Lisa Famularo: Our primary role is to work with CLAS faculty and staff to make sure that the career-related needs of CLAS students are being met. We not only carry out the programs that the CCD offers to all students, but we also tailor these resources to the unique needs of CLAS majors.

There is a wide divide between political debates about the teaching of reading and the actual instruction students receive in classrooms. The sloppy, mudslinging nature of these debates has led to confusion, distrust and a tribe-like affiliation with single approaches among practitioners, researchers and policymakers.

Like most kids heading into seventh grade, Jesús Cortés-Sanchez was not yet thinking ahead to a future career. What mattered most then was enjoying time with his friends. Even into his high school years, the idea of going to college was not on his mind. An undocumented student ineligible to apply for federal student aid, he viewed college as an unrealistic, financially impossible feat.

All of that would start to change when a recent Yale School of Music graduate named John Miller began recruiting students to a new band program he had established at Cortés-Sanchez’s middle school in New Haven, Conn.

“One major issue is the fact that many of the students are Spanish-dominant or Spanish monolingual, which means that they are likely classified as English learners and therefore require specialized instruction from certified teachers, along with ongoing monitoring,” Liz Howard said.

Students from the UConn ScHOLA2RS House Learning Community visited Washington, D.C. last week to attend events surrounding the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference. While there, they met with UConn alumni and Connecticut legislators at a special networking reception honoring the students and their supporters.

Two research projects co-led by professors in the Neag School of Education have recently been awarded a total of more than $2.5 million in federal funding, made available through the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Editor’s Note: This month, Teach.com — an educational web resource for information on becoming a teacher — features Neag School alumna Natalie Curran ’11 (ED), ’12 MA in its “8 Questions” series, which showcases teachers who have transitioned their classroom skills into new and exciting careers in, and beyond, the field of education.

Professor James Kaufman, the author/editor of more than 35 books, is interviewed in this piece focused on books and reading, which originally appeared on The Readings Lists blog. 

“I am a Professor of Educational Psychology at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. My background is more in cognitive psychology (how people think). I study creativity – what it is, how to measure it, the positive outcomes, and how to nurture it. It sounds silly to both creative types and scientific types (the former thinks it’s pointless and the latter think it’s impossible), but my goal is to help creative people,” says James Kaufman.

“It’s not until they actually get out into the field, and see that they may be working in a place with English language learners, where they may think, ‘Oh, this might be an option for me to be a bilingual teacher or a TESOL teacher’,” Elizabeth Howard said. “And if they don’t land in a place, in a district, where there’s a high incidence of English learners, then it would not occur to them at all necessarily, they wouldn’t see the need for it.”