I Am the Boss of THIS! Cultivating Ownership in Writing

Date: Tuesday, Feb 25, 2025
Time: 6pm-7:30pm
Location: Online
Registration: Click here to register

As middle and high school teachers, getting students to reflect upon themselves and own their writing is a significant part of our classroom work. Using Jason Reynolds’, Look Both Ways as a model, this session uses a new, creative identity framework that flexes with varying texts, ushers middle and high school students past superficial comprehension of characters toward a more scrupulous analysis of the social, emotional, intellectual, and moral strengths each one possesses. Then, as a way of having youth reflect upon their identity, we will illustrate how this same framework can help empower students through multimodal writing as they determine who they are socially, emotionally, intellectually, and morally – permitting our young people to take steps to towards cultivating ownership in critical thinking and writing.

Presenter Bios:
Danielle Hardt
is a seventh-grade English teacher and Content Area Specialist for the English Department at Starpoint Middle School. She is also a doctoral student at the University at Buffalo in the Learning and Teaching in Social Contexts, Ed.D. program. Her focus is on student identity, social justice, multi-modal writing, and student autonomy in the classroom.

Jevon D. Hunter, Ph.D.
is the Woods-Beals Endowed Chair for Urban Education in the School of Education at Buffalo State University. An award-winning scholar, his interests are principally collaborative, partnering with youth, their teachers, and others to envision and implement dignity and justice educational frameworks so our young people can shine in school and life.