Join Worlds of Words and CERCLL for a four-day institute.
TIME: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
DATE: June 2-5, 2025
PLACE: Worlds of Words Center

This in-person, professional development event is presented by Dr. Kathy G. Short, Dr. Dorea Kleker and Narges Zandi with participating children’s authors Kao Kalia Yang and Shifa Saltagi Safad and refugee expert Julie Kasper. The $100 registration fee includes lunch, books and materials. Registration is limited to 35.

Register Now.

Join us for a four-day, in-person workshop to engage in experiences and books that invite children to immerse themselves in literature about refugee and immigrant experiences. In this interactive workshop, you will explore new picturebooks and novels for your work with students and participate in engagements with these books. You will also interact with children’s authors/illustrators who will join us to talk about their global books–Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Rock in My Throat, and Shifa Saltagi Safad, author of Kareem Between, winner of the 2025 National Book Award for Young People. You will receive their books along with booklists and other materials.

We are framing this workshop around the conceptual framework of journeys as movement along a pathway to examine the forced and chosen journeys in our own lives. Within this frame, we will explore refugee/immigrant books related to themes of displacement, difficult journeys, detention, belonging, home, language, memory, names and walls. There will be time to browse books as well as use dialogue strategies to engage with books. We will also share our work with children around these books. Our goal is inviting children to critically engage with story as a means of making sense of their own lives, and of understanding the lives of children whose experiences differ from their own.

Registration is limited, so reserve your spot today: https://cercll.regfox.com/2025wowcercllinstitute.