Recipients of the Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award

2024 Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipient

Whitney Hoffmann is a second-grade teacher in Columbia, MO. She began teaching at an arts integrated elementary school. There she researched how using Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS) can help students develop ideas for writing, find more detail, and unlock rich vocabulary to enhance writing. Later, she worked as a first-grade teacher in a Title I school. There she continued to integrate the arts in her teaching while also learning best practices to teach young children to read and write. 
 
With this award, Whitney will attend NCTE to present alongside fellow educators and authors. She will discuss the impact and possible process of selecting rich translingual texts to share with students. When back in the classroom, Whitney will partner with her grade level peers and arts team to launch a book study to guide writing instruction while infusing play, choice, and joy. Their work will focus on building classrooms of writers, delivering quality writing instruction connected to standards, while also allowing for more independence for young writers. 

2023 Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipient

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Kathleen Nickle
Kathleen Nickle, a 6th grade ELA teacher at Singapore American School, is a passionate educator with a deep love for literacy, international education and the middle grades. She is committed to fostering equity and helping students to develop a strong foundation in identity, justice and compassion.

In the middle school literacy classroom, Kathleen strives to nurture brave learners.  She believes that reading and writing should be an experience of creativity, adventure, play, and risk-taking.  In her years teaching in Taiwan, Japan and Singapore, Kathleen has centered a culturally-responsive approach in her classroom and always focused on creating a climate for student agency and voice.

With this award, Kathleen will travel to NCTE to present alongside other educators and authors.  She will discuss the role of middle grades literature in addressing the complexity of understanding our own and others’ identities through using creative responses. Beyond the conference, Kathleen is dedicated to sharing the knowledge she gains with her colleagues and students at the Singapore American School, a non-profit private institution with over 4,000 students. This will contribute to a school-wide English Language Arts (ELA) curriculum review, helping her school and beyond to benefit from the latest research and educational concepts.

2022 Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipients

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Dr. Jeanne Gilliam Fain
Jeanne Gilliam Fain is a professor in the College of Education and Director of Multilingual Learning at Lipscomb University. Her scholarship agenda includes a focus on Literacy, Literature, and Language Study in K-12 classrooms. She writes grants for school/university partnerships. She conducts research on critical conversations around global texts with multilingual learners and their families in local school partnerships. She is the current co-chair of Notable Books for a Global Society. She teaches literacy, global literature, language acquisition, culture & community, and research courses.
 
This project will utilize reflective and inquiry-based work with K-4 educators at a Title 1 school with a high population of multilingual learners for the 2022-2023 school year. We continue to build upon the work (supported by Worlds of Words grants in previous years) that we started three years ago. A select group of teachers including a librarian and ELL Instructional Coach from J.E. Moss Elementary  and 6 K-4 teachers will join me in regular professional development group meetings after school every three weeks to explore the critical use and implementation of global texts (focus on dual language literature and linguistic diversity) in the classroom. It's a literature-based collaborative teacher research project with literature implementation. We seek ways to use global literature in the classroom to promote critical discussion of texts and use multimodal response to dig deep into the issues from the global literature.

2021  Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipient

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Dr. Steven Layne
Dr. Steven Layne is a faculty member at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL. The award money are aimed to support a sustained professional development book study and discussion with four pre-service teachers prior to attending the 2022 Illinois State Reading Conference. The funds will also finance travel/lodging/meals so they can experience the energy of the conference together, with the goal of building these future teachers' understanding of professional communities and nurturing their professional identities and behaviors.

