The conference theme and focuses come from YOU.
We use your responses to our annual Needs Assessment to invite presenters and structure a program that best reflects what you need right now.
2024 Conference Theme
“Literacy and Beyond”
The 2024 Conference Committee has selected “Literacy and Beyond” as our 2024 theme. Thanks to those who suggested this, or something similar, in the 2023-24 Needs Assessment!
Why this theme?
In 2023, we focused on innovation and possibility with “Literacy Unleashed”. Now in 2024, we hope to explore what comes next – to bust some myths around narrow definitions of literacy, and look at both the expected and the unexpected places where literacy can transform lives.
What’s universal in literacy?
What’s changing?
What role do new technologies like AI play in teaching and learning?
We’ll look at all of it with “Literacy and Beyond.”
We’re planning a variety of sessions that explore this idea from different angles – an exploration of the many ways the world can open up for Texas adults and families once they’ve achieved the literacy level they want and need.
2024 Focuses
2024 focus topics coming soon!
In the 2022-23 Needs Assessment, your highest-priority topics were:
- How to help adult students whose literacy is at the lowest levels
- Techniques for effective conversation classes (ESOL)
- Effective community collaboration and partnerships
- Integrating workplace skills and technology into lessons
- Using data, effective program evaluation
We prioritized these topics when putting together this year’s conference program, inviting special guest presenters, and selecting sessions from our Request for Proposals.
2024 Guest Speakers
2024 guest speakers coming soon!
Mahalia Baldini
AEL State Director
Texas Workforce Commission
Opening Speaker – Tuesday, July 30:
“The State of the State in Adult Education”
What’s new in Adult Education and Literacy across Texas? What role do community-based organizations play in meeting the literacy challenges of the state?
Mahalia Baldini was named the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) Adult Education and Literacy (AEL) State Director in September 2020 after serving as the program’s supervisor for over six years. She earned her B.A in Journalism from the University of Kentucky and her Master’s in Education from Texas State University. Mrs. Baldini has spent the last fifteen years integrating workforce and economic development with educational solutions that center on outcomes for low and middle skill workers. She believes in and values a system that supports equitable education and learning opportunities that focus on an individual’s academic preparedness and advancement as well as the social and emotional intelligence needed to contribute to a positive work culture aligned to employer needs.
Horacio Sanchez
President and CEO
Resiliency Inc.
Special Guest Breakout Session Presenter
Horacio Sanchez is a highly sought-after speaker and educational consultant, helping schools learn to apply neuroscience to improve educational outcomes. He presents on diverse topics such as overcoming the impact of poverty, improving school climate, engaging in brain-based instruction, and addressing issues related to implicit bias. He is recognized as one of the nation’s leading authorities on resiliency and applied brain science.
Horacio has been a teacher, administrator, clinician, mental health director, and consultant to school districts across the United States. Horacio sits on the True Health Initiative Council of Directors, a coalition of more than 250 world-renowned health experts committed to educating on proven lifestyle principles as medicine. He is the author of the best-selling book, The Education Revolution, which applies brain science to improve instruction, behaviors, and school climate. His new best-seller, The Poverty Problem, explains how education can promote resilience and counter poverty’s impact on brain development and functioning.
Felicia C. Smith, Ed.D.
President & CEO
National Center for Families Learning (NCFL)
Keynote Speaker – Tuesday, August 1
“Centering Families in a Fast-changing Education and Workforce Landscape”
We find ourselves at new crossroads as artificial intelligence, AI, and its rapidly popular tools like ChatGPT are grazing our classroom doors. Recently, Education Week asked leading AI experts to forecast how classrooms will be impacted by artificial intelligence. Predictions and insights are emanating from such experts here in Texas. Peter Stone, Executive Director of Sony AI and professor of Computer Science at the University of Texas in Austin, postulated that “We shouldn’t be educating our students to do a particular job.” Stone conjectures that learners will need new skills, ones that he coins as AI literacy, to use the new AI tools as they become available because “ChatGPT is one specific type of AI, and learners need a broad exposure to the field of AI.”
