News

By Jillian Ellis

The Tennessee Higher Education Commission recently awarded the Improving Teacher Quality Grant to Lee University for the year 2014. The grant will fund a project involving 30 high school English teachers in a one-week, intensive summer workshop at Lee, with three follow-up training sessions throughout the fall.

The workshop, “Teaching Reading in Literature and Informational Text (Tri-LIT!): Strategies for Implementing Common Core Standards” will focus on implementation of the common core standards for reading literature and informational texts in grades 9-12.

Lee’s Department of Language and Literature and the Helen DeVos College of Education (HDCOE) are working cooperatively to make this opportunity available to high school English teachers from school systems in southeast Tennessee.

Dr. Donna Summerlin, professor of English, and Dr. Laura Anderson, professor of education, will co-direct the workshop.

In addition to Summerlin and Anderson, other faculty from both departments will serve as facilitators. Language and Literature faculty include Drs. Kevin Brown, Katherine Carlson, Rachel Reneslacis, Chad Schrock, and William Woolfitt; and HDCOE faculty Drs. JoAnn Higginbotham and Eric Moyen.

Carlanna Gill, former assistant professor of education at Lee and reading consultant for Bradley and Polk County Schools, will serve as a consultant and presenter.

Six school systems have signed on to partner with Lee University in promoting this workshop, including Bradley County, Cleveland City, Hamilton County, Meigs County, Polk County, and Sevier County school systems. Others have expressed interest in participating.

The five-day workshop will take place during the week of June 9-13, 2014. The project is funded under an agreement with the state of Tennessee.

For more information, please contact Donna Summerlin at [email protected] or (423) 614-8211 or Laura Anderson at [email protected] or (423) 614-8482.