Stories-To-Live-By with Kristin Valle Geren
In this special series of Classroom Caffeine in collaboration with the Stories-To-Live-By Collective, we talk with a group of K–12 teachers from across the state of Florida and former teachers now in higher education who are working together to explore how literacy teaching can respond to the climate crisis.
In this episode, we talk with Kristen Valle Geren. Kristin is a doctoral candidate in the Literacy Studies program in the College of Education at the University of South Florida and the Graduate Research Assistant for the Stories-to-Live-by Collective.
Before beginning her doctoral studies, Kristin taught elementary school and worked as a literacy coach in Tampa, Florida. Specifically, she worked in the community where she now engages in community-based educational research in an after school program with elementary-aged youth. As a child, Kristin’s family moved often due to her father’s military service, but she has lived in Florida for over 20 years now - all of her adult life. She came to the Stories-to-Live-By project through her interest in the ways children and teachers make sense of the places in which they live and teach and the possibilities of placemaking literacies for exploring issues of climate crisis.
For more information presented in this episode, check out: Perspectives on Practice: A Walk along Our River: Naming and Placing as a Start to Climate and Ecojustice Literacies Inquiry
To Cite this Episode: Persohn, L. (Host). (2025, Sept 9). Stories-To-Live-By with Kristin Valle Geren. (Season 6, No. 2) [Audio podcast episode]. In Classroom Caffeine Podcast series. https://www.classroomcaffeine.com/guests.