“As we await a potential agreement between MLB ownership and the union to play the 2020 season, there is still a long bridge to cross between policy and reality,” says Doug Glanville, a Neag School faculty member and former MLB player. “In the end, it is a negotiation, and history tells us there must be a compromise if there’s going to be baseball this year. During this coronavirus pandemic, safety has no compromise, of course, but there are elements on the table that leave more room to meet in the middle.”
Cyberbullying could worsen during distance learning unless districts focus on positive online environments for kids, experts say.
The specific factors exacerbating potential threats include more access to technology, less adult supervision, and fewer distractions, said Sandra Chafouleas, a professor at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education.
“Take time to care for yourself. Pause, listen, and catch your breath. Then make sure everyone around you can breathe, too,” says Dean Gladis Kersaint.
Black lives matter. We share the grief, sadness, and anger at the loss of George Floyd, whose murder follows so closely on that of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others. Each of their lives, like each and every Black life in our community and around the world, is unique, beautiful, and irreplaceable, and deserving of respect and dignity. The great and abiding shame of our nation is our inability to acknowledge, confront, and redress the legacy of white supremacy and the failure of our institutions, particularly our law enforcement institutions, to respect the human rights of black and brown people.
“I urge white Americans to reflect on their intentions for allying with #BlackLivesMatter. I hope that we all understand that supporting black Americans is the right intention. That means doing a lot more than posting on social media,” writes Jack Kitching, a Neag School alumnus and high school social studies teacher in Hartford.
It’s one thing to learn a skill in a class. It’s another to practice it in the real world, where conceptual lines are blurrier than they are in textbooks. It’s a distinction that leads many professional training programs to feature internships, which some may call clinical experiences of practicums, to complement the skills students learn in class. It is one that led the University of Connecticut’s Administrator Preparation Program (UCAPP) to reexamine internships when it began revamping its offerings to strengthen principal training.
Violet Jiménez Sims, a faculty member in the Neag School and New Britain Schools board of education member, comments on the board’s vow of inclusion in response to George Floyd’s death.
“As we piece together what the new normal might look like in our high schools, we should take advantage of this disruption to reconfigure the many moving parts that have been used as excuses for maintaining the status quo,” says Michele Back, an assistant professor of secondary and world languages education in UConn’s Neag School of Education.
“We need to get ahead of this crisis to survive and thrive together. It is time to provide alternate options in education preparation so we can continue to prepare high-quality leaders and teachers within this ‘new normal,'” says Patricia Virella, a Ph.D. student at the Neag School and faculty member at Sarah Lawrence College’s Art of Teaching Program.
We recently spotted a great quote from James C. Kaufman, a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Connecticut that said: “If creativity is a light, it does not have an on/off switch.”
