EMC CPD Face-to Face: English and Inclusion – Putting Students at the Heart of the Subject! An EMC Teacher Conference-with-CPD

Andrew McCallum

Andrew McCallum is Director of the English and Media Centre. Prior to that he ran a PGCE course in secondary English, and previously he taught for 15 years in London schools, spending most of that time at Acland Burghley School in Camden. He holds a doctorate in education, is author of Creativity and Learning in Secondary English (Routledge) and writes regularly for NATE's Teaching English magazine. If asked to name the EMC publication he's most proud of having worked on, it would be a three-way contest between Iridescent Adolescent, Diverse Shorts and Write On.

Kate Oliver

Kate Oliver taught for 14 years in Inner London in various roles. She now works as an education consultant for the English and Media Centre, specialising in KS3 and KS4. Her favourite aspects of English teaching are creative writing and poetry. She also has a particular interest in the wider implications of the subject such as getting students reading for pleasure and engaging teachers of other subjects with language across the curriculum. Her most recent publications for EMC are KS3 Poetry Plus, Just Write and Animal Farm: An EMC Full Text Study Edition.

Lucy Webster

Lucy Webster has been an advisory teacher at EMC since 1999. She is co-editor of emagazine, runs courses and writes and edits publications, specialising in A Level English Literature. Recent publications include Doing Close Reading, study guides to A Streetcar Named Desire, Hamlet, King Lear, Atonement and Mrs Dalloway and Yes We Can: EMC Approaches to Rhetoric – A Practical Guide for 11-14. She edited The Literature Reader and co-edited What Matters in English Teaching.

Peter Kahn

Peter Kahn has taught poetry in over sixty schools from Hackney to Lambeth to Walthamstow to Chicago to South Carolina to Ohio. He created the Spoken Word program at Oak Park and River Forest High School, where he taught for 28 years, with work showcased in Respect the Mic: Celebrating 20 Years of Poetry from a Chicagoland High School (Penguin Young Readers). He has appeared on PBS NewsHour, NPR, BBC radio and the docu-series, America to Me. A founding member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen, he has twice been a commended poet in the Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition and was runner-up in the 2019 NCTE and Penguin Random House Maya Angelou Teacher Award for Poetry. Peter co-founded the London Teenage Poetry Slam and, as a Visiting Fellow at Goldsmiths, founded the Spoken Word Education Training Programme. Along with Patricia Smith and Ravi Shankar, he edited The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks. His debut collection, Little Kings, is published by Nine Arches Press, with poems in the Guardian and Forward Book of Poetry. National Book Award winner Terrance Hayes writes, 'Peter Kahn is the kind of reader of poetry, teacher of poetry, and poet who makes the world easier for other readers, teachers and poets.' 

Peter is the 2024 recipient of the American Writers Museum’s Inspiring Teacher Award.

https://www.poet-educatorpeterkahn.org/

Professor Teresa Cremin

Teresa Cremin is Professor of Education (Literacy) at The Open University, UK, and co-director of the Literacy and Social Justice Centre which creates space for research, practice and advocacy to enrich educational opportunities for all. Her research focuses on volitional reading and writing, and teachers’ and children’s literate identities. An ex-teacher and teacher trainer, Teresa now undertakes research and consultancy and is a Fellow of the English Association, the Academy of Social Sciences, and the Royal Society of the Arts, a Trustee of the UK Literacy Association and The Reading Agency, and she advises the DfE on reading for pleasure. Teresa has published over 30 books, most recently, Reading for Pleasure: International Perspectives with S. McGeown (edited), Reading and Writing for Pleasure: A Framework for Practice with H. Hendry, S. Hulston and L. Chamberlian (both 2025, Routledge). Teresa is passionate about social justice and leads a research and practice coalition to support the development of young people’s volitional reading https://ourfp.org/

Dr Darren Chetty

Darren contributed to the best-selling book The Good Immigrant (Unbound) with a chapter entitled ‘You Can’t Say That! Stories Have to Be About White People’. For younger readers, he co-authored, with Jeffrey Boakye, What Is Masculinity? Why Does It Matter? And Other Big Questions (Wayland) and contributed to The Mab: Eleven Epic Stories from the Mabinogi edited by Matt Brown and Eloise Williams.

