Valerie Kinloch and Alfredo Celedón Luján, Homecoming Co-Chairs

Welcome to Homecoming 2022

NCTE’s inaugural Homecoming gathering is here. As President of NCTE, I could not be more excited to work with Past President Alfredo Celedón Luján, Executive Director Emily Kirkpatrick, the NCTE Executive Committee, and the entire NCTE staff to welcome you to this in-person celebration of teaching, learning, and engagement. As co-chair of Homecoming, I have been thinking about various NCTE-sponsored events, from our Member Gatherings and Professional Learning Sessions to our NCTE conferences and conventions. Also, I have been reflecting on our 2021 Annual Convention that I themed “Equity, Justice, and Antiracist Teaching,” which was scheduled to occur in Louisville. At the virtual Convention, we came together to demonstrate our unwavering commitment to equity and justice in literacy teaching and research. We recommitted to designing curricula that center freedom and human rights. We partnered with students, families, and educators in schools and communities to ensure that our literacy work does not reproduce inequities, injustices, and racism. In fact, we leaned further into dreaming, teaching, learning, and leading for liberation within, across, and beyond NCTE. And for these reasons and many others, I am thrilled to serve our professional organization and excited to have an opportunity to gather with many of you at Homecoming. Welcome! Valerie Kinloch NCTE President and Homecoming Co-Chair

At the pre-pandemic CCCC Convention in Pittsburgh, I learned that the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers flow together to form the Ohio River. At that point, the 2020 Denver Convention theme, “Confluencia, Songs of Ourselves,” was conceived. Though I had been naive about the birth of the Ohio, I knew that it flows through Louisville, where Muhammad Ali allegedly threw his Olympic Gold Medal into the river in protest of racial discrimination … and where his adversarial “Red Bike Moment” became the serendipitous catalyst to his life as boxer, activist, humanitarian, and diplomat. I also knew the 2021 Annual Convention would be in Louisville, and I discovered there was a Confluence Park in Denver. It all flowed together, so to speak. I was stoked for a great two years of NCTE Conventions. Then COVID-19, then two virtual Conventions and a longing for an in-person Convention, then a coming home to NCTE (aka “Homecoming!”). Welcome to Louisville, home of “Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee!” Alfredo Celedón Luján NCTE Past President and Homecoming Co-Chair