My Why

Dear Educators, 
The Wisconsin State Reading Association invites you to join us for WSRA's conference in the Online Literacy Learning Academy as we celebrate 65 years of leadership, advocacy, and professional learning! Your health, safety, and well-being are of utmost importance to us at WSRA. This is why we are excited to announce that our annual conference will be brought right to YOU! All of the high-quality literacy leaders you have come to expect from us will be sharing their voices virtually for nine months of ongoing, in-depth, and impactful learning from October 2020 - June 2021 to support you and your professional learning plans. Please join us as we Raise Our Voices to Empower All Learners Today to Change the World Tomorrow! This virtual conference will be presented via live and pre-recorded sessions. Some of the live sessions will be recorded and accessible for 10 days following the live event. 

As I was thinking about this milestone year for our organization, I reflected on all of the voices that have informed my literacy DNA and looked to the voices that are moving my thinking forward. Mostly, I thought about the children; they are our “why.” This brought me to this year’s theme: Raising Our Voices: Empowering All Learners Today to Change the World Tomorrow. 

We live in a democracy that ultimately demands engagement, so how are we educating its citizenry? Are we providing them spaces that foster agency where knowledge is constructed through dialog and interaction? Are we giving voice to those traditionally silenced or marginalized? Are we creating compassionate, civic-minded citizens who, through authentic, relevant, and meaningful learning opportunities, discover who they are and who they want to be in our global community? In short, are we honoring and raising up all voices?  

Inherent in the Raising Our Voices theme are not just the voices of students but our voices as educators as well. How are we advocating for the learners in front of us? How are we equipping ourselves with research-based best practices? How are we insisting on intentional, inclusive, anti-bias, anti-racist literacy practices for all of our students? How are we engaging civically in matters that greatly impact our profession? 

During these three days together, we will explore these ideas and more through the following learning strands: access for all, comprehension, critical literacy, digital literacy, emergent literacy, inquiry, intervention, literacy leadership, middle level literacy, secondary literacy, and writing instruction. Along with literacy experts, we will mine these topics for practices that we can put to work with the readers and writers before us. On Saturday, I’m delighted to bring our “why” back to the WSRA conference with the Young Voices Festival: Changing the World One Voice at a Time. 

In Kara Pranikoff’s book Teaching Talk: A Practical Guide to Fostering Student Thinking and Conversation, she states, “Lasting impact is made when we see the capacity we have to bring people together and empower their voice.” Beyond these days of learning together, my hope for you is that you reflect on whose voices you are lifting up in your schools, that you continue to offer and support relevant teaching that connects your students to the global community, and that you raise your own voices on behalf of all of the learners in our literacy communities. I will end as Monique Gray Smith did in her WSRA 2020 Conference keynote: 

Thank you for contributing to the wellness of the world!

Michelle Mullen, 2021 Conference Chair
WSRA 1st Vice President