2020  Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipients

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Melissa L. Antinoff
Melissa L. Antinoff, ​an elementary educator since 1992, was recognized as the 2019 Burlington County Teacher of the Year. Mrs. Antinoff specializes in developing a love of reading in her students and loves watching non-readers blossom into avid readers. Her experience with read alouds and teaching reading can be found in the last four editions of Jim Trelease’s Read-Aloud Handbook. Melissa was a Teacher Leader with Columbia University’s Teacher’s College 2016-2018 and ran lab sites in her school in Reader’s and Writer’s Workshop. She was a recurring guest on Brainstorms Radio, discussing children’s mental health. In addition, she has written a feature article for the NJEA Review, a state-wide teacher’s publication. Her commitment to simplifying the complex world of teaching, as well as culturally responsive teaching, is reflected in her BCH Award plan that allowed her to attend conferences on culturally responsive teaching with a specific focus on BIPOC books by BIPOC authors. Melissa plans to share what she learned with her colleagues and purchase books for her school’s classroom libraries that represent every child.
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Dr. Katie Schrodt
Dr. Katie Schrodt is a professor of literacy at Middle Tennessee State University where she works with pre-service and serving teachers. Katie’s research interests include reading and writing motivation with young children. She is passionate about making research relevant and available for teachers, as demonstrated by her most recent publication in The Reading Teacher titled "Becoming Brave Spellers." The money from the Bonnie Campbell Hill award will help support the continued work of 20 literacy coaches in Metro Nashville Public Schools. Together as a learning community, these coaches are working toward a writing revolution by creating cultures of empowerment for young writers and prioritizing writing instruction within their schools. In the Spring of 2021, the coaches will work through two book studies and participate in a writing session with author Juana Martinez-Neal. The money will also support the sharing of this work at NCTE’s 2021 Annual Convention. Katie lives in Tennessee with her husband and 6-year-old twins. They love hoarding books together. ​

2019  Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipients

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Megan S. Sloan
Megan Sloan is a Literacy Support Specialist (Literacy Coach) at Cathcart Elementary School in Snohomish, Washington.  She engages in instructional partnerships with K-6 teachers and works with students to support this work. Megan has taught first, second, and third grades during her 35 years in education. Megan is the author of four professional education books including Into Writing: The Primary Teacher’s Guide to Writing Workshop and Ten Essential Writing Lessons.  Megan speaks nationally and works with schools and districts in Washington State.  Her plan gave her the opportunity to bring three colleagues to the 2019 NCTE Conference, continuing her mission to mentor and encourage literacy leaders, as Bonnie Campbell Hill did
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Brennan Cruser
Brennan Cruser is the Innovation Coach at Casis Elementary School in Austin, Texas.  She supports, collaborates, and co-teaches with teachers PreK through 5th grade on all aspects of instructional technology.  Brennan has worked in Texas schools for the last 20 years.  She has been an elementary classroom teacher, reading specialist, and instructional coach.  She has worked closely with the University of Texas, supporting undergraduate students in their Literacy Cohort and Reading/Writing Methods classes.  She is an active member of NCTE, most recently co-authoring the NCTE Position Statement on Independent Reading.  Her award has allowed her to collaborate with teachers on her campus in a variety of ways.  She was able to purchase books for book study as well as bring a teacher to the NCTE conference in Baltimore.   In addition, she was able to travel to Minneapolis with her school librarian to visit the University of Minnesota’s children’s literature archives

2018  Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipients

Quintin R. Bostic II is a native of Augusta, GA. Before enrolling as a Ph.D. student at Georgia State University, he spent five years as an early childhood educator in a Pre-Kindergarten classroom. After completing a Masters degree, he worked as a language and literacy facilitator for a professional development agency. In this role, he supported teachers, curriculum directors, and site leaders in including literacy instruction throughout all daily learning experiences. As a Ph.D. student, he is currently preparing to teach his first course in elementary writing instruction for undergraduate preservice teachers. 
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Quintin R. Bostic II
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Kathryn Will-Dubyak is an Assistant Professor of Literacy in the Division of Elementary, Early Childhood, and Early Childhood Special Education at the University of Maine Farmington.  Her work centers on pre-service teachers in situated communities of practice as they develop their teacher efficacy and pedagogical understandings for developing literacy filled lives. At times this takes the form of sitting side-by-side with future teachers in the literacy clinic as they work with a child, presenting at conferences with her students, or even laughing at herself at the level of nerdiness she brings to her love for literacy and teaching. You may follow her and her students on Twitter at @WDsLitCrew.
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Kathryn Will-Dubyak

2017  Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipients

Misha Fugit is a teacher at Jefferson Middle School in Columbus, Ohio.

