Today is the deadline to register to attend talk by award-winning literacy researcher

Award-winning researcher Shirley Brice Heath will talk about family literacy research and her follow-up work about reading to learn and informal learning across communities at a special symposium event.

Join the Department of Language and Literacy Education for the Family and Community Literacies Research Speaker Symposium 10 a.m.-1:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 1, in the Miller Learning Center Room 171. Following Heath’s keynote, there will be a question-and-answer session, lunch, and a book signing. Afternoon breakout sessions, facilitated by language and literacy education doctoral students, will examine the following topics:

Conducting family and community literacies research in “The Trump Era”
Establishing family/school community relationships for families of color
Creating youth and arts-based community literacies
Integrating digital literacies research in families, schools, and communities

Shirley Brice Heath has led groundbreaking research on the longitudinal impact of “voluntary learning,” or the everyday ways in which learners read in and through the world. Heath’s research has influenced museums to shift their emphasis on learning for young people from one-time visits through school field trips to open enrollment in on-going laboratories, studios, and curating sessions. With community theaters and musical performance groups, she has stimulated innovative means of linking large cultural organizations with underrepresented communities through active participation rather than passive spectatorship.

Heath is donating her book, Words at Work and Play: Three Decades in Family and Community Life, to the first 15 attendees who submit a 100-word synopsis explaining why they wish to read her book. Send your responses to

tellison@uga.edu

. You must be present to receive her book.

This event is free and open to the public, but you must register in advance!

The registration deadline is Friday, March 24. For more information, please contact

Tisha Lewis Ellison