CEAO’s NCTE Liaison is Cindy Sabik, sabikc@gilmour.org
More than 7,000 teachers attended the 95th Annual Convention of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) November 17-22, 2005, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The theme for this year’s convention was “On Common Ground.” Hundreds of concurrent sessions and workshops focused heavily on media, technology, and pedagogy. Featured speakers included Isabel Allende, Frank Mc Court, Sonia Nieto, and Ted Kooser.
CEAO was represented at the Board of Directors meeting where we passed several resolutions, including, aaafter a brief discussion, a resolution in preparation for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). It reads as follows:
Be it resolved that the National Council of Teachers of English urge Congress and the U.S. Department of Education to
- include the respected voices of English language arts teachers and teacher educators as advisors at every stage of the reauthorization process;
- support policies that reward rather than punish teachers who choose to work in the nation’s most challenging schools;
- abandon impoverished assessment systems and support the development of multiple tools that measure the complexity of student literacy learning; and
- shift the focus from packaged reading programs to initiatives that respect teachers’ expertise in educating all children to read and write.
