Kaha Abdi is a critical literacy scholar-educator, former elementary school teacher, and doctoral candidate at The Ohio State University in the Department of Teaching and Learning. Her research draws on decolonial thought and utilizes ethnographic approaches to explore the literacy practices of African diasporic Muslim families across mosques and community spaces. Abdi seeks to expand understandings of the temporal and spatial expectations of literacy and learning, or what kinds of persons are considered “on time” or “out of time,” and honors the fullness of being outside secular modernity.

Abdi’s scholarship has been published in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods, The Urban Review, and English Journal. Her research has been supported by the International Literacy Association and recognized with the Emerging Scholar Award by the American Educational Research Association’s Language and Social Processes SIG. A wife, mother, and daughter, Abdi can usually be found tending to her garden and making good trouble in the neighborhood.

Mentor: Susi Long, University of South Carolina, Columbia

Elizabeth Castro (she/her/ella) is an assistant professor of bilingual and dual language Teacher Education at Central Washington University. Elizabeth is part of an (im)migrant farmworking family from rural eastern Washington and Veracruz, Mexico. Now a teacher educator in her home community, she previously served bi/multilingual migrant high school students. Her research and teaching are informed by sociocultural theories, raciolinguistic perspectives, and translanguaging instructional design. She is interested in the ways that early career bilingual teachers, paraeducators, and youth cocreate knowledge and solidarities and the brilliance and joy of everyday practices. Her dissertation, “Latina Bilingual Paraeducators as Sociocultural Mediators of Language and Literacies: In Accompaniment with Bi/Multilingual Youth in Secondary Schools,” a classroom-based ethnographic study, was supported by a NAEd / Spencer Dissertation Fellowship in 2024.

Elizabeth received her PhD in Education from the University of California, Davis, and an EdM from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She earned a BA in international studies from the University of Washington-Seattle and is an alum of Columbia Basin College.

Mentor: Susi Long, University of South Carolina, Columbia

Dr. Alanna Harris is an independent scholar and literacy educator based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She holds a PhD in urban education with a specialization in curriculum, instruction, and literacy from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Her CNV research, “Beyond the Mic: DJ as Theory of Synthesis in Secondary English Education,” positions DJing as hip-hop’s foundational compositional practice and a theory of synthesis for the English language arts classroom. Through a multiple-case study of practicing DJs, she examines how compositional moves like sequencing, layering, and transition can expand how secondary ELA teachers conceptualize, teach, and assess integrative writing. Her work draws on culturally sustaining pedagogy, raciolinguistic ideologies, and antiracist writing assessment to challenge the print-dominant hierarchies that shape what counts as synthesis. Harris is also the founder of Anomaly Soul, an educational consulting practice, and is a working DJ whose own craft informs her theory of composition.

Mentor: Khalilah Ali, Spelman College, Atlanta, Georgia

Dr. Tempestt S. Johnson is a dedicated educator, scholar, and lifelong learner who recently completed her PhD in language and literacy at the University of South Carolina. Her dissertation, Dancing Themselves Free: Black Girls’ Dance Literacies as Cultural Preservation in Majorette Dance, examines how Black girls use majorette dance, rooted in HBCU band culture, to preserve culture, resist adultification, reclaim their bodies, and transmit knowledge across generations.

Dr. Johnson’s research sits at the intersection of Black women and girls’ lived experiences, African American Language, and dance, viewing African American Language through the lens of bilingualism. Grounded in Black Girl Literacies, Black Feminist-Womanist Storytelling, and Dance Literacies, her work culminates in a proposed framework of Critical Dance Literacy, naming the political dimensions of Black girls’ dancing bodies and honoring Black dance as culturally and socially significant. Her scholarship holds meaningful implications for research, pedagogy, and policy affecting Black girls.

Mentor: Ashley Smith-Purviance, The Ohio State University, Columbus

Diana Lalata is a PhD candidate in the educational linguistics division at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Her research has focused on antiblackness and linguistic racism in language education policy as well as imagining cross-racial and cross-linguistic policy frameworks within education. Much of her work is informed by her positionality as a daughter of Filipino immigrants raised in a low-income community outside of Atlanta, Georgia. She also carries her teaching experiences across different classroom contexts as a public school, English language arts, and English as a second or other language (ESOL) teacher in Kentucky and Ohio.

Mentor: Danny C. Martinez, University of California, Davis

Tiffany D. Meadows is an educator, author, and PhD candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Virginia. With more than twenty years of experience as a middle and high school English language arts teacher in the Bahamas, her work bridges teaching, research, and community engagement. Her research centers Afro-Bahamian adolescent girls and explores how they use multiple literacies to interpret, critique, and construct representations of Black girlhood and womanhood.

