2025 NCTE National African American Read-In
All teachers and students are welcome at a special NCTE event!
Wednesday, February 12, 1:00–1:45 p.m. ET
NCTE invites educators, their students, and preservice teachers to join us for the fourth annual virtual National African American Read-In. This year, NCTE is proud to welcome award-winning author Charles R. Smith Jr. to engage in conversation and a classroom activity.
Smith is an author, poet, and photographer and the winner of the 2025 NCTE Award for Excellence in Poetry for Children. He will speak about his work and also guide elementary-grades students through a simple activity that classrooms can do together. Students will learn about writing, books, and creating.
Each year classrooms and readers from coast to coast celebrate literature through African American Read-In events. The 2025 NCTE National African American Read-In virtual event is free to all but registration is required. Find other ways to get involved in the National African American Read-In.
REGISTER HERE
This event is free and open to all. Please contact profdev@ncte.org with any questions.
AUTHOR
Charles R. Smith Jr. is an award-winning author, poet and photographer. His awards include the Knickerbocker Award in New York (2024), the Coretta Scott King Award for Illustration (2010) for his photographs accompanying the Langston Hughes poem, My People and a Coretta Scott King Honor Author Award (2008) for his biography on Muhammad Ali, Twelve Rounds to Glory. Many of his books have made notable lists and garnered reluctant reader awards, proving that kids that don’t like to read, do like to read his books.
Charles has combined his passions of writing and photography to create forty-five titles, covering a variety of subjects from basketball with the Sports Royalty series, featuring Hoop Kings and Queens, to Black history with 28 Days, to diversity with I Am America and I Am the World, to Greek mythology with The Mighty 12, to biography with Song for Jimi: The Story of Guitar Legend Jimi Hendrix, Bessie the Motorcycle Queen, and Major Taylor: World Cycling Champion.
But Charles is more than an author of books. He has worked as a fitness trainer, studied martial arts, boxing, gymnastics and ninja obstacles, even appearing on the TV show American Ninja Warrior in 2017. He attributes those physical skills to his success as an author and believes in fighting ignorance with knowledge. In his school presentations, Charles discusses the importance of developing the mind, body and spirit and likes to remind students and aspiring authors: “If you feed the mind, challenge the body and ignite the spirit, you can achieve your dreams.”
Charles R. Smith Jr. was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He
graduated with a BA in photography from Brooks Institute of Photography and currently lives in the Hudson Valley in New York with his wife Jan and his dog Jake.
(NCTE and independent bookstores receive a small commission from books purchased using the bookshop.org links provided.)
HOST
Tonya B. Perry, Provost and Senior Vice President at Miles College in Fairfield, Alabama, is a tireless advocate for students and educators who are often denied a voice. She works with and for educators, students, and communities to develop programs and initiatives that uplift historically marginalized peoples. In addition, she has advocated for others on numerous committees, including as a member of the NCTE Executive Committee, NCTE Research Foundation trustee, member of the NCTE Inclusivity Task Force, NCTEAR chairperson, NCTE Editorial Board member, and director for NCTE’s Cultivating New Voices among Scholars of Color program.
She currently is NCTE President and serves on the National Writing Project’s board of directors. Perry has also served the nation as a 2000 National Teacher of the Year finalist and a two-time National Board Certified Teacher. She has worked as a middle school teacher, teacher educator, full professor, executive director, and principal investigator for a large GEAR UP grant, director of the Red Mountain Writing Project, and both interim department chair and executive director for outreach and engagement for a school of education.
Her coauthored book Teaching for Racial Equity: Becoming Interrupters (2022) is a collaborative work with two teacher educators, Steven Zemelman and Katy Smith, and other brilliant teacher-writers.