Service

Selected Professional Service

• National Reading Conference Yearbook (Editorial Advisory Board, 1995-present)
• National Reading Conference (Research Ethics Committee, 1996-97)

Selected University Service
University

• University Library Committee 1994-95

• Area Chair, Secondary Teacher Education (1993-2004)
• Program Chair, Instruction and Curriculum in the Content Areas (1999-2004)
• Dean's Advisory Committee (1999-2004)
• Search Committees: English and Literacy Education (1995-96, 1996-97, 1999-2000, 2001-02)
• Promotion and Tenure Committee (2000-01)

Selected State and Local Outreach

• Founder and Project Director, 1998-present Literacy for Learning and Life: An After School Program, Neighborhood Ministries Community Center, Denver, Colorado

Literacy and Learning for Life is a fully operating after-school program in the Five Points Community of Denver, Colorado. In 1998, I founded the program in collaboration with the staff at Neighborhood Ministries where the program is currently located. The primary goal of this program is to provide an intellectually supportive and nurturing environment designed to help young children (ages 6 to 8) improve their reading and writing skills while also helping them to become more aware of the important role that literacy may play in their lives. Additionally, Literacy and Learning for Life offers a rather unique approach to the professional development of preservice teachers enrolled in the School of Education Teacher Licensure Program at the University of Colorado. The program faculty is a combination of CU students and adults from the Five Points Community. Each semester, the school program mentors five to six students from the School of Education who work as teachers in the program. As part of this involvement, preservice teachers also collaborate weekly with the participating community faculty, which presently include one Latino woman and three African American adult males. At this time, approximately 25 children from the community attend the program daily where they engage in a wide range of literacy-related instructional activities. The program is supported by grants from the National Council of Teachers of English, The International Reading Association, IMPART, and the University of Colorado Grant-in-Aid.

• Founder and Project Director, 1997-99
  Outreach Through Undergraduate Tutoring (Project OUT)
  School of Education, University of Colorado

Project OUT provides leadership opportunities for undergraduate students of color in arts and science who are interested in the possibility of teaching as a profession and the prospect of serving as a personal and academic mentor for high school students. Participating students from the University of Colorado are placed in Denver Metro area high schools where they work as academic tutors and develop mentoring relationships with students from diverse racial and cultural backgrounds.

• Co-founder and Co-Director (with Professor Shuaib Meacham), 1996-99
  Project BLUES: Building Literacy in Urban Educational Settings
  Neighborhood Ministries Community Center-Denver, Colorado

Project BLUES is a collaborative research and development effort with the Neighborhood Ministries Community Center in Denver, Colorado. Specifically, Project BLUES is a non-profit literacy program that conceptualizes literacy instruction as an important vehicle that may be instrumental in fostering more vital connections between community members, schools, and other local institutions. In the context of this program, participating adults engage in a variety of reading and storytelling experiences. In addition, a vital aspect of the adults' motivation for their own literacy learning in the program is the preparation they receive related to assisting young readers at a neighborhood elementary school. In the context of this instruction, stories are conceptualized as one of the primary means through which adults (and children) develop their own literacy skills, prepare to participate in school children's literacy development, as well as to imagine and take up more productive forms of community life.

• Co-Project Director (with Daniel Madigan and Victoria Rybicki), 1989-92
  Culturally Relevant Literacy Pedagogy in an African-American School Community
  Francis Parkman Elementary School - Detroit, Michigan

This project involved working with teachers and school administrators in developing literacy curricula that was both personally meaningful and culturally relevant to the children attending Francis Parkman Elementary School. Although children engaged in a variety of projects that integrated writing and community-related service (e.g., writing with adults in health care facilities) the cornerstone of this project was the publication of anthologies written by school children documenting their own life histories and experiences, as well as the histories and experiences of peers, parents, family members, and members of the community. Public readings of children's written work were also an important component of the program.