When we consider the state of rapidly changing technology alongside what we know is a pervasive need for bolstering adult literacy in the U.S., we all need to have an appetite for urgency. In the Organization of Economic Co-operation’s recently released report, Equity in Education, highlighting data collected in 2021, fewer than 10% of all adults had participated in formal and/or informal education training in the previous four weeks. We need to open ourselves to collaboration and learning to marry the needs of struggling adults with the exponentially shifting reality of workforce demands.
The work of the National Center for Families Learning is focused on improving educational and workforce attainment by purposefully engaging alongside families and their communities to create positive and transformational generational change. As the organization’s second-ever president, Dr. Felicia Cumings Smith is leading this national work with a driving purpose of creating equity for families furthest from opportunities. She is leading change at a demanding pace and with an incredible sense of urgency. Her remarks will bring visibility to current inequities in adult literacy and learning and how we might collaborate and leverage emerging technologies to address access, opportunities, and needs across communities.
A lifelong educator and national thought leader for teaching and learning, Dr. Felicia C. Smith brings decades of valuable experience to advance NCFL’s mission of working to eradicate poverty through education solutions for families. Having served in a variety of leadership roles in P-12, higher education, nonprofit, and philanthropy, her career has allowed her to experience leading systems and develop a unique vantage point of a learner’s educational trajectory from preschool to adulthood. Smith holds an Ed.D. in education leadership and administration from the University of Kentucky, and an M.A. in elementary education with an emphasis on K-12 literacy development and B.S. in elementary education from the University of Louisville.
Crystal Pennington
Marketing Director
Refugee Language Project
Special Guest Breakout Session Presenter
Crystal Pennington (she/her) is the Marketing Director for Refugee Language Project. She and her husband, Dr. Ryan Pennington, spent nearly a decade in Papua New Guinea with SIL International doing linguistic analysis and alphabet development with the Ma Manda language group. In 2017 they started Refugee Language Project, a non-profit in Amarillo, Texas that exists to see refugees flourish by removing language barriers, building leaders, and cultivating community.
She holds a B.A. in Biblical Studies from Dallas Baptist University and a Certificate in Applied Linguistics from Dallas International University. She currently lives in Amarillo with her husband and three children.
Kristina Rivas-Jones
Education and Career Coordinator
100 Families
Special Guest Breakout Session Presenter
Kristina Rivas-Jones’s career includes two decades of experience in higher education, marketing, and healthcare, as well as success as a small business owner. The Texarkana native is finishing up a master’s degree in human sciences with a focus on human development and family studies at Stephen F. Austin University. For her thesis, she is researching the sustainability of the 100 Families program that helps families move from crisis to career. She will use this research to inform her practice as the coordinator of the 100 Families Alliance in both Bowie and Miller Counties.
Kristina holds a bachelor’s degree in nuclear medicine from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences. She graduated from Texas High School and is married to Parker who is also an educator. They have three children, and the Jones family lives in Texarkana.
Dr. Jenny Walker
Executive Director,
Literacy Council of Bowie and Miller Counties
Special Guest Breakout Session Presenter
Jenny Walker has worked in education for more than 20 years in all levels including elementary, secondary, and adult/higher education. She recently graduated with a doctorate in education leadership from Texas A&M University – Texarkana, where she focused her research on emancipatory leadership, functional literacy, and collective impact.
Walker specializes in the education of adult learners from low-socioeconomic families. She also holds a master’s degree in education administration from A&M and a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of North Texas.
Don't forget your conference swag!
Caps, t-shirts in multiple styles, mugs, travel mugs, stationery, and more… all available in the Literacy Texas online store. All profits support literacy in Texas AND you can rep the literacy cause in style!
Browse the whole store here, or click on the images below to see the 2024 Annual Conference collection.
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Checked/updated 4/25/24
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