SPEAKERS
The caliber of speakers at NCTE’s Annual Convention is consistently singled out by attendees as one of the best things about attending. These individuals are sure to make #NCTE24 the most meaningful professional learning experience of your year!
Register today to hear from these and other great speakers at #NCTE24!
Keynote Speakers
This year’s keynote speakers bring a range of perspectives to the mic. We’re thrilled to share this stellar lineup with you!
All times are Eastern Time.
Ketanji Brown Jackson
Thursday Opening General Session | 11/21/2024 4:00 p.m
Ketanji Brown Jackson was born in Washington, D.C., and grew up in Miami, Florida. She received her undergraduate and law degrees, both with honors, from Harvard University, then served as a law clerk for three federal judges, including Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer of the Supreme Court of the United States. Jackson subsequently practiced law in the private sector, worked as an attorney and later as Vice Chair and Commissioner of the US Sentencing Commission, and served as an assistant federal public defender. In 2012, President Barack Obama nominated Jackson to the US District Court for the District of Columbia. Elevated to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2021, Jackson made history in 2022 when President Joseph Biden nominated her as an Associate Justice. The first Black woman ever confirmed to the Supreme Court of the United States, she took her seat on June 30, 2022.
In her recently published memoir, Lovely One, Justice Jackson shares how her heritage, powerful family stories, and formative experiences throughout her life shaped her academic and legal careers.
Please note: No large bags will be allowed in the session room for Thursday’s Opening General Session with Ketanji Brown Jackson at 4:00 p.m. ET. Bags allowed in the session room will be limited to 11 inches by 9 inches by 6 inches. Please plan accordingly and leave larger bags in your hotel room, at home, or in your vehicle.
Kate McKinnon
Friday General Session | 11/22/2024 8:15 a.m.
Kate McKinnon is an award-winning performer and writer best known for her tenure as an Emmy Award-winning cast member on Saturday Night Live. Young readers will recognize her voice roles as Ms. Fiona Frizzle in The Magic School Bus Rides Again for Netflix and as Lulu the Guinea Pig in DC League of Super-Pets. Her film work includes Ghostbusters, Bombshell, Yesterday, and Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-nominated worldwide blockbuster, Barbie. The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science is her debut novel.
Bryan Stevenson
Saturday General Session | 11/23/2024 9:45 a.m.
Bryan Stevenson is the founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI), a human rights organization in Montgomery, Alabama. Under his leadership, EJI has won major legal challenges eliminating excessive and unfair sentencing, exonerating innocent death row prisoners, confronting abuse of the incarcerated and the mentally ill, and aiding children prosecuted as adults.
Mr. Stevenson has argued and won multiple cases at the United States Supreme Court, including a 2019 ruling protecting condemned prisoners who suffer from dementia and a landmark 2012 ruling that banned mandatory life-imprisonment-without-parole sentences for all children seventeen or younger. Mr. Stevenson and his staff have won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row and won relief for hundreds of others wrongly convicted or unfairly sentenced.
Mr. Stevenson has initiated major new anti-poverty and anti-discrimination efforts that challenge inequality in America. He led the creation of EJI’s highly acclaimed Legacy Sites, including the Legacy Museum, the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, and Freedom Monument Sculpture Park. These new national landmark institutions chronicle the legacy of slavery, lynching, and racial segregation, and the connection to mass incarceration and contemporary issues of racial bias.
Just Mercy, his book chronicling one EJI case, is a bestseller and inspired a blockbuster film.
Ada Limón
Sunday General Session | 11/24/2024 12:00 p.m.
Ada Limón is the author of six books of poetry, including The Carrying, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award; Bright Dead Things, which was nominated for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award; and The Hurting Kind, which was short-listed for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Her upcoming children’s book, And, Too, the Fox, is scheduled for release in January 2025. Limón is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her new book, In Praise of Mystery, is a transcendent picture book featuring the poem that will travel into space on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will be launched to the second moon of Jupiter in October 2024.
As the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, her signature project, called You Are Here, focuses on how poetry can help connect us to the natural world. She will serve as Poet Laureate until the spring of 2025. In October 2023, she was awarded a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, and she was named a TIME magazine Woman of the Year in 2024.
NCTE in Primetime
Join your fellow #NCTE24 attendees to celebrate together on Friday, November 22, 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., with two exemplary speakers. NCTE in Primetime is open to all attendees and is included as part of your Convention registration. The evening will begin with a networking reception with hors d’oeuvres.
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.
Meal Event Speakers
Ticketed meals are offered during the NCTE Annual Convention. These events include talks by education luminaries and announcements of award winners by NCTE Sections and groups, including the Children’s Book Awards. Tickets to meal events can be purchased when registering for the Convention.
