Other Relevant Activities

Professional Development, Service, and Scholarship

On this page, I provide information regarding the professional development workshops, service projects, and scholarly activities that have contributed to my teaching skills and literacy expertise. Below, I list examples pertinent to each of these categories; however, a more comprehensive list is available here.

Professional Development Activities

“Teaching Close Reading”
Location: Virtual
Date: 6/1/2018
Duration: 30 minutes		“Strategies to Address SLDs in Reading”
Location: Virtual
Date: 5/31/2018
Duration: 1 hour
“Strategies to Address SLDs in Writing”
Location: Virtual
Date: 5/31/2018
Duration: 1 hour		“Annotation as an Interactive Reading Strategy”
Location: Virtual
Date: 3/15/2018
Duration: 30 minutes
“Literacy Co-Scoring Project”
Location: Cate TEC, Southeastern
Date: 4/4/2017
Duration: 4 hours

“Making Memories Live: Writing & Publishing
in the Classroom”
Location: Cate TEC (TDL), Southeastern
Date: 3/13/2017
Duration: 1 hour
Literacy Professional Learning Institute”
Location: Baton Rouge, LA
Date: 3/19/15 & 3/20/15
Duration: 10 hours
“Promoting Critical Thinking through
Cooperative Writing”
Location: TLC
Date: 10/2012
Duration: 1 hour

Service Activities

Service to Students and Colleagues

Honors Provider – EDUC 472:
“Reading in the Content Areas”
Location: Virtual
Date: Fall 2019
Duration: 4 hours		Presenter – “Praxis I Reading:
Core Academic Skills for Educators”
Location: Cate TEC (TDL)
Dates: 2/18, 10/17, 9/17, 2/17, 9/16
Duration: 7 hours
Co-Facilitator –
“Dyslexia Simulation” (Station 3)
Location: Cate TEC (Kiva)
Date: 2015, Spring; 2014, Spring
Duration: 3 hours (total)		QM Course Reviewer –
English 230: “World Literature”
Location: Virtual
Date: 5/2/2014
Duration: 2 hours
Thesis Reader – Brianna Johnson, English
“Reigniting Secondary Students’
Interest & Motivation in Reading”
Dates: 2012-2013
Duration: 4 hours		Guest Lecturer – “Using Rap to Promote
Culturally Relevant Content Literacy Instruction”
Location: Main Building
Date: 10/2/2012
Duration: 2 hours

Professional Service

Literacy Research Association
Reviewer – Journal of Literacy Research
Date: 2017-Present
Duration: 4 hours
Louisiana State Board of Education
Reviewer – “English Language Arts Student Standards”
Date: 5/29/2015
Duration: 1 hour
Literacy Research Association
Reviewer – LRA Conference Proposals
Areas 1, 3, 6, & 8
Date: 5/2015
Duration: 2 hours

Scholarly Activities

I collected information on more than 300 texts in multimodal English Language Arts units. For each text, I identified the genre, medium, and publication date, as well as demographic details about the author (e.g., race, gender). Four of the insights that emerged from this information are listed in the image on the left.

Presentations

Kumar, T. (2018, February). Where are their voices? Authors of color in the secondary ELA curriculum. Paper presented at the annual conference of the Eastern Educational Research Conference, Clearwater Beach, FL.

Kumar, T. (2017, March). Are we there yet? Race, gender, and relevance in Louisiana ELA anchor texts. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Education Research Association, Lafayette, Louisiana.

Kumar, T. (2015, December). Representations of disciplinary literacy: Exploring preservice teachers’ use of text in secondary social studies. Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Literacy Research Association, Carlsbad, CA.

Articles & Chapters

Kumar, T. (2016). Teaming up for literacy: Examining participants’ contributions to a collaborative family-based program. Multicultural Education, 23(2), 38-45.

Kumar, T. (2014). Where are their voices? Examining power and privilege in a family literacy text. School Community Journal, 24(2), 127-146.

Sailors, M., Kumar, T., Blady, S., & Willson, A. (2013). Literacy tools created and used within print-rich classroom environments. In B. M. Taylor & N. K. Duke (Eds.), Handbook of effective literacy instruction: Research-based practice (pp. 46-71). New York: