By Nicole Kingdon
On March 27th and 28th, 2025, the Massachusetts Reading Association (MRA) will be hosting their 54th Annual Conference. In addition to the acceptance of my workshop presentation, Cultivating Complex Conversations: How Classroom Conversations Can Improve Early Literacy, I am honored to announce that I have won the 2025 MRA Donald L. Landry Student Award!
The Landry Award honors Donald L. Landry, former MRA President and Executive Treasurer, for his dedicated years of service to the MRA. Undergraduate and graduate students in the field of education may submit an essay to receive funded fees, lodging, meals, and events for the conference, as well as an annual MRA and International Literacy Association (ILA) membership.
The graduate award required an essay on the following questions: If you could choose a theorist to visit your class, whom would you choose? Why would you choose this theorist to visit your classroom? What would the theorist see in your classroom that he/she would particularly like? The essays were scored on originality/creativity, content, and conventions.
As a former early childhood educator and Jumpstart AmeriCorps Member, I focused my essay on my experiences implementing Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings’s Culturally Relevant Pedagogy while working with preschool-aged children. Please see my submission below:
Welcome to our preschool classroom, Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings! It is an honor to have you here. Your theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP; Ladson-Billings, 1995), leading to Dr. Gholnecsar Muhammad’s Historically Responsive Literacy (HRL; Muhammad, 2020) and Dr. Django Paris’s Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP; Paris, 2012), all shape our classroom. Using CRP, HRL, and CSP, our classroom is a holistic growth environment, where I am both the teacher and the learner.
In our classroom, I foster a space to help shape identities by learning about students and their histories, using their identities and histories to shape teaching and learning, and reshape negative outlooks on their identities and histories by supporting them in challenging dominant narratives and self-defining their paths. Additionally, students are provided with the autonomy and agency to learn, think, and teach in critical ways, respectfully raising their voices to question and engage conversation. Furthermore, curricula are designed to foster critical consciousness, making it a natural part of students’ development.
Even though preschool students are young, their intellectual abilities as scholars are nurtured in our classroom. Social-emotional skills are at the forefront of all teaching and learning, providing students with essential tools at the critical developmental period to navigate their emotions and relationships in healthy ways. Furthermore, with integrated curricula, students gain skills and intellect in many areas, while simultaneously building their identity and criticality. Our classroom environment not only focuses on skills and intellect, but also the joy that comes from teaching and learning.
Today, we want you to experience the same joy we do because of CRP, introduced in 1995 and still making an impact 30 years later. Throughout your time here, observe how the students and I are both teachers and learners, reducing typical classroom power dynamics. I offer you time today to reflect on my learning and teaching practices, think critically, question my intentions, and, simultaneously, critically reflect on your own practices while teaching and learning with us. Our classroom is a dynamic environment of impact and growth, thanks to CRP, and we welcome your impact and growth today, Dr. Ladson-Billings.