\u201cDr. Kelly truly cares about all of her students and makes sure they are following their passions and taking the path that is best for them,\u201d explains Joanna Taylor (2025), an Elementary Education and Communication Studies major. \u201cHer classes help students learn how to not only teach literacy but also learn how to form relationships with students to build a meaningful classroom community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anyone who knows Dr. Kelly knows that at her core, she is a teacher. Promoted to full professor in spring of 2024, Dr. Kelly has served the Furman community and her students since 2012.<\/p>\n
Her teaching career began as a third-grade teacher in Gastonia, NC, followed by teaching grade four in Liverpool, NY. Next, she taught and served as a Literacy Facilitator in Charlotte, NC where she pursued an MEd (Reading Education) and then PhD (Curriculum and Instruction: Urban Literacy) at UNC-Charlotte.<\/p>\n
After serving as a Clinical Lecturer and Graduate Assistant at UNC-Charlotte, Dr. Kelly moved to Furman University where she teaches a wide range of undergraduate literacy courses and serves as Coordinator of Graduate Literacy Program.<\/p>\n
While Dr. Kelly is loved and respected by her students and teacher colleagues, she has also achieved national recognition as a literacy scholar. Along with numerous distinguished book chapter and article publications, Dr. Kelly has a book under contract (co-authored with Hass and Laminack), Literacy Learning as a Vehicle for Social Change<\/em>, and a 2023 volume (co-authored with Laminack), Critical Comprehension: Lessons for Guiding Students to Deeper Meaning.<\/em><\/p>\n Also highly sought after as a speaker and presenter at local, state, and national professional conferences, Dr. Kelly will be presenting the keynote at the Keystone State Literacy Association in December 2024 and the Colorado Council of the International Reading Association in February 2025.<\/p>\n Ultimately, Dr. Kelly\u2014whether standing in the classroom, speaking at a conference, or sharing her words on the printed page\u2014is always teaching, and she does so with a sense of advocacy that she argues, \u201cIn a time when the field of education and educators themselves are under attack and are often de-professionalized, resulting in demoralization and reduction in the teaching force, it is paramount that [educators prepare] future educators who strive for high-quality culturally responsive child-centered teaching practices and who advocate for children from all backgrounds, for themselves, and for the field of education.\u201d<\/p>\n As a teacher, scholar, and advocate, Dr. Kelly serves well as a model for the passion she hopes to instill in her students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cDr. Kelly truly cares about all of her students and makes sure they are following their passions and taking the path that is best for them,\u201d explains Joanna Taylor (2025), an Elementary Education and Communication Studies major. \u201cHer classes help students learn how to not only teach literacy but also learn how to form relationships […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":97,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/97"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":728,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions\/728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpressmu-1266771-5793343.cloudwaysapps.com\/academics\/education\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}