Lisa Buchanan and Master of Education candidate Anna Sophia Steinki presented their collaboration in community engaged learning at the NC Reading Associate Annual Conference.
Associate Professor of Education Lisa Buchanan and Master of Education candidate Anna Sophia Steinki ’24 G’26 presented their scholarship of community engaged learning at the North Carolina Reading Association’s Annual Conference in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The NCRA Annual meeting brings together classroom teachers, literacy specialists, university faculty, and school librarians from across North Carolina for sessions focused on literacy research and K-12 teaching.
Buchanan and Steinki first met during Steinki’s undergraduate coursework as an elementary education major at Elon in the Dr. Jo Watts Williams School of Education. When Steinki moved into her first teaching position in a local school after graduation, they began to collaborate on school-university partnerships between Buchanan’s elementary courses and Steinki’s elementary classroom. In Fall 2025, their partnership was focused on a book study of the historical fiction novel, “A Sky Full of Song.” Teacher candidates in Buchanan’s social studies methods course collaborated with Steinki to develop an 8-week book study with Steinki’s fourth graders. At the NCRA Annual Conference on March 16, their session focused on the possibilities of school-university partnership and the book study model used in their fall collaboration.
The featured collaboration was also part of Steinki’s capstone project for the DJWWSOE Masters of Education program. Steinki, a 2024 graduate of the DJWWSOE and elementary education major, will graduate in May from the Master of Education program. She is a 4th grade teacher at R. Homer Andrews Elementary in Alamance Burlington Schools.
Steinki is one of six Master of Education candidates graduating in May who received Elon’s Teach for Alamance Scholarship after graduating in May 2024. Teach for Alamance Scholarship recipients are graduating seniors from Elon University who have secured a teaching position in the Alamance-Burlington School System (ABSS) and commit to teaching in ABSS for two years while completing their M.Ed in the DJWWSOE. To learn more about the Teach for Alamance Scholarship, visit https://www.elon.edu/u/academics/education/teach-for-alamance/.