Professor Carol Lee is one of the nationally prominent educators slated to lecture in Pace University's Seventh Annual Distinguished Educators Series. The series, entitled "The Pedagogy of Success in Urban Schools," features talks by educators nationwide on topics ranging from testing to teachers to school reform.Her talk will focus on "Literacy for Urban Students." Lee has developed a concept of "cultural modeling" that serves as a framework for curriculum design and delivery. The theory connects students' prior out-of-school knowledge to academics in order to increase learning, and her focus is on young people who are members of minorities or low-income communities. For example, Lee has used rap music to teach African American teenagers about literary symbolism.
The lecture will take place at 6 p.m. on April 29 at Pace University in New York as part of the university's seventh annual series on education.
Other lecturers in the Distinguished Educators series are Michelle Rhee, chancellor of schools in Washington, D.C.; Martin Haberman of the University of Wisconsin; Carol Ann Tomlinson of the University of Virginia; author and lecturer Alfie Kohn; and Rochelle Gutierrez of the University of Illinois.
Lee, a professor of Learning Sciences at the School of Education and Social Policy, is president-elect of the American Education Research Association. In addition to publishing in numerous journals, Lee is the author of Culture, Literacy and Learning: Taking Bloom in the Midst of the Whirlwind and Signifying as a Scaffold for Literary Interpretation: The Pedagogical Implications of an African American Discourse Genre. She is co-editor, with Peter Smagorinsky, of Neo-Vygotskian Perspectives on Literacy Research.
Lee is active in the school reform movement in Chicago Public Schools and taught in both public and private schools before assuming a university career. She is a founder of three African-centered schools in Chicago. Lee is also past president of the National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy and the chair of the standing committee on research of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is a former trustee of the Research Foundation of the National Council of Teachers of English and former co-chair of the NCTE Assembly on Research.
Last Modified: 11/10/09