Ann Traynor, the director of advising and certification for UConn’s Neag School of Education, says students graduating this spring have begun creating online lesson plans to show prospective employers, and school professors are helping critique the lessons.

Host Danielle Scorrano invites READ listeners to enter the classroom with Devin Kearns, Ph.D. Kearns, a former teacher, is an expert in educational research and a professor of special education at the University of Connecticut. Kearns shares his expertise about dyslexia, dispels its pervasive myths, and presents research on reading.

Greenwich Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Toni Jones has appointed Dana Tulotta as assistant headmaster at Greenwich High School, effective July 1, 2020. Most recently, Tulotta held the role of Folsom House administrator at Greenwich High School in Greenwich, Conn.

“This graduation celebration is fitting because of the COVID-19 pandemic, as this is the way we started ScHOLA2RS House – a lot of uncertainty, some anxiety, fear of the unknown. Yet many of us were courageous to face this uncertainty, as we knew a blessing would come on the other side. That blessing has manifested today, the first ScHOLA2Rs House freshman cohort to graduate,” said Erik Hines, the first faculty director and former Neag School professor.

Connolly, a fifth-grade teacher at the Mather School in Boston and a former UConn women’s hockey player, has created a YouTube channel called “Ms. Connolly’s Math at Home,” which contains around 70 videos covering elementary school math topics from first to fifth grade.

Welcome back to another edition of Starkville! Jayson and Doug invite in MLB Network do-it-all and broadcasting icon, Bob Costas, to today’s show!

Superintendent Craig Cooke states, “I am very excited to have someone with Mr. Mihalko’s level of experience and background in regular and special education to our team. His work from Prek through grade 12 will bring new ideas and perspectives to Poquonock School. Jay impressed us all with his commitment to student learning and equity.”

Juanyi Li’s parents planned to fly from their hometown of Kunming, China, to Connecticut to watch her graduate. They had never been to campus and Li was eager to show them what life is like on an American college campus. “They made plans, but they had to cancel them,” Li said. “I started to plan my graduation a year ago. But it’s all canceled now.”

“We all are learning to adapt, but, this is not what we asked for, and we do not plan to continue when it is no longer required,” writes Tamika La Salle, an associate professor of school psychology at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education and a research scientist at its Center for Behavioral Educational Research.

“Rather than supporting students with my practical expertise, I have to narrow my own curriculum to address students’ anxiety regarding edTPA and answer logistical questions regarding the requirements and expectations, much of which they are not finding helpful to their practice,” Violet Jiménez Sims, an assistant clinical professor at the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, wrote in an op-ed.