NCAC ‘s Youth Free Expression Program provides advocacy training, guidance on activism to defend banned books and opportunities for leadership on issues like student free press freedom. Students also will receive assistance in amplifying their voices with publishing opportunities.
MEET OUR TRAINERS
Jonathan Gaston-Falk
Jonathan Gaston-Falk is an Education Law attorney with broad experience spanning almost a decade representing both school district and student clients. Jonathan was a high school student journalist for the inaugural class of contributors for the York High School newspaper The Talon in Yorktown, Virginia. He subsequently earned a Bachelor’s from the University of Virginia and a Juris Doctor and Master of Urban Planning from the State University of New York at Buffalo. Jonathan joined SPLC in March 2022 following a five year tenure with the Legal Aid Society of Rochester, New York as Program Director of the Education Law Unit, during which time he advocated for the free speech rights of students before countless boards of education and the Commissioner of Education in Albany.
Betsy Gomez
Betsy Gomez is the Assistant Director of Communications & Outreach for ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom, and Coordinator for Unite Against Book Bans and the Banned Books Week Coalition. Betsy is the former coalition and editorial director for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, an advocacy organization dedicated to the First Amendment rights of the comics community. Gomez edited and designed the award-winning publication CBLDF Presents: She Changed Comics, which profiles more than 60 groundbreaking women who expanded the expressive possibilities of the comics medium. With more than a decade of professional experience defending intellectual freedom, Gomez also has an extensive background in educational publishing as a content developer and editor. She also oversaw the Berkeley Poetry Slam and helped organize other San Francisco-Bay Area arts events for more than a decade.
Sarah Miller
Sarah Miller is the Senior Coordinator of Book Initiatives and Intellectual Freedom at the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). She is the staff liaison for the Build Your Stack® Committee, the NCTE Children’s Book Awards, and the Standing Committee Against Censorship. Since 2021 she has coordinated the work of the Intellectual Freedom Center, which provides resources and support to educators preparing for or responding to censorship challenges. More recently she has spearheaded the work of the This Story Matters Teacher Corps, working closely with cohorts of teachers from across the country who are creating new rationales for NCTE’s rationale database.
Lin Oliver
Lin Oliver is a children’s book author, writer-producer of family and children’s television series, and movies, a former Vice-President of Universal Studios, and co-founder of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. She served as the Executive Director of SCBWI from its inception in 1971 until 2022. While Lin mostly writes funny books, such as Who Shrunk Daniel Funk? novels, she also writes about challenges people face. The New York Times best-selling book series Hank Zipzer: World’s Best Underachiever, which she co-wrote with Henry Winkler, is about a boy with learning differences. Her latest novels, ALIEN SUPERSTAR, which detail the adventures of an alien who arrives in Hollywood to star in his own television Oshow, provide a satiric look at our culture and a commentary on authoritarian regimes. Lin, a college student (and hippie) who marched for peace and protested war, attended UCLA and UC Berkeley where she majored in English, and received a Masters in Educational Psychology. Reflecting on her college days, Lin says, “I’m glad I attended school when young people were speaking up about world politics and taking a role to shape our government and change our future.”