Read Misha Fugit's interview with KBIA: Columbia Public School Teacher Receives National Award for Children's Literacy
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Misha Fugit

2016  Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipients

Margaret Opatz is a fourth grade teacher at Mountain View Elementary School in Salt Lake City, Utah. Margaret distinguishes herself as a teacher-leader in her school community.  Working with a wide range of students and abilities, she is noted as being “thoughtful and sharing her ideas in respectful, yet challenging ways.”  Her plan is to develop a professional learning community that will establish shared goals for her school, then to attend the “Coaching of Reading Institute” to gain new skills and strategies that will benefit her team.   A key focus is “to teach reading of fiction and nonfiction in a more responsive and empowering manner.”
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Margaret Opatz
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Deanna Day is an Associate Professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Washington State University in Vancouver, Washington. An accomplished teacher and scholar of children’s literature, Deanna has worked for nearly three decades to share her knowledge, expertise, and passion for literature.  Her year-long project will engage 20 K-5 teachers to celebrate the power of picture books as participants build skills in reading, discussion, and analysis.   “My hope is that through this professional collaboration I would be able to support elementary teachers in using recent children’s literature, specifically picture books, in their instruction.”
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Deanna Day

2015  Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Recipients

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Cynthia Alaniz
Cynthia Alaniz School Librarian at Cottonwood Creek Elementary School in Coppell, Texas.
Cynthia takes her role as literacy advocate for her school seriously! She is described as a “gifted teacher leader who strives to improve her craft, designs learner-centered experiences and truly has a passion for ensuring success of all learners and educators.” Her grant funds are used to attend both the NCTE Convention in Minneapolis and the ALA Midwinter in Boston. In particular, she notes enthusiasm for joining in the open discussion meetings of the ALA Notables Committee, then sharing her skills and experience through the mock Caldecott she organizes with her 3rd-5th graders.
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Page Miller Fahrig-Pendse
Page Miller Fahrig-Pendse Assistant Head of Curriculum and Instruction at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, PA.A dedicated teacher-leader in her school, Page is using her award funds to foster a professional learning community at Germantown Friends School. A key goal of her project is to “think deeply about children’s oral language development, expanding knowledge of sound/symbol correspondence, and understanding and appreciation of narrative and nonfiction texts.” In keeping with the spirit of the Bonnie Campbell Hill Award, the funds also help Page and several colleagues broaden their connections to the world of children’s literature by attending the NCTE annual convention in Minneapolis.

2014 Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Winners

Karen Hayes District Instructional Intervention Specialist at Alief Independent School District in Houston, Texas. Karen sought to invigorate writing instruction in her district by forming a cohort of ten teachers to develop themselves as writers and thus better teachers. “Through reading professional resources on writing and children’s literature as mentor text, we will examine authors’ craft in composing, sentence structure, word choice, conventions and development of concepts while examining themes of persistence, resilience and perseverance….” Grant funds are used to purchase books and materials for her study group and to attend both regional and national conferences to share her work.
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Janelle Mathis Professor, Teacher Education and Administration at University of North Texas in Denton, Texas.
Through her work with area teachers and doctoral candidates, Janelle found a tremendous need for and interest in international children’s and young adult literature. She formed a study group to “(1) expand and deepen our knowledge base in literature and its uses: resources, engagements, and the scholarly work that supports our endeavors; (2) to extend individual inquiries in the development of international literature-based multimodal text sets; (3) to share their work” at regional (UNT & TWU), national (NCTE), and international (USBBY) conferences. Grant funds are used for professional books and literature, and to support participants’ travel to present their work.

2013 Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Award Winners

The 2013 Bonnie Campbell Hill National Literacy Leader Award was presented to two outstanding educators at the Annual Children's Literature Assembly Breakfast at NCTE, November, 2013.
Alida Hudson, a 2nd Grade Teacher at Northgate Crossing Elementary School in Spring, Texas, and Prisca Martens, Professor of Literacy Education at Towson University, Maryland, have been awarded the Bonnie Campbell Hill Literacy Leader Awards for 2013.
Ms. Hudson is a literacy advocate for her school who is excited to mentor fellow teachers in conducting engaging Reader’s Workshops. Award funds will be used for her to lead a book study group using The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller – including a live Skype session with the author, and to attend and/or present her work at the 2013 ALER, TALE, and NCTE conferences.
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Dr. Martens’ award will support her collaborative research project with area teachers that explores “how global literature supports the development of young children’s intercultural understandings and how the children express those understandings in art.” The funds will enable her team of 10-13 teachers to share their work at the NCTE Convention in Washington, D.C.