Young Adult Literature at the 2025 NCTE Annual Convention: A Reflection from Four New English Teachers

Before we get started, checkout the upcoming YA Summit

The 2026 Summit on the Research and Teaching of Young Adult Literature
Online
Thursday evening, February 26 & Friday, February 27, 2026
https://www.yalsummit.org/

Call for Proposals
Proposals Due by December 5, 2025
Proposal Form: https://forms.gle/NjeWp1kCubyFuF1R8

Meet our Contributors:

Dr. Mark Lewis is professor of literacy education at James Madison University. His research interests include examining and critiquing representations of adolescence and youth in young adult and adult literature, defining the multifaceted literary competence of secondary students, and identifying effective ways to support multilingual learners. Prior to coming to JMU, he taught middle school English and English as a second language in Arizona and worked with Indigenous youth in Colorado. Dr. Lewis has over 35 publications, including multiple book chapters and in scholarly journals such as English Education, English Journal, The ALAN Review, Study & Scrutiny, Journal of Teacher Education, Middle Grades Research Journal, Journal of Literacy Research, and Reading Research Quarterly. He is also a co-author of Rethinking the "Adolescent" in Adolescent Literacy (2017, NCTE Press) and Reading the World through Sports and Young Adult Literature: Resources for the English Classroom (2024, NCTE Press).

Dr. Melanie Shoffner specializes in English language arts education. Her education courses include ELA methods, curriculum theory, and the student teaching internship; she also teaches an English course on resistance and power. Dr. Shoffner is the editor of English Education, a member of the International Federation for the Teaching of English (IFTE) Advisory Board, and a former Fulbright Scholar (Romania). Her research addresses the dispositional and reflective development of preservice teachers.

Young Adult Literature at the 2025 NCTE Annual Convention: A Reflection from Four New English Teachers by Mark Lewis, Melanie Shoffner and students.

Mark and Melanie

We have supported teacher candidates from James Madison University to attend the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) Annual Convention for the last few years. For readers unfamiliar with the NCTE Annual Convention, it is arguably the premier conference for literacy educators from early childhood to college in the U.S. It is a space where like-minded folx from across the country gather to share teaching and research on a range of literacy topics, which makes it an ideal space for new teachers to enter the English language arts community (see, for example, DeWitt et al., 2025, for our teacher candidates’ reflections from the 2024 Convention). As our group prepared for the 2025 Convention, we asked the teacher candidates to intentionally notice how young adult (YA) literature was represented—in the conference program, in the exhibit hall, in the sessions—and how that representation might inform their future teaching. Two of the JMU teacher candidates, Ellie Fisher and Haley Smiley, were second-time attendees, and two of the JMU teacher candidates, Benjamin Kimble and Josie Fertig, were first-time attendees. Here are their thoughts:

Ellie: During my time at the NCTE Convention in Denver this year, I was surrounded—literally and figuratively—by young adult literature. YA texts appeared everywhere in the program, not as an afterthought but as presentations on and from diverse voices for implementing the genre in classrooms. One session that stood out to me was led by two current classroom teachers who described how they use Instagram to share YA recommendations with their students and followers. Their account, @KBLitAdventure, offers reviews, highlights new releases, and suggests engaging alternatives to trending (but not always classroom-friendly) books. They emphasized how creating recommendations not only built trust with students but also helped them intentionally choose texts that helped grow a love of independent reading, something we all know is increasingly difficult with reluctant readers.

YA literature was just as present in the Exhibit Hall. As a second-year attendee, I’ll admit that building my future classroom library is one of my favorite parts of the Convention, and the range of YA titles available did not disappoint. Publishers displayed books by reading level, genre, and theme—several featured collections centered on LGBTQ+ stories, authors of color, and books in verse. I took home everything from romantasy to contemporary fiction, and I appreciated the intentional showing of diverse voices. Still, I noticed there were some gaps in representation across cultural backgrounds, like Indigenous and Middle Eastern perspectives (despite growth on this front for other diverse groups!) and storytelling traditions—even a lack of graphic novels, an area I hope future Conventions continue to expand. Overall, the Convention reaffirmed how essential YA literature is to identity, belonging, and joyful reading in the classroom. 

