Rachelle Savitz

 

Rachelle S. Savitz is an associate professor of reading/literacy at East Carolina University. She was previously a K-12 literacy coach/interventionist and high school reading teacher. She values working with graduate students and teachers and learning with and from them. She explores the intersections of critical inquiry, culturally sustaining pedagogy, trauma-sensitive practices, and teacher self-efficacy related to disciplinary literacy and equitable literacy materials and curricula. She received the 2019 Association of Literacy Educators and Researcher’s Jerry Johns Promising Researcher Award and the 2018 Early Career Literacy Scholar Award from the American Reading Forum. Dr. Savitz spotlights the necessity of teacher collaborators in her upcoming co-edited book, Teaching the "taboo": Diverse and inclusive literature is the way, with Routledge, where teachers highlight their classroom practices. She emphasizes teacher instruction with over 15 snapshots in her book with Teachers College Press, Trauma-sensitive literacy instruction: Building student resilience in English language arts classrooms. This is an extension of Teaching Hope and Resilience for Students Experiencing Trauma: Creating Safe and Nurturing Classrooms for Learning, coauthored with Drs. Douglas Fisher and Nancy Frey.