Teaching Reading For All

Faythe Beauchemin is an assistant professor at the Lynch School of Education & Human Development, specializing in the areas of language and literacy. Drawing upon the fields of anthropology, linguistics and literacy studies, her academic research is grounded in theories that recognize teaching and learning as a social and cultural process that is historically and politically situated. She is committed to educational equity for students of color and bi/multilingual students in public schooling and is particularly interested in how daily moments of classroom literacy interactions hold the potential to affirm and value students' languages, cultures and knowledges in instruction.

Through her research, she explores how students and teachers use spoken and written language to build relationships and communities in classrooms that provide deep, academically excellent learning experiences while nurturing a sense of linguistic justice, belonging, and intellectual excitement. As a professor of teacher education, she hopes to support pre-service and in-service teachers as they grapple with the complexity and multi-layered nature of classroom interactions that unfold during literacy instruction. In particular, she focuses on developing teachers' capacities to engage in early literacy instruction through case studies and critical and microethnographic discourse analytic methods.

Elizabeth MacDonald is a longtime educator and instructional coach within the Boston Public Schools and has served as an adjunct instructor in Boston College’s Lynch School of Education and Human Development for over twenty years. Her interests include urban education, reading and writing instruction, dual-language schools, and the preparation of pre-service teachers. She has worked with Maria Estela Brisk on the study and implementation of the theory of Systemic Functional Linguistics in the classroom. Additionally, as co-author of the first and second editions of The Mindful Teacher, she is committed to supporting and retaining urban educators.