands the reading experience alone. Presenter 1 introduces (briefly) the connection between the National Writing Project and the scholarship of young adult literature, including his collaborations with Presenter 2. Presentations from three student panelists will follow. Presenter 3 shares an author study of Ibi Zoboi, highlighting resources created for classrooms and tools to assist teachers who use her books. (Padlet) Presenter 4 shares a ‘different kind of media’ to end the romanticization of eating disorders through exploring YA texts, by highlighting a life mission to counter negative effects of social media. (Canva) Presenter 5 turns the page against patriarchy with a multimodal discussion of female agency, and the reasons why strong women in literature still matter. (Google). Presentations by panelists follow with Presenter 2, as discussant, who addresses the ways YA literature, when partnered with digital tools and good writing instruction, results in a new world ripe for literacy instruction. The session ends with interaction. Audience participation is encouraged.

Understanding the Climate Catastrophe through Young Adult Climate Fiction: A Pedagogical Framework Derived from Critical Content Analysis

Mark Sulzer; University of Cincinnati

This presentation offers a pedagogical framework for teaching about climate literacy in English language arts (ELA) classes. Climate literacy is a “broad sociocultural competence” (Oziewicz & Kleese, 2025, p. 15), with interdisciplinary threads that combine climate science with political, economic, and cultural concerns. The ELA classroom is an ideal site for teaching about climate literacy because “…a purely science-oriented approach to climate change can miss the social, historical, ethical, and human realities that are critical to the problem” (Beach, Share, & Webb, 2017, p. 7). Young Adult Climate Fiction (YA Cli-Fi) engages these realities, inviting youth into the often dystopian worlds we may be heading toward. YA Cli-Fi insists that youth have the right to know about the climate and the forces that have led us to this moment. Using critical content analysis (Johnson, Mathis, & Short, 2017), I analyzed representations of youth in 11 YA Cli-Fi novels. The analysis involved identifying key passages, summarizing story arcs, and tracking formal literary elements related to the climate such as characterization, plot points, symbolism, and setting descriptions. Iterative rounds of coding produced themes related to the fundamental values in YA Cli-Fi, how those values become represented across the story, and central questions. Using this analysis, I created a pedagogical framework for teaching YA Cli-Fi that I use with my courses on YAL. It involves four overlapping categories: (a) accurate information about climate science, (b) emotional and spiritual connection to the earth, (c) collective action and systems thinking, and (d) youth agency.

What's New in Dissertations About Young Adult Literature

Jeffrey Kaplan;  University of Central Florida

As a dissertation chair and methodologist, I know that writing a dissertation can be a daunting undertaking. And whether you are an experienced or novice researcher, the challenge is always the same – what do I write about? For teachers and students of young adult literature, there are a plethora – or should I say, a good number of topics – waiting to be studied about young adult literature. Whether your bailiwick is fantasy or realism, genre’ bending or straightforward narrative, the study of young adult literature in the form of a doctoral dissertation – demands our attention and our generous consideration – for from such studies, emerge tomorrow’s teachers, researchers and scholars. To shed light on recent dissertations (2020-25) about the study of young adult literature, this presentation will discuss the practical considerations of academic research about young adult books – fiction and non – and how their findings have implications for classroom use, academic research, and scholarly endeavors. Practical emphasis will be given to involving the participants in sharing their own personal experiences in conducting academic research and how their endeavors can help others pursue both a scholarly and practical engagement about the study of young adult literature. This research session will involve participants in a discussion of a review of recent dissertations (2020-25) and their applications for classroom use, suggestions for teacher academic research, and considerations what makes the study of young adult literature innovative and useful for teachers, scholars, and authors.

Young Adult Literature as Ethical Laboratory

Melanie Hundley & Amy Piotrowski;  Vanderbilt University & Utah State University

For decades, creators—authors, filmmakers, artists—have imagined the "what ifs" of science and technology. From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which asked what would happen if humans could create life, to Isaac Asimov's tales of sentient machines yearning for autonomy, creators have explored the ethical implications of technology and its use. Movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Terminator, and Colossus: The Forbin Project depict both the potential and the dangers of artificial intelligence, offering bold and terrifying visions of the future. These creative works are more than entertainment—they challenge us to confront ethical questions about scenarios once thought to be entirely in the realm of science fiction. In addition to movies and television shows, essays, short stories, and young adult novels explore AI as a lens to discuss the ethical dilemmas that arise with the growing presence of AI in our world. This presentation asks the question, What can young adult literature teach us about the ethical challenges of AI? How might AI reshape these areas of our lives? How might storytelling change in these fields because of AI? The presentation will focus on analyzing media and YA novels that incorporate AI as a character, discussing and critiquing AI tropes used in storytelling, and the role that storytelling plays in showing what a society values and fears. Additionally, the session will share writing tasks and strategies that incorporate AI tools in creating poetry, essays, and stories.

Young Adult Novels as Mentor Texts: Using YAL to Teach Multiple Forms of Writing

Melanie Hundley & Jen Calonita (YA Author) Vanderbilt University 

Jen Calonita, award-winning author of middle grades and young adult novels, is a master storyteller whose work provides mentor texts for novice writers. This session invites educators to explore the power of young adult literature as mentor texts, drawing on the insights of the National Writing Project, which defines mentor texts as exemplary pieces of writing that students can study, imitate, and use as guides for crafting their own work. Building on William Zinsser’s belief that writers learn best by examining the craft of other writers, this workshop centers the fiction of acclaimed YA author Jen Calonita, whose engaging narratives and stylistic clarity offer rich opportunities for modeling effective writing. Participants will work directly with selected passages from Calonita’s works to identify craft moves—such as voice, pacing, characterization, and dialogue—that can be translated into their own classroom instruction. Jen Calonita will join the session as a master writer, offering commentary on her writing process, the choices behind particular scenes, and how she shapes her stories for young adult audiences. Her presence provides participants with a rare opportunity to connect author intention with instructional practice. Teachers will receive ready-to-use materials, including annotated mentor-text excerpts, lesson ideas, and adaptable writing exercises. Together, we will examine how intentional modeling empowers student writers to build confidence, experiment with technique, and develop authentic voices. Attendees will leave with practical strategies for integrating YA mentor texts into diverse classrooms and inspiring students through the craft of a contemporary writer whose stories resonate with today’s readers.