Welcome to the spring conference
​
Thursday, april 27, 2023

​Welcome to the Spring 2023 Conference of MACTE, MAECTE, and COMTEC on Thursday, April 27, 2023 at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. The Spring 2023 Conference theme is "Literacy Learning: Reconciling Policy and Practice for ALL Learners." It is our first in-person gathering in three years and an opportunity to reengage in our collective work to support teaching and learning across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. For those of you who are long-standing members of MACTE, we look forward to collaborating with you and to strengthening our partnership. To those who are new to the educator preparation community, we welcome you to join us for the day-long event. Our conference creates space for you to learn new strategies, network, and to engage with the state.​

Register online

Please join us at the College of the Holy Cross on April 27, 2023! The registration fees are $135 for General Admission and $70 for Undergraduate/Graduates Students. You can register online through Eventbrite. Please know that registration fee includes lunch and refreshments at the face-to-face conference at Holy Cross.

​Conference at a Glance

THURSDAY, APRIL 27, 2023
8:30 - 9:00 AM
Registration

9:00 - 9:05 AM
​Welcome & Introductions
Hogan Ballroom

​9:05 - 10:05 AM
Keynote Speaker: ​​Afrika Mills
Hogan Ballroom​

10:15 - 11:15 AM
Concurrent Session I
Hogan Center 320, 328, 406 or 408

11:20 - 12:05 PM
Early Literacy Presentation
Speakers: Siobhan Allen, DESE & Jessica Bazinet, Lenox Public Schools
Hogan Ballroom

12:05 - 1:05 PM
Lunch & MACTE Board Election

​1:10 - 2:10 PM
Concurrent Session II
Hogan Center 320, 328, 406, 408 or Hogan Ballroom

2:15 - 3:00 PM
DESE Presentation & Closing Remarks
Hogan Ballroom
​​


Keynote Speaker: ​​AFRIKA mills
​
Opening Windows, Opening Minds

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Afrika Afeni Mills, MEd, is the CEO of Continental Drift, LLC, an author, Education Consultant, and Adjunct Professor at Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development and Mount Holyoke College. She has been an educator since 1999 with a background as a classroom teacher, instructional coach, teacher developer, and school administrator. 

Afrika works with teachers, instructional coaches, and administrators to develop and sustain culturally responsive and sustaining, antibias, anti-racist, pro-human instructional practices. Afrika has been featured on podcasts, blogs, delivered keynote addresses and facilitated sessions at conferences across the United States. 

Afrika is the author of Open Windows, Open Minds: Developing Antiracist, Pro-Human Students, as well as the viral blog post, A Letter to White Teachers of My Black Children. Her TED-Ed Talk, Having Conversations About Race is Just Another Hard Thing We Can Learn to Do will be released in Spring 2023. Afrika was chosen as one of Brightbeam’s Top 22 Education Influencers of 2022 and is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Learning Forward.  Afrika has an M.Ed. in Elementary Teaching from Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, where she graduated first in her class. 

Afrika is the author of Open Windows, Open Minds: Developing Antiracist, Pro-Human Students, as well as the viral blog post, A Letter to White Teachers of My Black Children. Her TED-Ed Talk, Having Conversations About Race is Just Another Hard Thing We Can Learn to Do will be released in Spring 2023. Afrika was chosen as one of Brightbeam’s Top 22 Education Influencers of 2022 and is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), and Learning Forward. Afrika has an M.Ed. in Elementary Teaching from Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development, where she graduated first in her class.

The Opening Windows, Opening Minds session will build on the content of Open Windows, Open Minds: Developing Antiracist, Pro-Human Students and Emily Style’s and Rudine Sims Bishop’s concept of windows and mirrors, exploring why learning to appreciate the experiences and perspectives of others is essential for students. Afrika offers an approach to teaching and learning that will equip students to become informed, empathetic, inclusive, racially and historically literate global citizens, who genuinely value diversity and can actively engage in dismantling systemic inequities.

breakout Session overviews

Concurrent Session I
10:15 - 11:15 AM
Critical Literacy and Themes with Children’s Literature Depicting Trans Children
Dr. Mark D. McCarthy, Springfield College
Hogan Center 320
An important part of teacher education is for prospective teachers to become aware of their biases and boundaries, and in some cases to push themselves to the margins of their comfort in order to deepen their capacity to critically engage with issues of social justice. To achieve this, we can begin with one-word takeaways to dig deeper into a text, focus on the last words to better understand the message, and then state a theme as a sentence. Once we’ve established a sense of the themes of a text, we can put it into dialogue with other texts to critically interrogate the books we use and social narratives we encounter around marginalized people.
Articulating Identity as a Pathway to Developing Culturally Sustaining Literacy Practices
Dr. Deb Patterson, Western New England University
Hogan Center 328
This session is focused on connecting the role of identity articulation (‘Who am I’ activities at varying levels) to implementing ‘windows, mirrors and sliding doors’ as a culturally sustaining literacy pedagogy.

