Dr. Shelley Harwayne finds the world a fascinating place and expects that her teachers do, too. In fact, when hiring a new teacher, she looks for someone who thinks being around kids is a privilege, a reader, and someone with whom she would want to have dinner.  Its the hallmark of an exceptional teacher, she offered to her captivated audience as Keynote Speaker at Hofstras H-NET conference.  As founder of the Manhattan New School, superintendent of New York Citys District 2, and recently appointed Regional Superintendent for Region 9 in the newly restructured New York City Department of Education, Dr. Harwayne inspires thousands of students, parents, and professionals with her effervescence and zeal. With a voracious appetite for reading and writing, she invariably immerses in good texts and actively asserts her writers voice in the community. She celebrates educators who share these passions and strive to create literacy aficionados of their students. 

            Regaling new and soon-to-be teachers at the H-Net conference with stories collected from personal experiences, colleagues and friends over the years, Dr. Harwaynes quirky and insightful personality energized conference attendees toward becoming reading and writing role models for their students. Role models, she relayed, are activists who get their voices out there and talk with students about what they themselves are reading and how it impacts their thinking and actions. She described a colleague who read an excerpt from a Live With Regis and Kelly newspaper synopsis in which talk show host Kelly belabored boring books that required thought, and described her favorite books as beach trash novels. Dr. Harwaynes colleague read the piece to her elementary school students, all appropriately outraged, who then wrote to Kelly urging her to reconsider the beach trash endorsement and celebrate quality literature, too. Witty, passionate, and purposeful letters resulted, as students were presented with a real world reason to write. Reading and writing are two of lifes great pleasures, Dr. Harwayne suggested and literate role models baptize students with this valuation.

            Sharing poems, essays, and letters collected from students over the years, Dr. Harwayne evidenced their import through her delight in examining them with H-Net attendees. She noted that when students hand in pieces she asks questions such as:  To whom might you give this? Where might you send this? Who would benefit from reading this? How can you go public with this piece, and how could you improve its quality? When students writings are invested with such attention, young writers naturally assume a purposeful attitude toward their work and desire for even greater achievement ignites. Teachers and students who are passionate readers and writers create exciting and fluid spaces to inhabit, and they are areas Dr. Harwayne often traverses.

Dr. Harwaynes remarks were, in many ways, like a good book; her stories set imaginations romping, whet intellectual appetites and sharpened cravings to immerse our own students in a vibrant world, ripe with meaningful reading and writing opportunities.