The Neag School of Education continues to achieve top-ranking status as a graduate school of education in the U.S.; it is the No. 1 public graduate school of education in the Northeast, and it is overall No. 33 in the nation, as ranked by U.S. News & World Report.
In its annual review of the best graduate schools in the country released in March, U.S. News & World Report ranks the Neag School No. 33 among the 279 private and public education schools. Also significant are the rankings of the Neag School’s core programs, which are individually assessed by U.S. News. Three rank among the nation’s top 25, including Elementary Education (18), Special Education (20) and Educational Leadership and Supervision (22).
Each year, U.S. News gathers opinion data from school superintendents and deans to rank professional school programs. Thomas DeFranco, dean of the Neag School, describes the findings as “very encouraging” and believes the rankings serve as one of several barometers used by the Neag School to assess its reputation and quality of its programs.
DeFranco also believes a factor helping to build the Neag School’s reputation is its work with public schools in Connecticut and across the country. “Faculty within the Neag School are not only focused on research and scholarship, they are committed to working in partnership with classroom teachers and sharing information about best practices and improving the academic performance of children,” he says.
One alumni survey responder said, “I think the most valuable experiences I had in the Neag School were the connections I made with my professors. I always felt well supported and mentored by the professors I had, and I still email with several of them for advice and help. These professors are not only experts in their fields, but valuable resources and friends to all students in the Neag School.”
“Our goal is to produce highly qualified teachers, principals, superintendents and health professionals who will impact the academic performance and health and well-being of children and adults in Connecticut and in the nation,” DeFranco says.
Top row, L-R, Rachel Buck, Dr. Diana Payne, Sidway McKay, Dr. Jean Wihbey and Dr. Heather Gibson; bottom row, L-R, W. Kurt Telford, Dean Tom DeFranco and Fran Mainella
The Neag School of Education Alumni Society and the faculty of the Neag School of Education recently held its 13th Annual Awards Dinner and recognized outstanding alumni.
“This evening was memorable as faculty and alumni gathered to formally recognize the achievements of some of our outstanding graduates,” said Dr. Tom DeFranco, dean of the Neag School of Education. “Our award recipients are educators who have made significant contributions across all levels of education. We know that you will agree with our outstanding selection of alumni to honor.”
The Distinguished Alumnus is Ms. Fran Mainella, B.S. ‘69, visiting scholar with Clemson University’s Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism Management. Prior to that, she had a 40-year park and recreation career culminating as director of the U.S. Department of Interior’s National Parks Service.
The Outstanding Higher Education Professional is Dr. Jean A. Wihbey, Ph.D., ’02, provost with the Palm Beach State College, Palm Beach Gardens, FL.
The Outstanding School Administrator is Mr. W. Kurt Telford, B.S., ’79, principal with West Forsyth High School in Clemmons, NC.
The Outstanding School Educator is Ms. Rachel L. Buck, B.S. ’01, M.A. ’02, math teacher with the Connecticut IB Academy, East Hartford, CT.
The Outstanding Kinesiology Professional is Dr. Heather Gibson, M.A., ’89, Ph.D, ’94, associate professor in the Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management at the University of Florida and an associate director of the Eric Friedheim Tourism Institute in Gainesville, FL.
The Outstanding Physical Therapy Professional is Ms. Sidway A. McKay, B.S. ’85, physical therapist with the Concentra Medical Centers in Denver, CO and lecturer/adjunct faculty member with the University of Colorado, School of Medicine’s Physical Therapy Program.
The Outstanding Professional is Dr. Diana L. Payne, Ph.D. ‘07, assistant professor and education coordinator with Connecticut Sea Grant, in Groton, CT.
For more information on the Neag School of Education or the Neag Alumni Society, visit www.education.uconn.edu. To visit a photo album from the event, click here.
The classroom middle and high school math teacher has a lot to tackle these days. He or she needs to continue developing content knowledge as it pertains to algebraic and proportional reasoning, help students form an academic language for expressing and understanding math concepts, and shape a pedagogy that will enhance justification and higher order thinking skills.
But they also are called on to step up and be math leaders in their schools, often in settings where they are part of a committee and not officially in charge.
With this scope of skills in mind, a group of Neag math educators and a mathematician are creating a yearlong Math Leadership Academy for about 30 teachers in four school districts, with the support of a $380,000 grant from the state Department of Higher Education. The 12 credits of graduate coursework begin with training in July, continue with weekly seminars in the fall and spring, and culminate in an April 28, 2012, symposium.
“If we do this well, we’ll have a nice collaborative group that will be a resource for one another to work together on problems and improve their practice,” Dr. Megan Staples, a Neag math educator and co-director of the project, says.
Participating math teachers or those in related specialties will have at least three years of classroom teaching experience, hold a provisional or professional educator teaching certificate, and be motivated to improve their practice and leadership skills. Tuition and fees are paid through the grant. The 30 spots are almost filled and there is a wait list, Staples says.
The teachers are in districts already connected through Neag’s Integrated Bachelor’s/Master’s Teacher Education Program and its post-graduate teacher certification program. Districts are Hartford, East Hartford, Manchester and Vernon, with at least two teachers chosen from most of the participating schools in an effort to strengthen the academy’s ongoing impact.
Participants can earn 12 credits toward a master’s degree or a Sixth-Year Certificate. Six credits are tied to two courses – math and pedagogy – in the intensive nine days of training in July. The fall and spring weekly seminars each carry three credits. During the year, participants will apply coursework and new ideas and support other teachers’ learning. The year will culminate in a symposium open to academy enrollees, Neag students and others.
