The calendar shifted to 2025 a short time ago, but it has already been a “banner year” for Northern Michigan University assistant professor of education Kristen White. She co-authored “Teaching with Literacy Programs,” which received the 2025 Gloria J. Ladson-Billings Outstanding Book Award from the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) last week. She also will be honored in March as the 2025 Michigan Reading Association Teacher Educator of the Year. It is an impressive start for a woman who said her only other award in life was “Student of the Week” in 10th grade.
“Teaching with Literacy Programs” offers a practical roadmap for educators to develop equitable literacy instruction by adapting curriculum to meet the needs of diverse learners.
“Children come to school with different cultural backgrounds, linguistic repertoires and life experiences,” White said. “When you look at the U.S. student population, it is increasingly diverse. Most of the students we serve at schools are not white and middle class, and so we need teachers to have the skills and practices to be able to meet all of those children's needs. One-size-fits-all literacy curriculum materials are not effective.”
White's coauthors are Patricia Edwards and Ann Castle from Michigan State University, and Laura Hopkins from Life International School in Spain. While White was pursuing a doctorate at MSU, her mentor Edwards received a grant from the International Literacy Association to research Jean Chall's collection of literacy and reading curriculum materials at Harvard Library in Boston, and invited two graduate students to join her.
“I was fortunate to be one of them,” White said. “Jean Chall is an international figure in reading research. She did a lot of work with Sesame Street. My experience reviewing her materials for a week that summer proved to be the impetus for my dissertation research at MSU. The Harvard Education Press later asked if our research might provide the basis for a book, so we wrote a proposal and it was accepted and published.”
The Gloria J. Ladson-Billings Outstanding Book Award, named in honor of the prominent American pedagogical theorist and teacher educator, recognizes an author or book that significantly contributes to the knowledge base of educator preparation. It acknowledges those who offer a fresh lens on current assumptions or practices, reorient thinking in the field and show potential for significant impact on policy or practice in educator preparation.
In announcing White as the recipient of its Teacher Educator of the Year award, the Michigan Reading Association praised her impact on literacy. She had delved into that directly over her 10 years as a former first-grade teacher, guiding students through a pivotal point in learning how to read print-based text and write. She also taught fourth grade and served as an elementary school media specialist before stepping away when her children were born.
“I ended up going back to work for a National Reading Institute, traveling around the U.S. for about six years providing professional development to teachers, principals and reading specialists. I became curious about the reading process, and realized how many of the people I worked with felt underprepared to teach children how to read. There's no one answer; it's very complex. My curiosity about it led me to study literacy in my PhD program. It opened my eyes as to how under-prepared I was in my own teaching career. I became really interested in learning how to talk across race, class and language in order to better prepare future teachers to work in an increase increasingly diverse global society.”
White was nominated for the award by her NMU colleague, Professor Laura Reissner, who called her one of the most collaborative, effective and consequential people she has had the pleasure to work beside.
“Dr. White builds a welcoming classroom community, is knowledgeable and passionate about her subject matter, and embeds social justice in all her courses,” Reissner wrote in her nomination letter. “Several of her reading courses partner with local clinical sites, where she can model best practices for teaching with our candidates embedded in elementary classrooms. Her asset-based approach to education helps candidates see marginalized students as learners who deserve high-quality instruction using researchinformed, antiracist, inclusive instructional practices. She offers candidates access to perspectives and approaches to education that may be new to them and challenges their view of education through a supportive and non-threatening approach.”
Reissner also shared that White created a Future Educator Camp in the summer to bring high school students to campus to learn more about the teaching profession. She included current students as counselors and provided meaningful opportunities and experiences to the students. Several have enrolled at NMU because of the camp.
White also secured a $33,000 U.S. Department of State IDEAS grant titled “Global UP: Teacher Education Abroad, a CrossInstitutional Partnership Across Michigan's Upper Peninsula.” This grant will bring candidates from local community colleges and NMU to Belize to provide them with an opportunity to be in a context where people are culturally and linguistically diverse.
Among her many service roles, White served as the president of the Marquette-Alger Reading Council, expanding membership and providing new learning opportunities to members. She also serves on the LRA Edward Fry Book Award committee.
