Neag School alumni Jamie S. Baker ’03 (ED), ’04 MA, and Ronall L. Cannada ’05 (ED), ’06 MA visited the UConn Storrs campus this past spring to attend the inaugural 2019 Black History Month Networking Night, held to connect students from UConn’s ScHOLA2RS House, led by the Neag School’s Erik Hines, with alumni and friends of the University. They each reflect here on the impact of the event, as well as on their careers in education since graduating from the Neag School.

“I fully expect that over the next few years, Ivy will become not only a beloved teacher, but also a leader in the schools where she teaches and in the broader educational field,” says Horan’s faculty advisor and Neag School Prof. Dorothea Anagnostopoulos. “She will be a force to reckon with as she works to improve schools for and with her students and their communities.”

James Kaufman, a professor at the Neag School of Education, theorizes that creativity is both a widespread phenomenon and critical to human development. Rather than reserving the term “creative” for the favored few who produce globally acclaimed works of art or world-changing discoveries, he said, creativity is a label just as easily applied to the prosaic activities of everyday life — learning, problem-solving or making a junior high art project.

“Of course games and other forms of playful learning have a place in classrooms! Board games, card games, video games, role-playing game, simulations, even Kahoot!™ quizzes with leaderboards and badges—they can all contribute to student engagement, motivation, and the creation of an interactive situated-learning environment,” says Young.

Many school districts across Connecticut hold Neag School of Education teacher education graduates in the highest regard for potential employment.Throughout the Neag School’s partner school districts, juniors and seniors in the Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s (IB/M) program get firsthand student teaching experience in urban and suburban classroom settings; during their fifth year in the program, students receive further preparation through various professional development offerings and on-site internships.

E.B. Kennelly School in Hartford, Conn., hosted the second annual “UConn Day” at the school on May 2, an event that included a schoolwide parade and a basketball game with students playing against the teachers and staff.

Today, nearly every state recognizes and accepts American sign language (ASL) as a second or world language and a growing number of universities now offer ASL in fulfillment or foreign language requirements. The university is working on a partnership with the Neag School of Education for an ASL concentration within the world language teacher certification program.

But Douglas Kaufman, a literacy professor at UConn’s Neag School of Education, said the test is not culturally responsive and inclusive. In other words, it doesn’t consider the variety of ways that teachers connect to students or other hard-to-quantify measures.

Of the programs that do exist in California and elsewhere, there is no statewide quality control. A recent survey from the University of Connecticut found that most gifted classes in 2,000 schools in three Midwestern and Southern states didn’t actually provide much accelerated content.

“You don’t want to be hostage to even the well-meaning generosity of a philanthropists,” said Casey Cobb, an education policy professor at UConn’s Neag School of Education. “You don’t want to be held hostage to their vision or their way of getting there.”