Ijeoma Oluo is a Seattle-based writer, speaker, and internet yeller. She is the author of the #1 New York Times bestselling books So You Want to Talk about Race; Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America; and Be a Revolution: How Everyday People Are Fighting Oppression and …
Ruta Sepetys (rutasepetys.com) is an internationally acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction. Her novels Between Shades of Gray, Out of the Easy, Salt to the Sea, The Fountains of Silence, and I Must Betray You have won or been shortlisted for more than …
Steve Sheinkin is the acclaimed author of fast-paced, cinematic nonfiction histories, including Impossible Escape, Fallout, Undefeated, Born to Fly, The Port Chicago 50, and Bomb. His accolades include a Newbery Honor, three Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards, a Sibert Medal and Honor, and…
Ellen Oh is an award-winning author and editor of middle grades and young adult novels, including Haru, Zombie Dog Hero; Finding Junie Kim; The Dragon Egg Princess; the Spirit Hunters trilogy; and The Colliding Worlds of Mina Lee. She has also edited …
Celeste Ng is the New York Times bestselling author of the novels Everything I Never Told You, Little Fires Everywhere, and Our Missing Hearts. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation,…
Sneed B. Collard III has written more than ninety books for young people, including his newest picturebooks Border Crossings; Like No Other: Earth’s Coolest One-of-a-Kind Creatures and Waiting for a Warbler. He is the 2024 recipient of the …
Sarah Everett is the author of The Probability of Everything as well as several books for teens. She is 2024 recipient of the NCTE Charlotte Huck Award® for Outstanding Fiction for Children. …
James E. Ransome has been honored with the 2023 Children’s Literature Legacy Award by the American Library Association in recognition of his exceptional contributions to children’s literature. …
Lesa Cline-Ransome is the author of numerous nonfiction and historical fiction titles for picturebook, chapter book, middle grades, and young adult readers, and her work has been named to …
Antero Garcia is Vice President of NCTE and an associate professor in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Prior to completing his PhD, Antero was an English teacher at a public high school in South Central Los Angeles…
We Can Make Something Beautiful: Worldbuilding with Arts-Infused Writing Pedagogies
“What is the brightest, most just, most loving vision of education you can imagine? …
Featured Sessions
Friday, November 22, 11:00 a.m.–12:15 p.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.
Saturday, November 23, 4:15–5:30 p.m.—ROOM 205 A (BCEC, Level 2): “Connecting Our Hearts: Having Difficult Conversations in the Classroom”
Detra Price facilitates a panel of teachers and other experts who will share how they navigate conversations and build community, starting first with the teacher and the development of self-awareness and critical love for humanity.
Saturday, November 23, 5:55–8:00 p.m.—ROOM 210 C (BCEC, Level 2): Private Pre-Release Screening of Banned Together: The Fight Against Censorship
Join filmmaker Kate Way and a distinguished panel for a brief discussion and a screening of this explosive new feature documentary. Popcorn and a cash bar will be available. Explore intellectual freedom in a common space with peers.
Special Event Speakers
Elementary Section Get-Together
Thursday, November 21, 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m.—ROOM 210 C (LEVEL 2)
Hear from NCTE’s elected leaders who represent the NCTE Elementary Section and from the winner of the 2024 Outstanding Elementary Educator Award.
Speakers:
Committee Chair Nancy Valdez-Gainer, Texas State University
Angie Zapata, University of Missouri
Middle Level Meet-Up
Thursday, November 21, 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m.—ROOM 210 A (LEVEL 2)
Kick off your Convention experience with this gathering of middle level attendees that features speakers and the chance to hear from Section leaders.
Speakers:
Sarah Bonner, University of North Carolina Wilmington
Pablo Cartaya
Jamar Nicholas, Scholastic, Inc.
Secondary Section Get-Together
Thursday, November 21, 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m.—ROOM 210 B (LEVEL 2)
Meet members of the Secondary Section Steering Committee, hear Section updates and award announcements, gather with friends and colleagues over appetizers, and hear from guest speaker. Jessica Lander.
Speakers:
Josh Thompson, Virginia Tech
Jessica Lander
JESSICA LANDER is an award-winning teacher, writer and author. She has, for more than a decade, worked with students in middle school, high school, and university in the U.S., Thailand, and Cambodia. In 2015, she began teaching history and civics to immigrants and refugee students from more than 30 countries at Lowell High School, in Lowell Massachusetts.
She encourages her students to be leaders and teachers in the community, including by writing and publishing books that share their voice, history, and ideas, and by collaborating with local leaders on civics projects. In 2019, Jessica and her former students launched the national We Are America Project, working with teachers across the country to support students in writing, publishing, and sharing stories of self.
Jessica is the author of Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education, a coauthor of Powerful Partnerships: A Teacher’s Guide to Engaging Families for Student Success and the author of Driving Backwards.
She has won numerous awards for her teaching, including being named the 2023 Massachusetts History Teacher of the Year, presented by the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History; a 2023 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year Finalist, presented by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education; and a Top 50 Finalist for the Global Teacher Prize in 2021, presented by the Varkey Foundation. She was a 2020 Emerson Collective Fellow. Jessica writes frequently about education policy and teaching.
College Section Get-Together
Thursday, November 21, 5:30 p.m.–7:00 p.m.—ROOM 209 (LEVEL 2)
Join leaders of the NCTE College Section and colleagues who teach at the postsecondary level across the country during Thursday night’s College Section Get-Together.
Speakers:
Jonathan Bush, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo
Tracy K. Smith
TRACY K. SMITH is a librettist, translator, and the author of five acclaimed poetry collections, including Life on Mars, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Her memoir, Ordinary Light, was a finalist for the National Book Award. From 2017 to 2019, she served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States. She currently is a Susan S. and Kenneth L. Wallach Professor at Harvard Radcliffe Institute and a professor of English and of African and African American studies in the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She lives in Massachusetts.
