Maggie Hawkins, a professor with the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction, was honored with the International Literacy Association’s (ILA) Erwin Zolt Digital Literacy Game Changer Award.
Hawkins’s work focuses on languages, literacies, and learning in classrooms and schools, while striving for equity and social justice.
At UW-Madison, Hawkins has been involved in many teacher education initiatives and worked with schools and universities in less developed countries to improve literacy instruction, create and sustain libraries in schools and communities, and provide professional development to teachers.
Her project, Global StoryBridges, works with under resourced communities in 17 countries across Asia, Central America, North America, Africa, and Europe. Global StoryBridges supports youth in developing technology, language, and literacy skills, while also providing a platform to share their lives and communities with other youth across the world.
“I would like to see Global StoryBridges continue to expand, along with the newly formed international research team we have assembled,” Hawkins says in the Literacy World Wide press release. “I’m hoping that we can come to understand how youth from different languages and cultural backgrounds, living in disparate regions and communities, make sense of messages that travel between them, and thus of one another.”
Hawkins emphasizes global issues and citizenship, recommending that educators keep social justice as a foundational part of their curriculum.
“It’s so easy to become immersed in the day-to-day routines and demands, and yet our students need to become citizens of the world,” Hawkins tells Literacy World Wide. “It enhances their futures and it offers an excellent lens for understanding themselves and others.”
Read Literacy World Wide’s press release here.