2025 CEL Annual Convention Call for Proposals
November 23–25, 2025 | Denver, CO

Abundance

 

The deadline for proposal submissions is 9:00 a.m. ET, Wednesday, March 19, 2025.
Proposal notifications will be sent by May 31, 2025.

Submit a Proposal

Abundance.

Plentitude. Fullness. Vibrancy. Camp. Kitsch. Excess. Privilege. Consumerism. Elitism. Waste.

Everything you do as a leader promotes abundance. The Conference on English Leadership invites sessions that celebrate, explore, and critique these literacy leadership practices.

We seek to explore the many ways that abundance affects our leadership—especially as leaders of initiatives focused on the aesthetic, the literary, the literate, and the beautiful. Literacy leaders are often uniquely positioned to inspire faculty and students to explore the plentiful worlds awaiting them in stories; we foster heartfelt communication, nurture dialogue, and seek connections. Literacy leaders are also attuned to the (sometimes accurate) accusations of elitism or esotericism, and to the regular defense of our practices (and our funding) in the face of challenges that we are “extra,” irrelevant, or wasteful. Some of us confront, daily, the privileged abundance of our students and our communities; others strive to create spaces of abundance for students and teachers who have rarely experienced that fullness.

In one dimension, our world has become anemic—stripped down to functionality, work-force preparedness, and compliance. Abundance can be a radical challenge to that status quo: demanding that we celebrate the riotous beauty of the world, that we rediscover the sublime awe of a universe brimming with verdant futures. Abundance can be actions we take as literacy leaders to support those who have rarely felt the beauty of plentitude, and the steps we take to allow our community to see their schools as places of capability, support, love, and generosity.

In another dimension, we see the devastation that our desire for abundance can bring to this world: the perpetuation of settler-colonialism, our complicity in imperial narratives, our contribution to elitist educational systems, the pushing aside of vital questions about environmentalism, fair working conditions, and civil rights with the assertions that these demands are “excessive” and impossible.

This Convention invites 60-minute individual or group workshops on this year’s theme:

• How have you adopted approaches to literacy education that promote capacity and capability?
• How have you created spaces of plentitude and support?
• How have you interrupted spaces of privilege and entitlement?
• What role does beauty play in your leadership: In the designing of learning spaces? In the planning of the curriculum? In the teacher evaluation process? In the strategic implementation of long-term initiatives?
• How does the concept of abundance restructure the importance of Arts and Humanities in a STEM-dominated educational landscape?
• In what ways can abundance be used to critically engage with climate change and eco-literature?
• How have we challenged narratives of excess, unruliness, and loudness that are often used to pathologize BIPOC cultures?
• In what ways do joy and vibrancy redefine traditional metrics of success in literacy education?
• How do kitsch, camp, and bricolage restructure our approach to text selection, to unit structures, or to writing?
• What are the potential pitfalls of promoting abundance in literacy education, particularly in terms of perpetuating consumerism and elitism?

In the spirit of abundance, all literacy leadership proposals are valid. Please share anything from your current practice as there is abundance inherent in the thoughtful sharing of best-practices, making the self a resource, and the offer of companionship and connection.

In line with this theme, we also welcome 30-minute celebrations, artworks, and performances. You might tie these creative practices back to your work as a literacy leader, or… you might trust and explore with the audience and see what emerges! You might choose to showcase a skill you possess, or to teach that skill to others, or to build something collaboratively.

• Knitting, storytelling, stand-up comedy, juggling, jump rope, communal singing, urban nature walks;
• Tactile, sensorial, textile, visual, and performance art;
• Contextualizations, documentaries, testimonials, cultural celebrations, gustatory explorations;
• Student and faculty projects, performances, events, recordings, or initiatives.

These sessions are places to share your passions and talents; do not feel the need to constrain your sharing to only literacy or only leadership practices. We aim to create spaces of abundance and sharing beyond typical literacy leadership sessions. These will give us dedicated time in the conference schedule to abundantly connect with one another.

Matthew Helmers 
2025 CEL Annual Convention Program Chair

Submit a Proposal

IMPORTANT DATES

• Proposal database is open.
• Proposal submission deadline: 9:00 a.m. ET on Wednesday, March 19, 2025
• Proposal notifications: by May 31, 2025
• Registration & housing information available: Summer 2025
• Convention dates: November 23–25, 2025, Denver, CO
  

NOTE: As a nonprofit organization of educators, we are not able to provide a stipend or reimburse expenses to presenters. All presenters must register for the CEL Annual Convention.