2022 UCTE CONFERENCE
UCTE 2022 Keynote Speakers
Sara K. Ahmed
Sara currently serves as the Director of Curriculum Integration and 5th-grade advisor at Catherine Cook School in Chicago. She has taught and coached in city, suburban, public, independent, and international schools, where her classrooms were designed to help students consider their own identities and see the humanity in others. When she is not in the classroom or meeting with teachers, you can find her coaching cross country, soccer, or basketball.
Sara is the author of Being the Change: Lessons and Strategies to Teach Social Comprehension and coauthor with Harvey “Smokey” Daniels of Upstanders: How to Engage Middle School Hearts and Minds with Inquiry. She is an international speaker and staff developer in schools around the world– bridging literacy, inquiry, and social identity work through curriculum development, professional growth meetings, and lab classrooms. Sara has also served on the Teacher Leadership Team for Facing History and Ourselves, an international organization devoted to examining and confronting the choices we’ve made in history—individual and society.
Sara has just returned from Bangkok, Thailand where she served as a literacy coach and consultant-in-residence at NIST international school. These days you can find her playing tennis, reading, or writing her way through her sweet-home Chicago, and rediscovering the restaurant and pastry scene with her family.
You can find her on Twitter or Instagram @SaraKAhmed.
Dr. Shelbie Witte
Dr. Shelbie Witte is the Kim and Chuck Watson Chair in Education and professor of adolescent literacy and English Education at Oklahoma State University. She is proud to serve as site director emeritus of the Oklahoma State University Writing Project as well as the founding director of the Initiative for 21st Century Literacies Research, which recognizes the annual recipients of the Divergent Award for 21st Century Literacies Research and provides theory to practice resources for classroom teachers and students interested in implementing 21st century literacies in the classroom.
Dr. Sara Kajder
Sara is a faculty member in Language and Literacy Education at The University of Georgia and a consultant to K-12 school systems across the country. Her most recent research examines secondary English teacher practices and adolescent literacy identities, especially in dialogue with the use of digital tools and social media. The author of many peer-reviewed articles and books, her most recent title, Adolescents and Digital Literacies (NCTE), received the NCTE Britton Award in 2012.