James R. Squire Award
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2024 Recipient: Kylene Beers
Dr. Kylene Beers is currently an international literacy consultant, author of professional texts, and program author of reading and literature textbooks by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. She has previously served as Senior Reading Researcher at the Comer School Development Program at Yale University and was on the adjunct faculty for the University of Houston. She began her career as a middle school language arts teacher outside of Houston, Texas.
Kylene is the author of When Kids Can’t Read/What Teachers Can Do, a book used nationally and internationally. With Robert Probst, she is the co-author of Forged by Reading; Disrupting Thinking; Reading Nonfiction; and Notice and Note – Strategies for Close Reading. Disrupting Thinking was the 2018 recipient of the Teachers’ Choice Awards.
Kylene has served on committees with the International Reading Association and the National Council of Teachers of English and is an often-invited keynote speaker to national and state conventions. She has served as president of the National Council of Teachers of English; chair of the National Literacy Coalition; Special Advisor on Literacy Education to the Department of Defense Education Activity; invited special assistant to the National Governor’s Association committee on education and special consultant to the State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards of the Council of State Chief School Officers. She has served as an advisor to the BookLove Foundation as well as the LitWorld Foundation. She is the recipient of the NCTE CEL Leadership Award, the NCTE Richard Halle Award for Outstanding Contributions to Literacy Education at the Middle Grades, the University of Houston Outstanding Teaching Award, the Ann Martin Book Award from the Regional American Library Association for Outstanding Contributions to Literacy Education, the VOYA award for Outstanding Contribution to Literacy, and the Southwest Education Research Award for Rising Researchers.
Most importantly, Kylene is a teacher who continues to work in classrooms today across the nation as she works shoulder-to-shoulder with teachers and students. When not on an airplane, Kylene lives on her ranch with her husband, Brad, outside of Waco, Texas.
The best teachers do more than teach kids to extract from a text or write to a formula. They help students develop habits that bring about intellectual and emotional engagement with the texts they read and the ones they write; they teach them that thinking can be generous and yet skeptical, compassionate and yet critical.
The best teachers are thoughtful, creative, courageous teachers. They choose the best instructional strategy for the diverse learners who enter the classroom each day. Such teachers have never needed a mandate demanding we leave no child behind. They stand firm in their convictions that reading and writing can be catalysts for changing students, for changing how they see others around them, and for potentially helping them change their world. The best teachers recognize that a literate life not only benefits the individual but benefits our democracy. Such a life opens doors of possibilities to students and our nation. Teachers hold open those doors each and every day.
Overview:
The James R. Squire Award, formerly called the NCTE Executive Committee Award, was established in 1967. In 1999, the Executive Committee renamed the award to honor former Executive Secretary James R. Squire for his contributions to NCTE and the profession at large.
This award is given by the Executive Committee in recognition of outstanding service, not only to the stature and development of NCTE and the discipline which it represents, but also to the profession of education as a whole, internationally as well as nationally.
Criteria:
The James R. Squire Award is a special award given to an NCTE member who has had a transforming influence and has made a lasting intellectual contribution to the profession. We remind nominators, nominees, and selection committee members that members of NCTE Conferences—CCCC, CEL, ELATE, LLA, and TYCA—are members, by definition, of NCTE.
Current NCTE Executive Committee members are not eligible for this award. Recipients of this award are not eligible to receive any other Executive Committee approved awards in the same year, nor in the following year.
The NCTE James R. Squire Award does not need to be awarded each year. This award should be bestowed only when the subcommittee decides that nominations warrant presentation of the award. Only one recipient will be selected each year.
Selection Committee:
The selection committee will consist of the immediate Past President and a committee of three Past Presidents of the Council appointed by the immediate Past President.
The selection committee welcomes nominations from NCTE members.
The James R. Squire award selection committee will select an award recipient, and the Executive Committee will approve the committee’s selection at an Executive Committee meeting.
Award:
The recipient is honored at the NCTE Awards Session and receives a commemorative piece, a complimentary NCTE lifetime membership, and the following travel expenses paid to attend the NCTE Annual Convention: airfare, two hotel room nights, and three days’ meals reimbursement.
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Application Deadline: May 1
Please contact NCTEAwards@ncte.org with any questions.
James R. Squire Award Previous Recipients
2023 Beverly Ann Chin
2022 Carol Jago
2021 Carol D. Lee
2020 Linda Flower
2019 Kathleen Blake Yancey
2018 Charles (Chuck) Bazerman
2017 Sonia Nieto
2016 Arthur N. Applebee (posthumously) and Jerome C. Harste
2015 Kent D. Williamson (posthumously)
2014 Yetta M. Goodman
2013 Rudine Sims Bishop
2012 Miles Myers
2011 George Hillocks Jr.
2010 Mike Rose
2009 Frank Smith
2008 Donald H. Graves
2007 Kenneth S. Goodman
2006 Janet Emig
2005 Geneva Smitherman
2004 Courtney Cazden
2003 Shirley Brice Heath
2002 Louise Rosenblatt
2001 Peter Elbow
1999 Edmund J. Farrell
1980 Robert F. Hogan
1974 John Gerber
1971 J. N. Hook
1967 James R. Squire