​Participants will practice several identity articulation exercises, discuss how these exercises develop language for analysis, creation and implementation of culturally sustaining pedagogy. ​
Growing Confidence in Multicultural Efficacy: A Study to Illuminate Pre-Service Teachers’ Increasing
Anti-Racism
Dr. Jacquelynne Boivin, Bridgewater State University
Dr. Marlene Correia, ​Bridgewater State University
Hogan Center 406
Presenters share their investigation of the impact an anti-racist book study, using Tiffany Jewell’s "This Book is Anti-Racist", had on elementary pre-service teachers the semester before their full-time practicum. Their mixed methods study asked two guiding research questions: 1.) Does participation in an anti-racist book club increase the value that pre-service teachers place on anti-racism work personally, professionally, or both? 2.) What is the multicultural proficiency of pre-service teachers before and after completing an anti-racist book club and online learning community? Attendees will consider how these results could be used to improve anti-racist programming and cultural responsiveness of future teachers. ​​
Making Literacy Learning Accessible for Students with Disabilities: Practitioner Inquiry as a Tool for
​Teacher Candidates
Dr. Lindsey Chapman, Boston University
​Kathryn Meyer,  Boston University
Hogan Center 408
This session will examine the use of practitioner inquiry to promote teacher candidates’ ability to provide accessible literacy instruction for students with disabilities. Opportunities and challenges related to implementation of practitioner inquiry during the student teaching and CAP process, as well as recommendations for practice, will be discussed.

Early literacy presentation

Speakers: Siobhan Allen, DESE & Jessica Bazinet, Lenox Public Schools
11:20 - 12:05 PM - Hogan Ballroom
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Siobhan Allen is a Literacy Specialist on the Educator Effectiveness team in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Siobhan began her career in education as a preschool teacher’s aide in an inclusive classroom, learning first hand the importance of fostering a love of school and learning in those early years.  She went on to become a Reading Interventionist in Brockton Public Schools and then a middle school English and Social Studies teacher in Hull. Her twelve years serving middle school students sparked a drive for improving equitable literacy outcomes for all students, ultimately leading her to join the team at DESE last year.

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Jessica Bazinet is a recipient of the 2012 Berkshire County Educator Recognition Award and was named a 2022 MA Teacher of the Year Finalist. She has been teaching for 17 years as an early childhood educator, ESL teacher, and technology specialist. She has her Masters in Language and Literacy and Bachelors degrees in Early Childhood Education and Interdisciplinary Studies. Jessica is a certified Wilson Dyslexia Practitioner and a presenter for ed tech integration in her community. She has mentored many teacher candidates from educator prep programs and is a member of the Leadership and PBIS teams in Lenox, MA. Her practices include being a student choice/voice advocate and integrates yoga, meditations, positive affirmations, and growth mindset with her students. Her work has also been cited in articles and books from the Center For Educational Improvement.
Concurrent Session II
1:10 - 2:10 PM
Sowing the Seeds of Early Literacy in Massachusetts: A Critical Analysis
Dr. Maria José Botelho
University of Massachusetts Amherst

Dr. Deb Patterson
Western New England University

Hogan Ballroom
“The science of reading” informs Mass Literacy (preK-3). Unfortunately, these studies overlook the situated details of children’s literacies and script teaching and standardize learning. In this session, we reconcile the contradiction between this policy and DESE’s commitment to anti-racist-multilingual-and-culturally-sustaining teaching through an analysis of the Appleseeds curriculum in teacher education. ​
Selecting Culturally Authentic Literature for the Classroom
Ryan Ambuter
Elms College

Dr. Tyra Good
​Elms College

Hogan Center 328
This workshop is designed to support teacher educators and classroom teachers in thinking through the literature we share with students. We will focus on developing a critical analysis about representation in literature, and on how to choose diverse, culturally authentic books that provide students with windows and mirrors.
Utilizing Assessment to Deconflate Language and  Disability with Prospective Teachers
Dr. Mark D. McCarthy, Springfield College
Dr. Sara Scribner, Springfield College
Hogan Center 406​​
Our presentation workshops data gathered by prospective teachers (PTs) to enable us to collectively brainstorm potential avenues for assessment to teach us more about what an ELL student can do and what they need. We will highlight how our process led PTs to more subjective, nuanced glimpses into student capacity.
Relearning Elementary
History/Social Sciences SMKs​​
Rachel Kramer Theodorou, Brandeis University
Hogan Center 408
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Elementary history education has taken a backseat to ELA and math leaving pre-service educators with little experience and practice including diverse perspectives and teaching from a critical stance.  Teacher educators learn and share resources to deepen SMK fluency for History/Social Sciences SMK and PCK through a positional and equity lenses.
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Mentorship and Classroom Placements: Building Strategies and Learning from Challenges in Teacher Placements at the Elementary and Secondary Level
Dr. Letina Jeranyama, Clark University
Carmen Oco'n, Clark University
Hogan 320
The process of teacher candidate placements involve the identification of supportive classroom and knowledgeable teacher mentors. At Clark University, university supervisors have engaged a variety of critical strategies to sustain collaborative mentorship relationships across K-12. The purpose of this presentation is to share successful strategies and ongoing challenges with participants.
Massachusetts Association of Colleges for Teacher Education 2024