The WNY Science of Reading Conference

Registration is now open!

As a partner organization in the WNY Literacy Initiative, we are thrilled to present the WNY Science of Reading Conference, and announce that registration is now open! Please click HERE to access it!

Calling all teachers, admin, literacy specialists, professors, parents, dyslexia advocates, parents - anyone concerned about literacy outcomes - this is for YOU! Space is limited and going fast, so we recommend registering early. (CTLE credit offered!)

This conference is offered at NO CHARGE and will bring the best and brightest minds in the literacy space to Buffalo to help our teachers and children. We have an all-star lineup of speakers and sessions that you don’t want to miss:

KAREEM WEAVER

Kareem is the Co-Founder of FULCRUM (Full and Complete Reading is a Universal Mandate). He is committed to improving literacy rates in California and across the country by engaging stakeholders around the systematic structures needed to cultivate excellent reading outcomes for all students. Kareem is also a member of the Oakland NAACP Education Committee and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the National Council on Teacher Quality.

Kareem previously led the Western Region for New Leaders, a leader development organization that supports the professional growth of teachers and administrators and prepares them to serve schools and communities desiring improved outcomes. Prior to New Leaders, Kareem was an award-winning teacher and administrator in Oakland, California, and Columbia, South Carolina.

NATALIE WEXLER

Natalie Wexler is an education writer and the author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—And How to Fix It (Avery 2019). She is also the co-author, with Judith C. Hochman, of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades (Jossey-Bass, 2017), and a senior contributor to the education channel on Forbes.com. Her newsletter, Minding the Gap, on Substack, is available for free. Click here to view past posts and subscribe.

Natalie’s articles and essays on education and other topics have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, the MIT Technology Review, The American Scholar, and other publications. She has spoken on education before a wide variety of groups and appeared on a number of TV and radio shows, including Morning Joe and NPR’s On Point and 1A.

DR. MARIA MURRAY

Dr. Murray is Founder and CEO/President of The Reading League, a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to advance the awareness, understanding, and use of evidence-aligned reading instruction. Prior to founding The Reading League, Dr. Murray was an associate professor at the State University of New York at Oswego, where she taught courses related to literacy assessment and intervention for ten years. She received her Ph.D. in Reading Education from Syracuse University, where she served as project coordinator for Dr. Benita Blachman’s numerous federally-funded early reading intervention grants.

DR. PAM KASTNER

Pam Kastner, Ed.D., is an educational consultant at the Pennsylvania Training and Technical Assistance Network (PaTTAN) Harrisburg, where she serves as the State Lead Consultant for Literacy. Dr. Kastner, along with the PaTTAN Literacy team, has lead Pennsylvania’s Dyslexia Screening and Early Literacy Intervention Pilot Program extension and expansion. She was part of a research team investigating the impact of explicit instruction in phonemic awareness on student literacy outcomes.

DEBBIE MEYER

Debbie Meyer is a founding member of the Dyslexia (Plus) in Public Schools Task Force, a small group of community leaders working to help students with dyslexia and related language-based disabilities thrive in their neighborhood schools. She also serves as a board member of the Dyslexia Alliance for Black Children, and consults for the NYCDOE on literacy initiatives. She was appointed as a contributor to NYC Mayor Eric Adams's Transition Team. She served as a board member of College and Community Fellowship, Harlem Women Strong, Women's City Club/Women Creating Change, and a member of the Arise Literacy Committee at Advocates for Children. In 2018, she was named as an A’leila Bundles Community Scholar at Columbia University, class of 2022, to look at the intersection of dyslexia and mass incarceration and the role of universities in changing the trajectory of struggling readers.

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This is just the tip of the conference iceberg. Click over to the registration site to get our speakers’ full bios, and please spread the word to educators in the Buffalo and Western New York area.

Together, we can improve the literacy outcomes of our students.

Best,

Tarja