Announcing the 2025 Spring Conference Keynote Speakers!
Tuesday – Alisha De Lorenzo
After decades spearheading groundbreaking initiatives in education, Alisha De Lorenzo has emerged as a guiding force in reshaping the way schools cut through the noise, lean into positive disruption, and solve for the disengagement, disconnection, disparities and declining morale plaguing our communities. Alisha has come to believe that the only way we fight overwhelm and burnout is not by lowering our standards or doing less, but rather by unleashing the next level of aliveness in our people.
An acclaimed international speaker, award winning educator and therapist, Alisha has shared her insights with over 250 thousand educators from the US to Africa. Her work has been featured on PBS, NBC and NJ Spotlight News while her influence has earned her recognition from the NJ Department of Education, Monmouth University, community agencies, and government officials. In 2023 she received the prestigious Ernest L. Boyer Outstanding Educator Award from NJASCD.
Alisha’s profound understanding of the human spirit sets the foundation for schools to unlock innovation, differentiation and growth to drive engagement, productivity and high performance. Stepping into the realm of the extraordinary requires all of us to create cultures where people feel seen, heard, and valued, and that is the foundation to the aliveness we all seek.
Wednesday – Dr. Patriann Smith
Dr. Patriann Smith serves as Professor at the University of South Florida. Her research considers how literacy teaching, research, assessment, and policy are influenced by the intersection of race, language and (im)migration. She draws from the Black Englishes and from the Black literacies and languaging of Afro-Caribbean immigrants, other Black immigrants in the United States (i.e., African), and Black American students (i.e., African-American) to propose solutions that advance racial and linguistic justice in literacy. She also explores the Englishes of Black populations in their English-speaking Caribbean locales to make recommendations for advancing literacy teaching across local, national, and international boundaries.
Dr. Smith has proposed solutions such as ‘a transraciolinguistic approach’, ‘raciosemiotic architecture’, and the framework for ‘Black immigrant literacies’ to clarify how literacy can be re-envisioned and taught to all students (e.g., monolingual, bilingual, multilingual students) in classrooms. She has served as Co-PI of the USAID-funded $3.6 million “RISE Caribbean” initiative and is Co-Founder of the Caribbean Educational Research Center (CERC) designed to enhance research-based decision-making in the Caribbean. Dr. Smith’s research is published broadly in various educational journals. She is the author of Black Immigrant Literacies: Intersections of Race, Language, and Culture in the Classroom. Dr. Smith is the incoming Vice-President of the Literacy Research Association (LRA).
Thursday – Missy Testerman
Missy Testerman, the 2024 National Teacher of the Year, is a kindergarten through eighth grade English as a second language (ESL) teacher who is a staunch advocate for her students, their families and her fellow teachers. Testerman served as a first and second grade teacher at Rogersville City School in Tennessee for three decades before taking advantage of the state’s Grow Your Own initiative and adding an ESL endorsement three years ago. She currently works as an ESL specialist at Rogersville City School, where she teaches K-8 students who do not speak English as their first language and supports them in all academic areas.
In her rural Appalachian community, Testerman builds bridges between cultures – families who have been in the area for centuries and newer immigrants – through a curriculum focused on a study of Americans from diverse backgrounds, allowing students to better understand that people are inherently the same and that they all belong.
Missy plans to use her year of service as National Teacher of the Year to empower teachers to advocate for students and fellow educators by using their voices and sharing their experiences with those outside of the classroom. Testerman believes strongly in teachers embracing their role as education experts to inform decision-makers of today’s classroom experiences to meet all students’ needs.
