2023-2024 Whippoorwill Committee
ERIKA BASS, CO-CHAIR
Erika Bass is assistant professor of English education at University of Northern Iowa. Her research is focused on preservice teacher education, rural education, and literacies; often those three areas intersect. She truly believes place and identity are deeply connected.
MICHAEL YOUNG, CO-CHAIR
Michael Young is an assistant professor of elementary literacy education at Illinois State University. He is a former elementary teacher, middle school instructional coach, and K-12 curriculum leader. Michael’s research examines pursuits of equity and justice in literacy teaching and learning by considering intersections of reading and writing development, critical literacy, education policy, identity, and antiracist pedagogies in schools and communities.
DEVON BRENNER
Devon Brenner is a professor of teacher education at Mississippi State University and Director of the Social Science Research Center. She is also co-editor of The Rural Educator, the journal of the National Rural Education Association. Previously, she taught elementary school in Addison, Michigan, the town where she grew up.
CHEA PARTON
Chea Parton is a farm girl, former rural English teacher, and visiting assistant professor of curriculum and instruction at Purdue University. She is the founder of Literacy In Place, a digital space where teachers, scholars, writers, and readers can consider how the where of reading/writing/learning shapes and is shaped by experience, culture, and identity. She is also the host of the YouTube series/podcast Reading Rural YAL where she reviews and analyzes rural YAL and interviews the authors who write it.
ALAN HOFFMANN
Alan Hoffman teaches high school English in Stanwood, Washington. Previously,k Alan taught at a small school in Montana (high school enrollment of around 25). His experiences there formed my grad school project, a memoir titled "Teaching English on the Moon: A Memoir of Teaching at a Rural School".
MONICA ROE
Monica Roe is a Whippoorwill Award-winning author, physical therapist, beekeeper, and researcher/advocate for the social model of disability and inclusive rural health. A first-generation graduate, Monica studies public health and disability-inclusive disaster preparedness at the University of Alaska and spent over a decade as a pediatric physical therapy consultant for remote, off-road communities in northwestern Alaska. She and her family divide their time between Alaska and their apiary in rural South Carolina.
JACQUELINE YAHN
Jacqueline Yahn is associate professor of teacher education at Ohio University, a generational Appalachian, and a lifelong resident of the Ohio Valley. Her research focuses on rural school and community viability and and she teaches several classes in middle childhood education including language arts and social studies methods, children’s literature, and middle childhood literature..
The 2022 Whippoorwill Award Committee Members hard at work.