“Pop-up” Professional Learning at Parker

Recently, members of the Parker English/Language Arts/ILIS communities happily hosted the ebullient Julia Torres for a “pop-up” professional learning conversation. After touring the Kovler Family Library with Director of Studies Sven Carlsson, a group settled into the TIDES Garage for a lively conversation and lunch. Topics ranged from literacy instruction across grades 6 through 12, collaboration between librarians and classroom teachers, choice reading and how to disrupt the canon with a wide variety of texts.

Ms. Torres, a long-time language arts educator, is now a library educator with the Denver Public Schools, where she works with students and their teachers across five schools in the district. She is a member of the #EduColor collective and a cofounder of the hashtag #DisruptTexts, an online curriculum development movement designed to assist educators in expanding their English/language arts materials beyond the traditional canon.