Haley: Zines, fascicles, and commonplace books offer powerful models for how I can deepen students’ engagement with young adult literature in my own classroom, especially as I reflect on how YA texts were represented at the 2025 NCTE Convention. Observing the presence of YA literature at the Convention highlighted how we can have our students engage with texts using different and multimodal means, specifically in ways that depart from the didactic and expected essay summative assessment. These creative formats help me push against the ubiquity of the summative essay in my teaching in order to provide my students many different opportunities to demonstrate their learning.
 
Incorporating zines or fascicles allows me to position YA literature differently. These mediums serve as a space for critical exploration, multimodal thinking, and personal connection. These formats validate the complexity of YA texts by encouraging students to interpret, remix, and respond to them with intention and creativity. Integrating zines, fascicles, and commonplace books helps me model a more expansive view, one that treats YA texts as literature deserving of rigorous yet artistic analysis. Through sessions at NCTE and my discussions with practicing teachers at this year’s Convention, it is clear there is a need and a draw to build assessments for students that emphasize this critical exploration, leading to the pairing of YA literature with summative assessments that value creativity and multimodality.
 
Reflecting on NCTE, YA literature, and the use of multimedia ultimately strengthens my commitment to creating a classroom where YA literature is not peripheral but central, and where students engage with it through practices that honor its depth, diversity, and creative potential.

Benjamin: At the 2025 NCTE Convention, one of the sessions I attended focused on using YA graphic novels in the classroom. I am passionate about this topic and was incredibly lucky to find myself in a room of people who were also passionate about this topic. Something I found interesting was the presentation of YA in comparison with classic literature. The presenters criticized texts, like The Great Gatsby and The Catcher in the Rye, while praising YA literature. The point they were trying to make is that there should be no difference between books that make you feel good and books for learning: What’s wrong with enjoying what you’re reading and teaching? 
 
This wasn’t just the presenters’ view, though; the other teachers in the room agreed too. What was originally a presentation about YA graphic novels turned into a large roundtable discussion where everyone in the room talked about their experiences. Veteran and new teachers alike shared how using YA graphic novels has helped their students learn and helped them teach. People asked for recommendations, and everyone at the table had different things to share. It was heartening to hear so many teachers talk so enthusiastically about YA.
 
I’m not here to say that all of the classics are bad and should be avoided. I am saying that I saw a shift from my previous experiences in English education: These teachers were looking beyond the canon. Young adult literature is working its way into education in a way that I find to be inspiring.

Josie: During my time at the 2025 NCTE Convention, I observed and experienced young adult literature in countless meaningful and unique ways. From a multitude of daily sessions covering diverse topics and concerns in several subgenres of YA, to floating around the Exhibit Hall and soaking in hundreds of colorful book covers and acclaimed author-signings, to even having the privilege of hearing the beloved, award-winning writer and artist Jason Reynolds discuss his upcoming release of Soundtrack, the print version of his first original audiobook that came out this past summer, I came to know and love YA in ways I hadn't yet understood. Whereas before I had only known it in the context of pages and classroom discussions, I now know it for its ability to connect and unite people from across the country, including teachers, students, and the writers themselves.
 
I was in utter amazement to sit down in my first ever session with authors Angeline Boulley, Amber McBride, and Jasmine Paulino, and realize that they too knew and understood YA in the same way as everyone else in that room. They were no longer some far-removed, abstract names on book covers; they were real, breathing individuals who were passionate about and deeply connected to their works, and who spoke vulnerably, emotionally, and openly. From then on and throughout the Convention, I realized how the power of YA helps us as adults understand our own inner child, the children of our own, or the ones in our classroom, and helps the children we know and love understand themselves, their peers and friends, and what it even means to be a young adult. This all-encompassing, high-achieving genre is only capable to achieve such outcomes due to our own ability to love and connect with other humans, and I am eternally grateful that NCTE allowed me the opportunity to have this experience. 

Mark and Melanie: In our own careers, the NCTE Annual Convention is a fixture on our fall calendars. It is our professional home and, in stressful and uncertain times, it is often a personal sanctuary. Introducing new English language arts teachers to this community has also become a sustaining practice as teacher educators. Additionally, both of us are avid readers of young adult literature and use these stories in our own teaching (see George et al., 2024, for a few of our pedagogical approaches employing YA literature), and view the NCTE Convention as another tool for showing new teachers how it can also be a cornerstone of their own professional lives—as Ellie, Haley, Benjamin, and Josie have gracefully expressed.