ELATE Events at #NCTE26

We welcome all #NCTE26 attendees to join English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE) for these sponsored events! You can find all of the sessions in the ELATE strand in the searchable, online 2026 NCTE Annual Convention program. Use the filter function to select the ELATE Strand.

Friday, November 20, 2026

ELATE Luncheon featuring Raina J. León, 2026–2027 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia
11:30 a.m.–1:30 p.m., Ballroom B, 300 Level, Pennsylvania Convention Center (ticket required)
The 2026 ELATE award and research grant recipients will be honored during the Luncheon.

Raina J. León, PhD, is Black, Afro-Boricua, and from Philadelphia (Lenni Lenape ancestral lands). She is the 2026–2027 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. She is a mother, daughter, sister, madrina, comadre, partner, poet, writer, and teacher educator. She believes in collective action and community work, the profound power of holding space for the telling of our stories, and the liberatory practice of humanizing education. She seeks out communities of care and craft and is a member of the Carolina African American Writers Collective, Cave Canem, CantoMundo, Macondo. She is the author of black god mother this body, Canticle of Idols, Boogeyman Dawn, sombra: (dis)locate, and the chapbooks profeta without refuge and Areyto to Atabey: Essays on the Mother(ing) Self. She publishes across forms in visual art, poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and scholarly work. She has received fellowships and residencies and attended retreats with The Watering Hole, the Obsidian Foundation, VONA, Community of Writers, Montana Artists Refuge, Macdowell, Vermont Studio Center, the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland, and Ragdale, among others. She is a founding editor of The Acentos Review, an online quarterly, international journal devoted to the promotion and publication of Latinx arts. She co-founded the Wild Indigo Poetry Reading Series (2024) in Germantown, Philadelphia, in deep partnership with Young American Cider and Reclaim Philadelphia and now Deaf-Hearing Communication Centre and Hands Up Productions for ASL interpretation. She is a recipient of a National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures Grant, a Leeway Transformation Award (2025), Letras Boricuas Fellowship (2025), a Velocity Fund Grant (2026), a Puffin Foundation Grant (2026), and an Academy of American Poets laureate fellowship (2026). She retired early as a full professor of education and is professor emerita at Saint Mary’s College of California. She teaches poets and writers at the Stonecoast MFA at the University of Southern Maine and poetry at Bryn Mawr College as a visiting professor. She is additionally a digital archivist, emerging visual artist, writing coach, and curriculum developer.

ELATE Commissions Meeting
3:30–4:45 p.m., Ballroom A, 300 Level, Pennsylvania Convention Center
All interested ELATE and NCTE members are invited to come learn about the ELATE commissions. After an overview from each commission, attendees can visit the commissions at roundtables to learn more about past and current commission projects.

Saturday, November 21, 2026

Critical Issues in English Education: Research by ELATE Research Grant and Award Winners
8:15–9:30 a.m., 201-AB, 200 Level, Pennsylvania Convention Center
In this roundtable session, the recipients of the annual Research Initiative Grant, Graduate Student Research Award, Janet Emig Award, James Britton Award, and James Moffett Memorial Award, sponsored by English Language Arts Teacher Educators (ELATE), present their award-winning works on current issues in the fields of literacy and English teacher education.

ELATE Membership Meeting and Social
5:45–7:00 p.m., 201-C, 200 Level, Pennsylvania Convention Center
All those interested in shaping English language arts teacher education are invited to attend this membership meeting and social to mingle with representatives from English education programs nationwide and prospective English education graduate students and PhD candidates.