Elementary Section 2019 Election Results
The Elementary Section Steering Committee (ESSC) members are elected each year to a four-year term. The Chair is elected from within the ESSC for a two-year term and serves on the NCTE Executive Committee representing the interests of the elementary membership.
The Nominating Committee prepares a slate of candidates for vacancies that occur annually on the Elementary Section Steering Committee and selects candidates for the succeeding year’s Elementary Section Nominating Committee. The candidate who receives the largest number of votes in the election will chair the committee.
Learn more through the ESSC Annual Report and ESSC Member Activities Responsibilities.
Thanks to the 2019 Elementary Section Nominating Committee:Ting Yuan, College of Staten Island, New York, chair; Crystal Polite Glover, Winthrop University, South Carolina; and Dinah Volk, Cleveland State University, Ohio.
Elementary Section Nominating Committee
(term to expire August 2020)
Members of the Section Nominating Committee choose candidates for the Section Committee and the Section Nominating Committee for the following year. The person receiving the most votes serves as chair.
Third-grade teacher, Louisville, KY
Membership(s): NCTE, Early Childhood Education Assembly
Award(s): Heinemann Fellow (2018–20); Professional Dyads and Culturally Relevant Teaching Cohort 2
Publication(s): Articles in The Reading Teacher, Talking Points, Action in Teacher Education
Program Contribution(s): NCTE, WLU
Position Statement: Attending the NCTE Annual Convention yearly sparks joy, helps me reflect on how responsive my practices truly are, and renews my spirit by being around like-minded educators. As a Black woman, feminist educator, I am committed to implementing culturally responsive/sustaining practices and centering Black joy in my literacy instruction.
Associate professor, literacy education, Queens College, NY
Formerly: Reading specialist; elementary classroom teacher
Membership(s): NCTE Standing Committee on Literacy Assessment, LRA, CELT
Publication(s): Book: Becoming Biliterate: Identity, Ideology, and Learning to Read and Write in Two Languages; articles in Research in the Teaching of English, Reading Research Quarterly, Talking Points, Language and Literacy
Program Contribution(s): NCTE, LRA, AERA
Position Statement: NCTE has provided teachers with a space to consider the different kinds and forms of literacy learning. Through my current service to NCTE, I have discovered ways that researchers, teachers, and administrators can change the conversation on student learning from a policy-driven, deficit perspective to one that values the knowledge and histories of students and families. If elected to serve on the NCTE Elementary Section Nominating Committee, I will continue to foster platforms for critical conversations that promote equity and advocate for teachers, students, and learning.
Principal, Northern Parkway School, Uniondale, NY
Formerly: Assistant principal, Northern Parkway School; physical education teacher, Bay Shore Elementary School
Membership(s): NCTE, Early Childhood Education Assembly, Affirmative Action Committee of ECEA
Award(s): NCTE/CEE Diversity Grant
Publications: Engaging Teachers, Families & Children in Multiple Literacies; Courageous Leadership; Culturally Sustaining Early Literacy Teaching: New Approaches, Strategies and Practices
Program Contribution(s): NCTE, Early Childhood Education Assembly, AAC, co-director of Professional Dyads and Culturally Relevant Teaching
Position Statement: As an elementary school principal, I find that NCTE serves as my professional home to allow me to participate as a practitioner and researcher in the field of early and intermediate literacy. As a member of the NCTE Elementary Section Nominating Committee, I would be committed to supporting NCTE to enhance the organization’s work in helping teachers, students, and their families with equitable and culturally responsive literacies pedagogies and practices.
Questions or comments for the Steering Committee can be emailed to elementary@ncte.org
Mission Statement
The Elementary Section Steering Committee of NCTE is committed to the pursuit of justice and equity. We believe that in an open democratic society we cannot argue for democracy and humanity unless we create for our children a more just and caring world. To this end we are dedicated to the support and development of emancipatory pedagogies that counter official policies and mandates that narrow the possibilities for the teaching of the language arts in public schools. We believe that it is essential that we resist any attempt that is made to separate school based language arts programs from the socio-cultural realities of children’s everyday lives. Our task is to support the work of teachers as they work closely with their students and their families to build classrooms where everyone has an opportunity to participate in the conversation with a renewed consciousness of worth and possibility of their own language use and the literacies that they share.
—ESSC, January 2017