Preservice education establishes the foundation for a successful science teaching career. However, preservice teachers often experience tension between their university and school-based experiences related to the different expectations for teaching and learning across these settings.

Faculty in the Neag School teacher education program this March brought together more than 70 people — from current students and alumni to local educators and school administrators — for an interactive discussion focused on the theme of “Teaching in Turbulent Times.” Prompted by ongoing discussion in recent months among faculty and educators about political divides surfacing in today’s classrooms, the event — led by Dorothea Anagnostopoulos, executive director of teacher education at the Neag School — was intended to serve as an opportunity for a diverse range of people in the education field to network and speak openly, offering suggestions and concerns.

The Neag School of Education has long dedicated itself to providing aspiring educators with in-depth, firsthand experience in the classroom as part of its rigorous teacher education program. Its partners include numerous schools across the state of Connecticut at the elementary, middle, and high school levels.

For the past 10 years, E.B. Kennelly, a public neighborhood elementary school in Hartford, Conn., has been one of those school partners — and an exemplary one at that, having been recognized this past year with the National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER) Richard W. Clark Exemplary Partner School Award for 2016. The award recognizes a partner school collaboration that is advancing the complex work of developing, sustaining, and renewing partner schools.

Congratulations to our Neag School alumni, faculty, staff, and students on their continued accomplishments inside and outside the classroom. If you have an accolade to share, we want to hear from you! Please send any news items and story ideas to neag-communications@uconn.edu.

The work of more than 70 faculty researchers and graduate students from the Neag School of Education will be presented as part of this year’s American Educational Research Association (AERA)’s Annual Meeting, taking place Thursday, April 27, through Monday, May 1, in San Antonio.

But as del Campo and Thomas Kehle, professor of school psychology at the University of Connecticut, who co-authored the review on ASMR and frisson point out: It appears that both are induced or enhanced through the practice of mindfulness, which involves focusing attention on one’s internal and external experiences in the present moment.

Zirin’s lecture, “Social Issues in Sport,” was featured as part of a newly created “Beyond the Field” lecture series, focusing on how sports and society are intertwined. The series was coordinated by the sport management branch of UConn’s Neag School of Education.

Sport management graduate student Khalil Griffith traveled to Kenya this past month for the second time, having visited previously in the summer of 2016. During this most recent trip, Griffith conducted workshops to promote healthy masculinity in villages throughout Kibera, a neighborhood in the city of Nairobi, and worked to implement positive youth curriculums in communities with the organization A Call to Men. Here, he shares his experiences from both trips, and how his ventures changed not only the lives of others, but his own as well.

Rachel Holden is a graduate student studying agricultural education at UConn’s Neag School through the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates.

Rachel Holden is a graduate student studying agricultural education at UConn, with the goal of becoming a teacher after she graduates in May 2017. She is currently student teaching at the agricultural science program at Lyman Hall High School in Wallingford, Connecticut, with a class of animal science students.