Since 2018, He has written a regular column for Books for Keeps with Professor Karen Sands O’Connor examining Black & racially minoritised characters in children’s literature, entitled 'Beyond the Secret Garden'. A book based on the column was published by the English Media Centre in 2024. His first picture book I’m Going To Make A Friend, illustrated by Sandhya Prabhat, will be published in the UK and US in May 2025.

Darren has judged the Blue Peter, YA, The Week Junior, CLiPPA, and Little Rebels book awards and the BookTrust Lifetime Achievement Award. He provided training for the Carnegie judges and advises on the CLPE Reflecting Realities research and Penguin / Runnymede Trust Lit in Colour project.

Candy Gourlay

 

Candy Gourlay was born in the Philippines, grew up under a dictatorship and met her husband during a revolution. She had many adventures as a journalist in Asia, including reporting from North Korea on the 50th anniversary of Kim Il Sung. Then she moved to the UK and found herself writing news about toilet paper, toothpaste and bleach. She pivoted to writing books for children and young adults and was published after nine years of rejection. Her books have been nominated for major prizes in Europe, including the Carnegie, the Guardian Prize, the Costa and the Nero Book Award. She has twice won the National Children’s Book Award of the Philippines and twice the Crystal Kite Prize for Europe. Her first novel Tall Story was selected one of the 100 Best Books of the Last 100 Years by Booktrust, and Bone Talk is a White Ravens Book and is endorsed by Amnesty International.

She lives in London with her family. She loves dogs, making comics and gardening, in that order.

Theresa Lola

Theresa Lola is a British Nigerian poet and creative practitioner. A poem from her first collection In Search of Equilibrium is in the UK’s GCSE syllabus. Her second poetry collection is Ceremony for the Nameless. She was previously the Young People’s Laureate for London. As a practitioner she has worked on projects by Dulwich Picture Gallery, Hackney Museum, and was poet-in-residence at Bethlem Museum of the Mind, and St Paul’s Cathedral. Her writing has been commissioned by Selfridges and Rimowa. She often combines poetry with music and visual art. She holds an Mst in Creative Writing from University of Oxford.

Stephen Dilley

Stephen Dilley has spent the last 15 years teaching English; he is currently Head of English at Kendrick School in Reading and an EMC Associate Teacher for 2024-25. He is passionate about sharing diverse texts and, as part of the UKLA Book Awards team and the Just Imagine review panel, he reads 100+ new children's and YA books each year. He also leads an OU/UKLA Teacher Reading Group for local primary and secondary teachers, and is governor at a local primary school. Stephen has written multiple articles for emagazine on authors including E. M. Forster, Kazuo Ishiguro, Alice Walker and Bernardine Evaristo.

Sami El Janbey

Sami has been an English Teacher for 10 years, working in London. She has experience of teaching KS3, KS4 and KS5 and has worked as a KS5 coordinator, 2ic and has recently been promoted to Head of Department. She is passionate about finding ways to promote reading for pleasure within the secondary context, as well as exploring what an inclusive and diverse English curriculum looks like. 

Samantha Wharton

Samantha is an experienced teacher with nearly two decades in education. She completed her PGCE in English and Drama at the IOE and holds an MA in Black British Literature from Goldsmiths University. Currently teaching at St Angela's School, Samantha has taught English, Drama, and Media Studies. She has also served as a drama consultant, written content, and delivered talks for AQA and OCR exam boards, and has been a drama examiner for Edexcel. Samantha authored the official study guide for Winsome Pinnock's Leave Taking under NHB publishing and writes educational content for Lit in Colour. Additionally, she has experience in publishing with Hachette Group at Quercus and has written blogs for Diverse Education. Her mission is to ensure that the students she serves experience diverse literature that reflects them.

Lauren Cowan

Lauren is an English teacher and KS5 Coordinator at the lead school in a multi-academy trust in north London. Lauren has previously worked as 2iC and KS3 Coordinator. She has taken a lead role in shaping curriculum, assessment and other department policy, as well as leading school-wide reading and literacy initiatives.