Polykosmia is a universe dreamed up by students in two classes led this spring by Stephen Slota (he/him, they/them), Neag School assistant professor-in-residence of educational technology. The project, an exercise in both worldbuilding and lesson planning, involved designing everything from mythologies to local governments to individual character arcs. Students also learned how to adapt worldbuilding activities into K–12 classrooms and how to design lesson plans that connected story objectives in a fictional world with learning objectives in the classroom.

Tamika P. La Salle, an associate professor of educational psychology with the University of Connecticut’s
Neag School of Education, said immigrant families tend to come with much more of a group mentality.

“It’s not just doing better for them, it’s doing better for their families and making their family proud. A lot of them have this collective identity,” said La Salle.

The Neag Foundation has provided the UConn Collaboratory on School and Child Health (CSCH) with a two-year grant to facilitate work in the Think about the Link Project. The project builds from the CDC’s Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model to fully acknowledge the many interrelated components involved in supporting student well-being. The Think about the Link Project offers practical tools to help schools enhance their work by incorporating the WSCC model in decision-making across academic, social, emotional, behavioral, and physical supports. 

Graduation, prom, banquets, trips. Our teenagers are lamenting so many lost milestones. My daughter, a high school senior, recently summed up her thoughts about graduating amid a pandemic: “It feels like the light at the end of the tunnel was just snuffed out.”

“Many white families in America want to live in a certain type of community and want their kids to be educated in a certain type of school,” says Casey Cobb, the Neag Professor of Educational Policy. “It’s often not malicious, not overt, and not articulated. It’s just the broad pattern of how white Americans move about this land, and perhaps that’s the definition of a privilege that is increasingly being called out.”

“We had had a concerted effort to work with more urban districts in the state,” said Casey Cobb, professor of educational policy at the University of Connecticut, who helped reorient UCAPP’s approach to district partnerships. “But we never had formal partnerships beyond one with the Hartford School District. The Wallace initiative gave us the opportunity to reach out to districts to support their leadership development pathways.”

“As a parent, it is a daily struggle not to get swept up in the sadness of the losses forced by COVID-1,” writes Sandra Chafouleas, a UConn Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor. “As a school psychologist, I am trying my best to heed what I know about coping and promoting resilience. Life is supposed to present us with bumps — bumps can help us grow if the right supports are available to brace for them. But the intensity of the current global situation means that we need to identify and draw on positive coping resources more purposefully.”

Six of these faculty members met earlier this year at the UConn Hartford campus in the historic Hartford Times Building to discuss changes in the program thus far, elements that appear to work well, elements that present some challenges and directions the program may take in days and years ahead. Wallace’s editorial staff had the opportunity to listen in and report back.

Doug Glanville writes and narrates a personal call to action in response to the passing of George Floyd.

“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.”