NFA faculty, along with students from the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, guided the dual-session program meant to give sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders a summer boost in STEM education and aspiring teachers a real-world classroom experience.

“If you go strictly by the official account, heatstroke was the cause of death for University of Maryland football player Jordan McNair. McNair died earlier this year following a grueling practice in which training staff failed to properly diagnose and treat his condition. But there’s another culprit – or at least a contributing factor – that should not be overlooked,” says Joseph Cooper, an associate professor of educational leadership in the Neag School of Education.

Over 75 students entering grades 6, 7, and 8 participated in a free STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) enrichment program at NFA this summer. Guided by NFA faculty in collaboration with aspiring teachers from UConn’s Neag School of Education, the young students from Norwich and surrounding towns received a summer boost in their STEM education with hands-on learning to explore creative approaches to scientific questions, applying mathematics to modern day problems, and solving complex STEM problems, while having fun working in teams with new friends.

Public Advocates, a nonprofit law and advocacy organization, is pushing for greater oversight, clearer accounting measures and more parental involvement in charter school financial affairs in a recently released report indicating most California charter schools are either failing to fully disclose how special assistance funds are spent or are not reporting the spending altogether.

Project SPARK at Brookside and Kendall elementary schools, part of a federal grant for gifted education run by researchers from the University of Connecticut, seeks to train teachers to better identify children with advanced potential for learning.

An intervention designed to promote healthy growth, which taught first-time moms how to respond with age-appropriate responses to their babies’ needs, resulted in children having lower body mass indexes (BMIs) when they were 3 years old.

Devin Kearns, an assistant professor of special education at the University of Connecticut, told the Register he believes genetic research has “a lot of really amazing potential to help kids of all kinds.” Reached for comment last week, Kearns, who has an appointment at the Haskins Laboratory at Yale but claims no affiliation with the Lexinome Project or its staff, said his research has to do with neuroimaging, or tracing development of young people’s brains as they are exposed to different reading interventions.

Professor Catherine Little writes this original piece for the National Association of Gifted Children, about rethinking the practice of using gifted learners as peer tutors in the classroom.

Ronald Beghetto wears many others in studying and working to inspire creativity, especially in education. He is one of the speakers at the Creativity Conference at Southern Oregon University August 3-6. And he visits with us about his work on creativity.

“Each year, I have the opportunity to work with preservice teachers to provide a little bit of information for them about gifted education. During that workshop, someone always brings up the idea that one great way to work with advanced learners – particularly the teacher pleasers and ‘fast finishers’ among them – is to have them help the other kids with their work. These developing professionals, along with some of the practicing teachers with whom they work, are secure in their belief that this approach is a win for everyone. Students are kept busy, the struggling student has individual support, and surely the gifted learner will benefit because “we all learn something better when we have to teach it to others,” writes Catherine Little, a professor of educational psychology at UConn’s Neag School of Education.