Shawna Coppola, M. Ed. Reading, is an expert in child and adolescent literacy, including practices that support a diverse range of writing and writers.
An educator for over twenty years, Shawna has worked as a middle school language arts teacher, a children’s librarian, and a K-6 literacy specialist/coach. In addition to working with students, Shawna has led courses and workshops for K-12 educators through the University of New Hampshire’s NH Literacy Institutes as well as their Professional Development and Training program and has spoken at a variety of local, regional, and national conferences.
Shawna consults across the United States and internationally with elementary, middle, and high schools. For the majority of her teaching career, she has taught in multi-age classrooms and is effective at engaging learners of all ages in reading, writing, speaking, viewing, and listening experiences. Shawna is a fierce advocate for all students–in particular, for those who may not fit the profile of a “typical” learner.
Shawna’s work has included collaborative inquiry projects with educators on facilitating young children in critical conversations around gender, race, equity, and social justice. Using both current and historically significant texts written by Indigenous, Black, and people of color that consist of a wide variety of forms and modalities, she helps students and teachers find accessible “doorways” into learning about the issues that matter most in supporting inclusive, compassionate, and equitable worlds on both the local and global level.
Shawna is the author of Literacy For All: A Framework or Anti-Oppressive Teaching (Routledge, 2024) Writing, Redefined: Broadening Our Ideas of What It Means to Compose (Stenhouse 2019) and Renew! Become a Better-and More Authentic–Writing Teacher (Stenhouse 2017),and a number of pieces that have been featured in Voices from the Middle, Literacy Today, The Reading Teacher, Education Week, The Nerdy Book Club blog, and others. Her latest book, about enacting anti-oppressive literacy practices, is due out in the late summer/fall of 2023. She has also presented at a number of national and regional education conferences, including ILA, NCTE, ASCD, and The Educator Collaborative’s own #TheEdCollabGathering.
Shawna is devoted to helping all learners experience the joy that literacy can offer. Learn more about Shawna and her work by visiting her website.