Student Travel Journal: Maya Sardar '25
Maya Sardar '25 NCTE Travel Documentary
Editor's note: In November, a group of five undergraduate students attended the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) conference in Boston to present research they have been conducting with the W&M School of Education Literacy Lab. The group included Margaret Barr '25, Hailey Fisher '27, Katie Rusnak '26, Maya Sardar '25 and Lily Silverman '26. All received full funding from the Charles Center to travel and present their findings. The group is now writing a manuscript that will be submitted for publication in a peer-review journal. Senior Maya Sardar '25 documented her experience of presenting at a prestigious national conference.
My name is Maya Sardar, and I’m a senior studying marketing and psychology. I joined the Literacy Lab my junior year because of my interest in educational psychology. I had the opportunity to travel to the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) with my research group to present on the research we conducted last spring. Here I am with Lily (below) when I first arrived at the conference. My plane was a bit delayed, so we got dressed and rushed over to the main speaker of the night. 
The main speaker on Thursday, Nov. 21, was Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. She wrote a memoir called "Lovely One." She discussed how her parents were both educators and how this greatly influenced her upbringing. It was a great end to the first night of the conference!
We started Friday Morning with a talk with [actress and comedian] Kate McKinnon. I used to watch her on "Saturday Night Live" all the time, and it was so interesting to hear about her new book. She wrote "The Millicent Quibb School of Etiquette for Young Ladies of Mad Science." The story took inspiration from her personal life growing up and how she always felt more “weird” than other kids. She also kept getting nervous and would start doing high kicks, as pictured here [see slideshow above]. She’s hilarious.
Next, Margaret, Hailey and I went to a discussion with author Kwame Alexander and Booksource. Kwame Alexander was one of my favorite authors in middle school, and my whole grade was required to read "The Crossover" for our English class. The most memorable story he told was how a young girl wrote to him and yelled at him for not writing any stories about girls. This inspired him to write his first book featuring a young girl. We also got copies of his book, "The Door of No Return," which I am excited to read!
Here is the group with our poster! We presented the research we conducted on what elementary school students prefer to read. Our main conclusion in the end was that kids just crave control over what, where, when and why they read. We spoke with college professors who were at the conference but also elementary school educators who wanted to know how to apply what we found to their classrooms. We even got to speak to [author] Molly Ness (not pictured) and explain our research to her, which I know the education majors in the group were ecstatic about.
While we were taking turns presenting the poster, we also were able to wander around to different stations where authors or publishers were handing out books. I acquired a ton of chapter books that I can’t wait to read, including a signed copy of "Lovely One" by Justice Jackson.
We ended the day by getting some food and walking around the Seaport Christmas market. I left that night, but I know my colleagues stayed to go to more conversations the next day. Overall it was a great experience and adventure! We can’t wait to get started on our manuscript.
