Creative activities served as a buffer that helped many older adults cope with isolation, stress and fear during the pandemic, according to James C. Kaufman of the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut, Storrs. He points to research that suggests that participation in arts—crafts as well as dance, singing or painting—helps increase social engagement, stave off depression and keep older adults mentally engaged and active.

Virtual classrooms may become a permanent fixture in the state of Connecticut. New legislation tasks the state’s Department of Education to develop plans for a K-12 statewide remote learning school that would use the same curriculum and have the same school year length as a traditional school, but would be under the jurisdiction of the State Board of Education.

It was coming home,” U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona ’01 MA, ’04 6th Year, ’11 Ed.D., ’12 ELP said of heading to Pratt & Whitney Stadium at Rentschler Field to give this year’s commencement address. Students could not have agreed more. At a string of outdoor ceremonies May 8–12, students and families gathered together for the first time in many long pandemic months.

The federal government has sent a wave of funding to local schools across the country looking to bolster student performance and make up for lessons lost to remote learning, and the result is that teachers and tutors are in high demand and short supply, particularly in math and fields that were already difficult hires.

“Summer school programs help children get better at both reading and mathematics. Students who attend summer school tend to have higher test scores than those who don’t, which means that offering voluntary summer programs is likely to help students catch up from pandemic-related learning slowdowns,” says Kathleen Lynch, an assistant professor of learning sciences at UConn’s Neag School of Education.

“The visits to UConn are really important to the students taking UConn classes for credit in high school,” says Brendan Wilkosz ’03 (ED), ’04 M.Ed., who has been at Berlin HS since 2004, and teaches a chemistry class that grants UConn credit through the ECE program. “There can be a disconnect for the students if they are physically separated from UConn. This year, that was not possible, but it was important for me to do something, so we worked on a virtual day. There was a real willingness at UConn to get that done to have students experience the challenges and complexities of the work, but also see that the research is cutting edge.”

Sarah Woulfin, an associate professor at UConn’s Neag School of Education, said she prioritized students’ humanity during the pandemic, which she hopes will continue. “I am somewhat optimistic that this will stay in a certain way and perhaps in certain pockets,” she said.

“I think it’s a nice gesture, but I think that it’s more important to see what the city does in terms of actions, policies that have an impact on people’s every day lives,” says Tamika La Salle, an associate professor at the Neag School of Education.

To support teachers in implementing ambitious reform efforts, professional developers and teacher educators need to know more about teachers’ thinking about argumentation. Specifically, there is a need to understand more about teachers’ views and evaluations of students’ mathematical arguments as they play out in practice. In this article, we share a tool developed to elicit teachers’ pre- and post evaluations of students’ mathematical arguments on a problem-solving task

LEARN, the Regional Educational Service Center for southeastern Connecticut, has hired Tricia Lee as principal of The Friendship School in Waterford. Presently, Lee serves as assistant principal at The Friendship School.