Grounded in Black feminist, Caribbean feminist, and decolonial perspectives, Meadows employs ethnographic, qualitative methodologies to examine the relationships among literacy, identity, language, culture, and representation in postcolonial Caribbean contexts. She is particularly interested in how digital storytelling, literacy circle dialogue, and reflective writing create opportunities for self-definition, cultural affirmation, and critical engagement.

Meadows is committed to amplifying Afro-Bahamian adolescent girls’ voices and advancing culturally sustaining literacy practices that affirm Afro-Caribbean girls’ ways of knowing, being, and becoming.

Mentor: Allison Skerrett, University of Texas at Austin

Will O’Neil-White is an assistant professor of teaching and curriculum at the University of Rochester, Warner School of Education and Human Development. He holds a PhD from the University at Buffalo where his dissertation examined Black youth literacy practices in urban after school programs. A former high-school English teacher for 8 years, his qualitative studies—primarily ethnographic and design-based—investigate the literate lives of Black youth in Rust Belt cities. His work includes studies on STEM and literacy practices in urban schools, ethnic heritage after-school programs, and literacy spaces for Black males. He has published articles in the English Journal, Urban Education, and the Journal of Language and Literacy Education.

In addition to his scholarship, O’Neil-White is still deeply committed to working in his hometown community of Buffalo, NY. He volunteers teaching humanities courses for Black boys in the city along with his full-time appointment at the University of Rochester.

Mentor: Justin A. Coles, University of Massachusetts Amherst

LaMar Timmons-Long is an English teacher and doctoral student in New York City, where he wears two hats: classroom educator and emerging scholar. He teaches English courses to high school students in his hometown of Brooklyn, NY, while pursuing his doctorate at NYU, where he is interested in studying speculation and English education. Timmons-Long’s overall goal is to provide young people with access to the best, most equitable education possible. He finds deep joy in working with both students, teachers, and scholars. His national leadership and professional development work have helped create powerful spaces for ELA educators to grow and learn. His writing has been featured in NCTE journals, blog posts, and on numerous podcasts, and his voice continues to bloom throughout the field.

Mentor: Teaira McMurtry, The University of Alabama at Birmingham

Brandon J. Watkins recently earned a PhD in Curriculum and Instruction with a specialization in Urban Literacy Education from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A lifelong reader, a love passed down from his mother, Brandon believes deeply in the transformative power of literacy. A former pre-kindergarten teacher’s assistant, middle school English teacher, and instructional coach, he now teaches future educators at the University of South Carolina Upstate.

His research examines the sociocultural literacies of Black boys, with particular attention to meaning-making, play, identity, and community. Drawing on Youth Participatory Action Research, Black PlayCrit, and New Literacies Studies, his work challenges deficit narratives and foregrounds the rich social, cultural, and multidimensional literacy practices Black boys enact in out-of-school spaces. While acknowledging the inequities and challenges Black boys face in the United States, his scholarship highlights the creative and sophisticated ways they leverage gaming spaces to enact sophisticated literacy practices often overlooked in schools.

Beyond academia, Brandon is committed to serving his local community. As a first-generation college graduate and former TRIO student, he mentors students through local TRIO programs. He also founded and owns Brandon’s Brown Bookshelf, an online bookstore dedicated to amplifying literature by and Black and Brown communities.

Mentor: Allison Skerrett, University of Texas at Austin

Andre Zarate is a queer Filipinx educator, creative, and researcher with thirteen years of experience in K-12 schools across Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and New York City. Grounded in his dissertation research and lived experience, his work explores imagination, literacy, identity, agency, and belonging alongside queer Filipinx youth through participatory, arts-based, and critical literacy approaches.

Centering queerness and Filipinxness, Andre’s scholarship centers Filipinx epistemologies, imahinasyon (imagination) as literacy, and the balikbayan box as a metaphor for returning home to self. He seeks to create opportunities for queer youth to imagine our expansive identities, center queer joy, participate in imaginative world-building, and dream of a future that includes themselves.

A former Illinois Teacher of the Year finalist, Andre has served as a teacher, instructional leader, curriculum designer, and edupreneur. At the heart of his work is a commitment to uplifting and celebrating the brilliance and humanity of queer Filipinx youth and the Filipinx communities.

Andre holds a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and a MSEd and Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania – Graduate School of Education. You can find him on Instagram, TikTok, Medium, and Substack under @titodredreaming.

Mentor: Danny C. Martinez, University of California, Davis