Kelly Wissman

Dr. Kelly Wissman is an Associate Professor and Co-Chair of the Department of Literacy Teaching and Learning at the University at Albany. Across her scholarship and teaching, she considers how children’s literature, writing, and the arts can facilitate the creation of more equitable and humanizing educational spaces for all students. Her research and teaching interests include children’s literature; sociocultural approaches to writing; practitioner inquiry; the interplay of literacies, identities, and equity; and multimodal composing. She pursues these interests through collaborative, arts-based, and ethnographic research methodologies.

Dr. Wissman is the Director of the Capital District Writing Project (CDWP), a site of the National Writing Project. Recipient of a 2020 President’s Award for Exemplary Public Engagement, the CDWP is a vibrant network of K-16 educators working to enhance the teaching of writing within the Capital Region’s schools and to create a future where every person is an accomplished writer, engaged learner, and active participant in an interconnected, digital world.  

As the project director of the Freedom Dreaming for Educational Justice public engagement research project, Dr. Wissman led a diverse coalition of K-12 educators, K-12 students, aspiring educators and mental professionals, teaching artists, and community members in creating multimedia education freedom dreams. These visions of a more equitable educational system have been exhibited in a range of virtual, community, and campus spaces. Dr. Wissman orchestrated the multi-authored production of the e-publication We Are Dreaming of Freedom: Picturebook + Teaching Guide and served as the editor of Teaching with Arts-infused Writing Pedagogies: Freedom Dreaming for Educational Justice (Teachers College Press).

Dr. Wissman is also the co-author of Teaching Global Literature in Elementary Classrooms: A Critical Literacy and Teacher Inquiry Approach. This multi-vocal book explores how K-6 teachers infused diverse texts into their classrooms and found support for their endeavors in a teacher inquiry community. Dr. Wissman’s publications have appeared in several journals, including, Research in the Teaching of English, Journal of Literacy Research, Anthropology and Education, Children’s Literature in Education, Language Arts, Journal of Children’s Literature, English Education, The Reading Teacher, and Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.

From 2015-2021, Dr. Wissman served as a Co-editor of Language Arts, the premiere journal for the teaching of the language arts at the elementary and middle school levels. She is also a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Children’s Literature and the Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.

Dr. Wissman has received recognition for both her scholarship and her teaching. In 2006, she was awarded the Selma Greenberg Dissertation Award from the Research on Women and Education Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association. She is also the recipient of the 2010 Virginia Hamilton Essay Award Honor Certificate for an article in Children’s Literature in Education. She has received an Excellence in Full-Time Teaching Award from UAlbany’s School of Education and has been named an “Educator of Excellence” from the New York State English Council. In 2016, she received a President’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from the University at Albany and in 2017 she was honored with a Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching from the State University of New York.  In 2021, the International Literacy Association named her the Jerry Johns Outstanding Teacher Educator in Reading.