“One major issue is the fact that many of the students are Spanish-dominant or Spanish monolingual, which means that they are likely classified as English learners and therefore require specialized instruction from certified teachers, along with ongoing monitoring,” Liz Howard said.

Students from the UConn ScHOLA2RS House Learning Community visited Washington, D.C. last week to attend events surrounding the Congressional Black Caucus Annual Legislative Conference. While there, they met with UConn alumni and Connecticut legislators at a special networking reception honoring the students and their supporters.

“I am a Professor of Educational Psychology at the Neag School of Education at the University of Connecticut. My background is more in cognitive psychology (how people think). I study creativity – what it is, how to measure it, the positive outcomes, and how to nurture it. It sounds silly to both creative types and scientific types (the former thinks it’s pointless and the latter think it’s impossible), but my goal is to help creative people,” says James Kaufman.

“It’s not until they actually get out into the field, and see that they may be working in a place with English language learners, where they may think, ‘Oh, this might be an option for me to be a bilingual teacher or a TESOL teacher’,” Elizabeth Howard said. “And if they don’t land in a place, in a district, where there’s a high incidence of English learners, then it would not occur to them at all necessarily, they wouldn’t see the need for it.”

In Degrees of Change: UConn Increases Diversity in Teaching Programs, Enright states that “UConn and the Neag School of Education have made a concerted effort to increase their minority student population, with the long-term hope of closing the gap that exists now in classrooms.”

“College freshmen across Connecticut have unpacked their bags and gone through orientation, and are starting to adjust to life with a roommate,” says Drs. Richard and Kristin Schwab. “Now, after they worked hard to get to college and along with their families made sacrifices to attend, we offer a few suggestions to make the best of these next few years.”

In this episode of the of TeacherCast Podcast, we welcome ASCD Author Dr. Ronald Beghetto on the program to discuss his new book What If? Building Students’ Problem-Solving Skills Through Complex Challenges.

Listen in to Neag School Associate Dean Del Siegle, director of the National Center for Research on Gifted Children, discuss the identification of gifted students among English Language Learners.

A lack of diversity among classroom teachers in elementary and secondary schools has long been a national issue. In the state of Connecticut alone, less than 8 percent of teachers are of color, while students of color represent 40 percent of the population.

Neag School Jeffrey Villar ’96 MA, ’99 Ph.D. introduced the featured speaker at the convocation, George Sugai, who Villar referred to as “the guru of climate and culture” in educational settings.