Kelly Villar, 43, a mom of six who teaches second grade at Southeast Elementary School in Mansfield, was selected last June as the Iditarod’s designated “teacher on the trail,” a year-round role created in 2000 to extract educational opportunities from the fabled, 1,000-mile sled dog race. She recently served as the race’s “teacher on the trail.”

“Jordan is a great addition to our defensive staff as our linebacker coach,” said Head Coach Greg Gattuso. “Jordan worked with us two years ago and did an outstanding job for our staff, which made this an easy choice for our defensive coaches and myself.”

“I coached rowing at UConn and got my master’s in sport management,” says Strodel. “That allowed me to dabble in coaching. From there, I did go into the real world.”

“It has the potential to be awesome, but not this way,” said Michael Young, a University of Connecticut professor who specializes in education technology.

“Thanks to the coronavirus, my third-grade twins are home all day for the foreseeable future,” says Jennie Weiner. “I’m not going to recreate school for them.”

As school closures are announced across the state and country, the Neag School looked to its resident experts to provide guidance and insights for students, parents, educators, and administrators.

Congratulations to our Neag School alumni, faculty, staff, and students on their continued accomplishments inside and outside the classroom. If you have an accolade to share, we want to hear from you! Please send any news items and story ideas to neag-communications@uconn.edu.

“While I genuinely appreciate and value that edTPA is a way of making certain that teacher candidates demonstrate the knowledge and skills required to help all students learn in real classrooms, I am deeply concerned at the impact I see it having on aspiring educators,” says Patel-Lye.

Jason Gilmore, a Guilford resident and art teacher at McDonough Middle School in Hartford, was named the recipient of the 2020 Rogers Educational Innovation Fund, a $5,000 annual award for an innovative project for elementary- or middle-school level classrooms.

“Without edTPA, I believe my colleagues and I could better focus on attracting and supporting teachers into the shortage areas that already exacerbate the issues faced by many of our districts, especially those with high concentrations of students of color and students living in poverty,” says Violet Jiménez Sims, an assistant clinical professor at the Neag School of Education.