Elizabeth Bromery

Elizabeth Watts Bromery, an English Professor at Broward County Public Schools, Florida, became an educator in 1990 as her parents raised her to equate education with social justice. She chose teaching to empower students to make valuable contributions to the global community and become positive change agents in the world. 

Elizabeth began teaching in an urban school of students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, including students from other countries who came to the United States for a better life and had little to no schooling. The motivation for this path was she aimed to reach more teachers and improve the lives of more students as a teacher educator and has made an outstanding contribution to the profession by sharing best practices with educators through the National Education Association (NEA) and Adobe Master Teacher projects; presentations at professional conferences; and publications in professional journals, books, and curriculum platforms. She has mentored preservice, new and veteran teachers through clinical education and professional learning, dedicating her adult life to improving the student achievement and social emotional wellness of students grades K-Adult as an educator. 

She has taught undergraduates in teaching literature and young adult literature, coordinated classroom field experiences, and supervised student teachers, served as Co-Director and teacher-facilitator for the North Florida Writing Project at Florida State University (FSU), designing and implementing summer institutes for English teachers from across Florida.  She has written interdisciplinary curricula on African and African American History for the Florida Commissioner of Education’s Task Force on African American History, used as a model for school districts in Florida. And she designed and implemented courses on multicultural education and equity and diversity. 

She has used creative teaching practices to spark and maintain engagement with her students, her first attempt at this was the SmartPhone Literature Project where students had to choose a character from literary works such as Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, or Macbeth and create a smartphone desktop for the character to navigate the plot and challenges in the literary work. Other innovations followed, such as students working in groups, discussing and creating a social media post and reflection on the poem “Mother to Son” by Langston Hughes. As a result of using such project-based learning and instructional scaffolding in the classroom, 100% of her 12th grade students have earned English credit and graduated from high school.  

Since October 2020, she has served students in the eLearning environment at home along with students in her bricks and mortar classroom and led an international student forum on Microsoft Teams with her students and those from Germany, Mexico, Egypt, Switzerland, Zimbabwe and the Czech Republic discussing aspects of their lives during the pandemic - school, family time, chores, hobbies, socializing with friends - as well as favorite films, TV shows and foods.  

Elizabeth has raised funds for high school, college, and graduate school scholarships, been a community educator for parents and caregivers for children with chronic illnesses. She has written grants to fund programs for educationally disadvantaged students and provided cultural programs to increase cross-cultural understanding.