AMERICAN READING FORUM
2nd November, 2009.
Greetings American Reading Forum Members,
We are just weeks away from our 30th annual meeting of the American Reading Forum conference to be held from Wednesday 9th - Saturday 12th, December, 2009 at the Sundial Beach and Tennis Resort, Sanibel Island, Florida. Program Co-chairs, Enrique Puig and Nance Wilson, have been hard at work putting together this yearÕs program focused on ÒRedefining Diversity: Going Beyond Language, Literacy, and CultureÓ. We can look forward to presentations by keynote speakers Kath Glasswell, Junko Yokota, Louis Gomez, and Kimberly Gomez. The valuable contributions of our guest speakers and quality session presentations will undoubtedly generate engaging dialogue during and even after the conference.
The Call to Forum Committee has selected as the Book for 2009, Holding On to Good Ideas in a Time of Bad Ones: Six Literacy Principles Worth Fighting For by Thomas Newkirk. I join Call to Forum moderators, Sara Runge and David Pulte, in encouraging you to participate in healthy debate and discussion of the book.
Among our priorities as a scholarly community, is our focus on critical discussion and dissemination of research, issues and ideas in the field of reading and literacy education. I would like to remind you to submit your manuscripts to the American Reading Forum Online Yearbook. We are proud of our commitment to publishing quality research and mentoring the new and junior scholars through this forum. Thanks to George Hruby, Amy Alexandra Wilson, Alison Heron-Hruby, and Jonathan Eakle for their dedicated work as editors.
On behalf of our organization, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all our members who have and continue to serve ARF with the highest level of dedication. To all former and current Board members and Committee Chairs and committee members, I offer sincere gratitude for your dedicated service to our organization. To our new members: Welcome to our small, vibrant and strong community of scholars.
As you finalize your arrangements for the 2009 conference, please remember to volunteer for committees so that you may take an even more active role in our organization. Our organization is deeply indebted to you for helping to make the American Reading Forum the scholarly, nurturing environment that has become the hallmark of our organization. Your continued participation in and your service to the organization are necessary in order to keep the ARF tradition alive.
I look forward to seeing each of you in December for yet another exceptional conference.
HereÕs to insightful conversations around the theme of redefining diversity.
See you on Sanibel, Everyone!
Best,
Cheryl.
Cheryl A. McLean
Chair
American Reading Forum
www.americanreadingforum.org
Email: ceemclean@gmail.com