Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise Into Practice

Kylene Beers, Ed.D., is a former middle school teacher who has turned her commitment to adolescent literacy and struggling readers into the major focus of her research, writing, speaking, and teaching. She is author of the best-selling When Kids Can't Read/What Teachers Can Do, co-editor (with Bob Probst and Linda Rief) of Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice, and co-author (with Bob Probst) of Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading and Reading Nonfiction, Notice & Note Stances, Signposts, and Strategies all published by Heinemann. She taught in the College of Education at the University of Houston, served as Senior Reading Researcher at the Comer School Development Program at Yale University, and most recently acted as the Senior Reading Advisor to Secondary Schools for the Reading and Writing Project at Teachers College. Kylene has published numerous articles in state and national journals, served as editor of the national literacy journal, Voices from the Middle, and was the 2008-2009 President of the National Council of Teachers of English. She is an invited speaker at state, national, and international conferences and works with teachers in elementary, middle, and high schools across the US. Kylene has served as a consultant to the National Governor's Association and was the 2011 recipient of the Conference on English Leadership outstanding leader award. Kylene is now a consultant to schools, nationally and internationally, focusing on literacy improvement with her colleague and co-author, Bob Probst.

Bob Probst is the author of Response and Analysis, he is coeditor (with Kylene Beers and Linda Rief) of Adolescent Literacy: Turning Promise into Practice, and coauthor (with Kylene Beers) of Notice and Note: Strategies for Close Reading and Reading Nonfiction; Notice & Note Stances Signposts, and Strategies, all published by Heinemann. Bob has also published numerous articles, chapters, and monographs in national and international publications.Bob began his teaching career as high school English teacher and then became a supervisor of English for a large district in Maryland. He spent most of his academic career at Georgia State University where he is now Professor Emeritus of English Education. After retiring from Georgia State University, he served as a research fellow for Florida International University. Bob is now a consultant to schools, nationally and internationally, focusing on literacy improvement. He works in schools with his colleague and co-author, Kylene Beers.Bob has served as a member on the Conference on English Board of Directors, an NCTE journal columnist, a member of the national advisory board to American Reading Company, and a member of the NCTE Commission on Reading. In 2004 he was awarded the NCTE's Exemplary Leadership Award, presented by the Conference on English Leadership.

Linda Rief left the classroom in June of 2019 after 40 years of teaching Language Arts with eighth graders. She misses their energy and their apathy, their curiosity and their complacency, their confidence and their insecurities. But mostly, she misses their passionate, powerful voices as writers and readers. She is an instructor in the University of New Hampshire's Summer Literacy Institute and a national and international presenter on issues of adolescent literacy. She is the author of Whispering in the Wind: A Guide to Deeper Reading and Writing Through Poetry (2022), The Quickwrite Handbook: 100 Mentor Texts to Jumpstart Your Students' Thinking and Writing (2018), Read Write Teach: Choice and Challenge in the Reading-Writing Workshop (2014), The Writer's-Reader's Notebook (2007), Inside the Writer's-Reader's Notebook (2007), 100 Quickwrites (Scholastic, 2003), Vision and Voice: Extending the Literacy Spectrum (1999), and Seeking Diversity: Language Arts with Adolescents (1992); she is co-editor (Beers, Probst, and Rief) of Adolescent Literacy (2007). For five years she co-edited with Maureen Barbieri Voices from the Middle, a journal for middle school teachers published by the National Council of Teachers of English. In 2021 she was honored with the Distinguished Service Award from NCTE and in 2020 received the Kent Williamson Exemplary Leader Award from the Conference on English Leadership, in recognition of outstanding leadership in the English Language Arts. A recipient of NCTE's Edwin A. Hoey Award for Outstanding Middle School Educator in ELA, her classroom was featured in the series Making Meaning in Literature produced by Maryland Public Television for Annenberg/CPB. For three years she chaired the first Early Adolescence English/Language Arts Standards Committee of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. In 1988 she was the recipient of one of two Kennedy Center Fellowships for Teachers of the Arts. She spent a month at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, writing prose and poetry based on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. She read her writing in performance at the Kennedy Center, a program later broadcast on NPR.