Awards

NCTE Early Career Educator of Color Leadership Program

The application for the 2024-2025 cohort is now closed. Applicants can expect to hear from NCTE by early June.

Program Details 

Purpose:

The specific purpose of this program is to support early career teachers of color as they build accomplished teaching careers in literacy education.

Eligibility:
Practicing preK to university-level literacy educators of color who are in the first five years of a paid teaching career and who aspire to build a career in literacy education. People of color refers to historically underrepresented groups: African American, American Indian, Asian American, Latinx, and Pacific Islander.

Program Specifics:

• Programmatic: (1) two years of support from a mentor in year one who can help the recipient plan his or her institute experience and to use NCTE resources to enhance professional growth; (2) in year two, the opportunity to present or co-present at the NCTE Annual Convention; (3) an opportunity to collaborate with NCTE leaders; (4) a plaque to recognize the recipient’s participation.
• Financial: round-trip airfare, hotel, and meals for the summer ECEOC Institute in year one AND round-trip airfare, complimentary registration at the NCTE Annual Convention, three nights’ lodging expenses, and a $50 per diem for three days at the NCTE Annual Convention in year two.
• A complete application will include a recommendation letter and a signed support letter from your school administrator or university-level supervisor. Please note that the support letter can be e-signed or may also be confirmed with an email directly from your administrator to leadershift@ncte.org.
• The 2023 Summer Institute will be held from August 7-9 in Washington, D.C.
• An interview with ECEOC leadership may be requested in May of the application year.

All recipients must be an NCTE member at the time the award is accepted. The annual standard membership cost is $50.00 and recipients can join online.

Questions? Please contact leadershift@ncte.org.

*NEW* 2023 NCTE Early Career Educator of Color

Leadership Program Recipients

G. Edzordzi Agbozo is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. He is an interdisciplinary teacher-scholar, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in technical and professional communication, science and medical writing, environmental rhetoric, and composition. He currently researches the complex dimensions of discourse and technoculture, medical and science writing, and digital and visual rhetoric. His recent publications appeared in Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, Technical Communication & Social Justice, and Rethinking Language Use in Digital Africa: Technology and Communication in Sub-Saharan Africa. He recently co-edited Communicative Perspectives on COVID-19 in Ghana: At the Intersection of Culture, Science, Religion and Politics (Routledge 2023). Agbozo works as the book reviews editor for Rhetoric of Health and Medicine. He received his doctoral degree from the Rhetoric, Theory and Culture Program at Michigan Technological University, and is the 2022 winner of the CCCC Outstanding Dissertation Award in Technical Communication.

Elizabeth B. Castro is a doctoral candidate in the Language, Literacy, and Culture program in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. Her goals include collaborating with Latinx, newcomer, and bi-/multilingual students in drawing on their full communicative repertoires and translanguaging practices. Prior to her doctoral program, she served Latinx students at her former rural high school in Washington as part of the Migrant Education program. She also taught dance and led after-school programming. Focused within secondary education, she is committed to expanding what counts as knowledge, language, and literacy in classrooms. As a rural Latina scholar, she aims to address the intersections across race and language in rural contexts. Castro is part of a multiyear project focused on supporting early career teachers of color alongside her advisor, Dr. Danny C. Martinez. She is currently working on a project to contextualize the roles of bilingual Latinx paraeducators, including how they navigate tensions and how they support student learning. She received a master’s in education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington-Seattle. She has been a McNair scholar, a Gates Millennium scholar, and a Fulbright scholar to Mexico.

Rabiyatu Jalloh is a third-year educator who teaches 11th-grade English at West Philadelphia High School. Jalloh is passionate about re-creating and re-imagining educational spaces where Black girls feel affirmed, healed, liberated, and loved. She earned her Master of Science in Education, Culture, and Society from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research explored the experiences of Black girls in educational spaces and examined how literacy interventions created with Black girls in mind have served as resistance pathways for Black girls. She received her Bachelor of Science in Education and Public Policy and Bachelor of Arts in African American Studies from Penn State-University Park. As an undergraduate, she was a D.C. Social Justice Fellow, where she developed a learner-centered social justice curriculum. Jalloh served as an educator with the Restorative Justice Initiative, where she contributed to the curriculum development and implementation of writing courses at correctional facilities in Centre County, PA. Jalloh created the Writing Through Social Justice course and developed three multi-session professional developments. She is also a volunteer facilitator with the Black Girls Literacy Project, a free after-school literacy program founded by doctoral student Barrett Rosser. Jalloh is also an international slam poetry champion, and believes writing can be a powerful and transformative tool for students.

Darius Phelps is a doctoral student at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is an adjunct professor at Hunter College, Teachers College, and an assistant manager at Brooklyn Poets. An educator, poet, spoken-word artist, and activist, Phelps writes poems about grief, liberation, emancipation, and reflection through the lens of a teacher of color and experiencing Black boy joy. His poems have appeared in the NY English Record, NCTE English Journal, Pearl Press Magazine, ëëN Magazine, and many more. Recently, he was featured on WCBS and highlighted the importance of Black male educators in the classroom. He can be contacted via email at dmp2219@tc.columbia.edu.

Sherita V. Roundtree is an assistant professor of English at Towson University in Maryland’s Baltimore-metropolitan area. Her research lies at the intersections of composition studies, Black feminist theories and pedagogies, community literacy, and writing program administration. More specifically, she centralizes the teaching efficacy, pedagogical approaches, and “noise” of Black women teachers of writing as well as the networks of support they utilize. Some of Roundtree’s work can be found in Community Literacy Journal, Writers: Craft & Context, and other forthcoming edited collections.

Konatsu Sonokawa is an elementary school teacher at Martin Elementary in Manchester, Connecticut. A recipient of her school’s Teacher of the Year award in 2022, she also serves as the BIPOC affinity space facilitator and a co-facilitator of the Equity Leadership Team at her school. Her interest in teaching is the importance of representation, and building the connection to provide a space for all her students to feel seen and heard with literacy. Her presentation at the 2021 NCTE Annual Convention was titled “The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House: Anchoring the Wisdom of Women of Color Educators to Transform Teacher Preparation and Beyond.” Her hopes are to not only build up her students, but to continue to help other educators feel a sense of belonging in the profession of education. She is a graduate of the University of Connecticut Neag School of Education, where she received her bachelor’s in elementary education and master’s in curriculum and instruction.