SPEAKERS

Dr. Joy Buolamwini is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a groundbreaking researcher, and a renowned speaker. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Time, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic. As the Poet of Code, she creates art to illuminate the impact of artificial intelligence on society and advises world leaders on preventing AI harms. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Rhodes Scholarship, the inaugural Morals & Machines Prize, and the Technological Innovation Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Her MIT research on facial recognition technologies is featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary Coded Bias. Born in Canada to Ghanaian immigrants, Buolamwini lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Lee Ann Potter is the Director of Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives at the Library of Congress. She leads a dynamic team committed to developing educational programs and materials based on primary sources. Before coming to the Library, she created and directed education and volunteer programs at the National Archives and Records Administration for 16 years. Prior to that, she worked at the Smithsonian on a project to build museum-school partnerships, and before that, she was a high school social studies teacher. During the 2009–10 school year, she served as a Fulbright Roving Scholar of American Studies in Norway. She has conducted hundreds of presentations and is the author of more than one hundred articles promoting teaching with primary sources.

Friday, November 22, 9:30–10:45 a.m.—ROOM 205 C (LEVEL 2): “‘It’s About Time’: Centering, Supporting, and Learning from HBCUs and Black Brilliance at NCTE”

NCTE welcomes you to a uniquely generative space where all NCTE members can learn from the wisdom, courage, perseverance, and joy of administrators, faculty, and students from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and grow in our ability to serve HBCUs as central to NCTE and the literacy education community. Valerie Kinloch, President of Johnson C. Smith University and former NCTE President, will pose questions to a panel of HBCU representatives as NCTE charts a clear path toward centering HBCUs and our service to them as leaders in the work to remain strong and true to Pro-Black convictions in a time of heightened anti-Black legislation and curricular oppression.

Chair: Kamania Wynter-Hoyte, University of South Carolina
Moderator: Valerie Kinloch, Johnson C. Smith University
Presenters: Khalilah Ali, Spelman College
Janice Baines, Allen University/University of South Carolina
Will Boyles, Allen University
Fatima Brunson, Spelman College
Tamara Butler, Xavier University/College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture
Flavia Eldemire, Allen University
Damara Hightower, Voorhees University
Tonya B. Perry, Miles College
Nicole Taylor, Spelman College
Natasha Thornton, Spelman College

Friday, November 22, 12:30–1:45 p.m.—ROOM 205 A (BCEC, Level 2): “Artificial Intelligence in the ELA Classroom: Embracing Our Reality, Owning Our Responsibility”

This session centers a public teacher’s expertise in a discussion on artificial intelligence in the ELA classroom. Come to explore the great potential of this moment. Consider how students and teachers are engaging, alongside the responsibility we share to know where risks lie, who is most likely to be left out of opportunity, and where the next generation of oppression lurks. NCTE has specifically curated teaching, technology, and scholarly expertise for this timely conversation.

Presenters: Dr. Joy Buolamwini
Ernest Morrell, University of Notre Dame
Brett Vogelsinger, Central Bucks High School South, PA

DR. JOY BUOLAMWINI is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a groundbreaking researcher, and a renowned speaker. Her writing has been featured in publications such as TIME, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic. As the Poet of Code, she creates art to illuminate the impact of artificial intelligence on society and advises world leaders on preventing AI harms. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Rhodes Scholarship, the inaugural Morals & Machines Prize, and the Technological Innovation Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Her MIT research on facial recognition technologies is featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary Coded Bias. Born in Canada to Ghanaian immigrants, Buolamwini lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

ERNEST MORRELL is the Coyle Professor in Literacy Education and director of the Center for Literacy Education at the University of Notre Dame. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, and a former President of NCTE. Dr. Morrell has been annually ranked among the top 200 university-based education scholars in the RHSU Edu-Scholar Public Influence Rankings published by Education Week. He has authored more than 100 articles and book chapters and fifteen books. His scholarly interests include literacy studies, English education, critical pedagogy, media and popular culture, and the African Diaspora. Morrell leads the NCTE James R. Squire Office of Policy Research in English Language Arts at the University of Notre Dame.

BRETT VOGELSINGER is an English teacher at Central Bucks High School South in Pennsylvania with over two decades of experience teaching in middle and high schools. He is the author of Poetry Pauses: Teaching with Poems to Elevate Student Writing in All Genres; his book Artful AI, about the use of generative AI in secondary writing instruction, is coming this summer from Corwin Literacy. He is the founder of Go Poems, a frequent contributor and webinar creator for Moving Writers, and a professional development presenter.

Connect with him on LinkedIn, @theVogelman on Instagram, Threads, or X. His website is www.brettvogelsinger.com.

YOLANDA SEALEY-RUIZ, PhD, is a Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University, and the 2024 New York University Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development’s Dorothy Height Distinguished Alumni Award winner. Her research has appeared in several top-tier academic journals. She is coeditor of five books and is coauthor of the multiple award-winning book Advancing Racial Literacies in Teacher Education: Activism for Equity in Digital Spaces (2021) where she examines her concept of Archeology of Self™ in education. For three years in a row, she was named one of EdWeek’s EduScholar Influencers—a list of the top 1 percent of educational scholars in the United States—a highly selective group of 200 scholars (chosen from a pool of 20,000).

At Teachers College, Sealey-Ruiz is the founder of the Racial Literacy Project @TC, and the Racial Literacy Roundtables Series, where for 15 years, national scholars, teachers, and students facilitate conversations around race and other issues involving diversity. She appeared in Spike Lee’s 2 Fists Up: We Gon’ Be Alright (2016), a documentary about the Black Lives Matter movement and the campus protests at Mizzou, and Defining Us, Children at the Crossroads of Change, a documentary about supporting and educating the nation’s Black and Latinae male youth. Yolanda’s first full-length collection of poetry, Love from the Vortex & Other Poems, was published in March 2020. Her sophomore book of poetry, The Peace Chronicles, was published in July 2021. Yolanda opened the 2022 TEDx UPENN conference at the University of Pennsylvania with her TEDx Talk: “Truth, Love & Racial Literacy.” Connect with Yolanda on Twitter at @RuizSealey and on Instagram at @yolie_sealeyruiz.