Charles Ellenbogen, Campus International's Language & Literature chair and one of our high school's founding staff members, has since our high school's opening worked alongside Dr. Molly Buckley-Marudas, our high school's professor-in-residence from Cleveland State University to present and/or publish their professional work on several occasions over the last three years.

Most recently, Dr. Buckley-Marudas and Mr. Ellenbogen were honored with the Nilsen-Donelson Award for the "best article of 2019" in the NCTE's (National Council of Teachers of English) ALAN Review (Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE). Their article, "Using YA Literature to Support Students as They Wrestle with Violence, Police Brutality, and Trauma: Engaging The Hate U Give", was a review of the deeply popular YA novel by Angie Thomas, which Mr. Ellenbogen taught to our founding cohort of students during their 9th grade year.

The following was shared about their work at the recent ALAN Breakfast:

In their winning article, "Using YA Literature to Support Students as They Wrestle with Violence, Police Brutality, and Trauma: Engaging The Hate U Give," Buckley-Marudas and Ellenbogen address ways teachers can use literature as an entry point into supporting adolescents as they discuss traumatic events. The unit they share empowers students to engage in critical conversations around violence, police brutality, and racism in their schools and within their communities. The authors bridge theory with practice by providing critical frameworks for text analysis and discussion along with suggestions for lesson ideas, activities, and resources. Readers highly value the goals of their project, including: teaching students how to bear witness to the trauma and brutality imposed upon people of color; helping students name, examine and navigate some of the psychologically challenging and emotionally demanding facets of living with police brutality and other social stressors; and addressing the need to make classrooms places where students of color feel safe, valued, and empowered as they struggle to make sense of targeted brutality and challenge systemic racism. The authors also focus on what students can do with their anger and on how, even in the midst of "grief, violence and fear," students have the power to speak up and create positive change as they connect with others in their communities who are also working toward the same goals.

Dr. Buckley-Marudas and Mr. Ellenbogen also published in the NCTE’s “English Journal” and presented at the OCTELA (the Ohio Council of Teachers of English and Language Arts) Conference this March, and presented at the NCTE Conference in November 2018 and Kent State’s “Annual Literacy Conference + Virginia Hamilton Conference) in October 2018.

At CIS, so much of the spirit of our university collaboration is about encouraging our students and staff to see themselves as vital contributors of knowledge to the university community, not simply beneficiaries of the resources of being on a college campus. Dr. Buckley-Marudas and Mr. Ellenbogen's collaborative work has epitomized this, but so have the almost two dozen teacher action research projects our staff have completed alongside CSU mentors for the annual Teacher Action Research Showcase at CSU over the past two years, three of which have gone on to be showcased at the annual MWERA (Midwestern Education Research Association) meeting in Cincinnati. Campus International also presented alongside the CMSD Portfolio Team at the National IEL Family & Community Engagement Conference in July 2018.