Language and Literacy

"The creative impulse, like love, can be killed, but it cannot be taught. What a teacher or librarian or parent can do, in working with children, is to give the flame enough oxygen so that it can burn. As far as I'm concerned, this providing of oxygen is one of the noblest of all vocations." - Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet

Dr. Mary Ann Cappiello is a Professor of Language and Literacy in the Graduate School of Education at Lesley. Prior to that, she served as a curriculum facilitator for English Language Arts and Social Studies at the middle level, and she taught English Language Arts and Humanities at the middle and high school level in New York and New Hampshire.

At Lesley, she teaches courses in children's and young adult literature and literacy methods, including a specialized course in nonfiction for children and young adults. She also mentors the content literacy and children’s literature courses and advises doctoral students. Previously, she served as program director of the Collaborative Internship Program, a residency-based teacher preparation program in its fifth decade.

Mary Ann co-chaired the writing team for the National Council of Teachers of English’s (NCTE) 2023 Position Statement on the Role of Nonfiction Literature (K-12). From 2015-2018 she was a member of the National Council of Teachers of English's Orbis Pictus Award for Outstanding Nonfiction (K-8) Committee, serving two years as chair. In 2022, Mary Ann led the national “Kids Love Nonfiction” campaign with Dr. Xenia Hadjioannou.

With Erika Dawes, Grace Enriquez, and Katie Cunningham, she is the coauthor of Reading with Purpose: Selecting and Using Children’s Literature for Inquiry and Engagement (Teachers College Press, 2023). With Erika Dawes, she is the co-author of Text Sets in Action: Pathways Through Content Area Literacy (Stenhouse, 2021), as well as Teaching with Text Sets (Shell, 2012) and Teaching to Complexity: A Framework for Evaluating Literary and Content-Area Texts (Shell, 2014). Mary Ann is also the author of the 2021 historical essay, “Searching for Dinah Tuck.”

Mary Ann has been a guest on public radio and a consultant to public television, and her work has appeared in The Reading Teacher, English Journal, Language Arts, The Dragon Lode, School Library Journal, and School Library Connection. She champions the use of biography in the K-12 classroom at The Biography Clearinghouse.  Previously, Mary Ann reviewed children's and middle-grade books for Language Arts and blogged about children's and young adult literature for over a decade at "The Classroom Bookshelf," a School Library Journal blog. Mary Ann was also a consultant on the PBS kids' show "Molly of Denali." Read more about her participation.

Mary Ann serves on the Advisory Board of the Children’s Literacy Foundation (CLIF), the Program Committee of the American Independence Museum (AIM), and is the 2023 Co-Chair/2024 Lead Chair of the Children’s Literature Assembly of NCTE’s Expert Class Committee.

Erika Thulin Dawes is chair of the Language and Literacy Department and Professor of Language and Literacy in the Graduate School of Education at Lesley University. Erika also serves as the program director of the graduate Early Childhood Education program. 

A former elementary classroom teacher, reading specialist, and district literacy administrator, Erika now teaches and mentors courses in early childhood literacy, children's literature, and elementary literacy methods. Prior to Lesley, Erika taught literacy methods courses at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Along with Mary Ann Cappiello, she is the co-author of Teaching with Text Sets (Shell, 2012) and Teaching to Complexity: A Framework for Evaluating Literary and Content-Area Texts (Shell, 2014) and a forthcoming book with Stenhouse Publishers in 2019. She is a co-author of a book on writing instruction, Learning to Write with Purpose: Effective Instruction in Grades 4-8 (2009), and the author of ancillary materials for the well-established textbook Charlotte Huck's Children's Literature, now in its tenth edition, authored by her mentor Dr. Barbara Kiefer. In 2016, Erika was appointed chair of the Charlotte Huck Award for Outstanding Fiction for Children committee of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), for a two-year term.

She blogs about children's and young adult literature currently at "The Classroom Bookshelf," and reviews children's and middle grade books for Language Arts.

Dr. Enriquez teaches a variety of courses for the Language & Literacy and PhD in Educational Studies programs. A former English Language Arts teacher and literacy staff developer, she bridges her work with teachers and students through collaborative, humanizing, ethnographic, and critical research in high-needs urban populations to examine literacy instruction in school contexts. Specifically, her scholarship focuses on reader response; children’s literature for social justice; critical literacies; intersections of literacies, identities, and embodiment; and the teaching of writing.

Grace’s work has been published in a variety of national and international refereed journals and books. She also serves on national literacy committees and editorial review boards. She is the recipient of the CHLA Diversity Research Grant, the CLA Research Award, and the NCTE Research Foundation Grant. Currently, she is the Children's Literature Feature Editor for The Reading Teacher, as well as co-author of the weekly blog, The Classroom Bookshelf.

Stephanie Spadorcia, Ph.D., is the Associate Dean in the Graduate School of Education and the Director of the Teacher Residency Programs. Her research and teaching focus on literacy instruction for students across the disability continuum; assessment of reading and writing; and using technology to support literacy instruction. She has published articles and book chapters, and presents nationally. She does work in schools to provide literacy instruction for all students, and the role of assessment in a literacy program.

Stephanie also co-facilitates Leadership Enrichment and Development with other members of the Lesley community. This work focuses on leadership identity development for self-identified women in a higher education setting. She is a member of the International Leadership Association’s Research Women’s Leadership Colloquium focused on intersectional approaches to leadership development. Currently, she co-facilitates a Mastermind Series focused on feminist self- and peer- mentoring leadership development for the International Leadership Association.

Laura Schall-Leckrone teaches in and leads the graduate Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and Bilingual Education (TESOL/BE) programs at Lesley. Prior to completing her doctorate, she worked for seventeen years as a bilingual teacher, Spanish teacher, and K-12 curriculum director in city and suburban public schools. Her scholarship and collaborative work in teacher education and educational linguistics seek to bridge knowledge production in K-12 schools and higher education to improve learning opportunities for multilingual learners.

Her research includes a focus on equipping history teachers to teach critical literacies; practitioner research in TESOL and bilingual teacher preparation; and a linguistic ethnography of a K-6 multilingual school in a gateway community.

Along with recent graduates of the masters’ in TESOL and Bilingual Education program, Laura recently received a President’s Innovation Challenge grant to support the creation of a Bilingual Educator Leadership Network (BELN). Read more about the BELN collaborative

Laura also was one of the speakers at the annual 2021 June Fox Lecture focused on Inquiry in Educational Equity with colleagues Grace Enriquez and Nettrice Gaskins. Read more about this event.

Dr. Victoria Gill is a poet, practitioner-scholar, former teacher of English at the middle school level, and former team leader of professional learning communities. She obtained her doctorate in Reading, Writing, and Literacy from the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the co-founder of @LanguageLegacies, an educational social media account on Instagram created with colleague Dr. Río Lopez from New Mexico State University, to resist against language loss within their families and communities.

Dr. Gill investigates the intersections of language, identity, and power as they relate to literacies and pedagogies in ways that create pathways for teachers to build inclusive classrooms that center historically excluded perspectives and voices. Her research examines how students' learning and teachers' teaching can be impacted by understanding and using the theory of Intersectionality with aims for equity and agency with a focus on Children’s and Young Adult Literature. Her current literacy research project analyzes award-winning Asian American picture books and explores the quality of intersectional ethnic representations.