Sue O’Connell hit the streets to find out about people’s holiday traditions. She also spoke with Neag School of Education Professor Sandra Chafouleas about how important these rituals are to the holiday season.

Friday was International Human Rights Day and the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education and Dodd Human Rights Impact Program both recognized the occasion. The virtual event Friday was highlighted by the appearance of U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Car-dona, who provided opening remarks. The roundtable featured former U.S. Sen. Christopher Dodd, Conard High School teacher Abigail Esposito, UConn graduate student Tyler Gleen and Capitol Region Education Council Civic Leadership High School student Zoe Maldonado.

As part of the observation of International Human Rights Day, the Neag School and Dodd Impact programs are jointly hosting a series of virtual workshops that introduce the intersecting fields of human rights education and civics education to undergraduate and fifth-year students in the Neag School’s pre-service teacher education program and in its Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates, or TCPCG.

“The stress is really the number one reason that we have. The teachers are reporting leaving the field prior to retirement and the rates of stress are increasing across all teachers and increasing at faster rates for elementary school teachers,” Lisa Sanetti, a professor of educational psychology at UConn’s Neag School of Education.

In our last episode, we dove into identifying the gaps between “learning” and “doing”, highlighting the work of University Principal Preparation Initiative. We learned that through thoughtful planning using frameworks developed by Wallace to address the growing need for more collaboration between districts and universities. In this episode, we’re going to dive into a case study of how one UPPI program at University of Connecticut and what they’ve learned from their program redesign. We spoke at length with Richard Gonzales, who oversees the principalship and superintendency program at UConn and serves as the director of UConn’s UPPI initiative project, specifically about the redesign of their core assessments.

“It’s important to have a relatively good handle on the expected number of children coming into a school, coming into a grade, because schools need to plan and districts need to plan way out in advance in terms of hiring new staff or reconfiguring staffing,” said Morgaen Donaldson, a professor at the UConn Neag School of Education.

The Association of Fraternity/Sorority Advisors (AFA) is pleased to announce Dr. Adam McCready, Dr. Trace Camacho, Dr. Crystal Garcia, and Kahlin McKeown as its 2022 Oracle editorial leadership team.

Preston Green, at the University of Connecticut, said there’s more at stake than the rights of students attending charter schools, which have continued to experience growth through the pandemic. If charters are not state actors, it would be easier for them to exclude some students, he said.

“I think when you have a greater understanding and a greater awareness of what type of disability it is, I think parents are asking those questions of their pediatricians or even school personnel,” says Tracy Sinclair, an assistant clinical professor of special education at the UConn Neag School of Education. “Better diagnostic tools allow doctors to diagnose children with autism as early as nine months — allowing these children to receive services as soon as possible.”

The challenges created by this fall’s contentious school board elections also offer superintendents and their teams a chance to bridge some political divides, says Casey D. Cobb, a professor of education policy a the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education.