Setting up a leadership network among in-service teachers in Grades 6-12, even between districts, is the new piece.
“We define leadership a little bit more broadly, not just as formal leadership,” Staples says. “Teachers are taking on leadership roles on committees in collaborative relationships. How does one navigate a system that is flat hierarchically?”
Staples explains that on a committee in a school setting with a flat hierarchy, “you’re supposed to be peers with everybody but you might be the point person to facilitate and make recommendations. The districts were very excited that this was an aspect. They told us, ‘Yes, we need that.’ ”
Dr. Mary Truxaw, also a Neag math educator, is the project director and will teach the pedagogy course with Staples. Dr. Fabiana Cardetti, co-director on the project and assistant professor in the UConn Math Department, and Dr. Reed Solomon, an associate professor there, will teach the math content class. Elements from the two courses will be tied together in the training, and academic year seminar project ideas will grow out of that work.
The other elements of the academy’s focus – content reasoning, math justification discipline, academic language and pedagogy – are crucial underpinnings for the leadership goal.
“In leadership how this all fits in, especially in a flat hierarchy, somebody’s expertise in an area is very important for them being able to influence or being turned to as a leader,” Staples says. “One of the most important pieces for someone who is in a role is that pedagogical expertise. We’re really working on pedagogy and content because that is the foundation for being a math leader. You need to be confident in what you’re doing to express that to others.”
Due to recent federal budget cuts, the Math Leadership Academy has funding for one year only, Staples says. But she is hopeful about its impact, which will reach not only teachers in the field, some former Neag graduates, but pre-service teachers at Neag.
One academy participant, Vanessa Rodriguez, a Neag IB/M program graduate who has been teaching math for five years at Bulkeley High School in Hartford, will be supervising a Neag intern next school year. “That student gets wonderful exposure and will see work Vanessa is doing through the academy,” Staples says. “Because we partner with student teacher districts, the idea is that this overall capacity building cycles back and supports our students and the work we do here.”
Carl Maresh, kinesiology professor and department head, was named a Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor at the spring Board of Trustees meeting. This is the highest award bestowed on faculty within UConn and honors faculty who have achieved exceptional distinction in the areas of scholarship, teaching and service, including public engagement, and who excel in at least one.
Maresh joins two other faculty within the Neag School who have earned this distinction — Joe Renzulli and Sally Reis.
Over the past few years, through Maresh’s leadership, scholarship and vision, the Human Performance Lab has been recognized as one of the top research facilities in the country while the Department of Kinesiology has the distinction of the No. 1 ranked doctoral program in the country, for the second consecutive time.
Maresh has been a faculty member at UConn and director of the Human Performance Laboratory since 1985, and department head of kinesiology since 1998. He holds joint professorships in the departments of Physiology & Neurobiology and Nutritional Sciences. Before moving to Connecticut, he was the department head and director of the Health Institute at St. Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, Mo., and then a senior physiologist in the BioOrganic Chemistry Department of Midwest Research Institute in Kansas City.
Maresh is a fellow of both the American College of Sports Medicine and a past member of the National Board of Trustees (Basic and Applied Science) for ACSM. He is also an active fellow in the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education. Among his other professional memberships are the American Physiological Society, the National Strength and Conditioning Association, the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Association of University Professors.
Getting a good grip on your health may mean … getting a good grip. The force you can muster when squeezing an object or a weight doesn’t only reveal how strong your hand and arm are. It can be a measure of overall muscle function and — according to one recent study — even portend how long you’re likely to live.
That’s not as nutty as it seems, says Richard Bohannon, a professor of physical therapy at UConn’s Neag School of Education. “Grip strength reflects your overall muscle status and a general sense of how much muscle mass you have,” he says. “If you have more muscle in your upper body, you probably have more in your lower body as well.” And if your muscles are wasting, you’re further down the road to frailty.
The readings naturally change with time: A woman age 30 to 34 has an average grip strength of 70 pounds, Bohannon says, whereas an 80- to 84-year-old woman has an average grip strength of 37.6 pounds. That’s because after middle age, muscle mass starts declining at the rate of approximately 1 percent per year, in a process called sarcopenia. But sarcopenia can be warded off. And readings that are abnormally poor for one’s age can be a good wake-up call that something is amiss and that maybe it’s time to take charge and build up your strength.
Scientists, physical therapists and physicians often assess grip strength because it’s an easy, noninvasive test that measures overall muscle power fairly accurately. Patients, or study subjects, simply grip a hand-held dynamometer with a spring or hydraulic mechanism that registers pounds of compression. Sometimes the dominant hand is measured, sometimes the non-dominant, and sometimes both.
Not everyone is tested for hand-grip strength routinely. A college soccer player with an ACL tear probably won’t undergo a grip test, because he or she has ample muscle stores. But a frail elderly person might, or someone who has lost muscle mass through illness or medical treatments such as chemotherapy.
The test has its limitations, says Duane Knudson, chairman of the Department of Health and Human Performance at Texas State University in San Marcos. “If you’re trying to make sure an older person has enough strength to do the activities of daily living, it’s very valuable,” he says. “If you’re trying to make a more global prediction of how healthy they’ll be, it’s not as good. It depends on what the purpose is.”
Weak grip strength has been associated with higher mortality rates, however. For example, a 2010 study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal found that among 555 85-year-olds, those who lost the most hand-grip strength over a period of four years died in greater numbers over a 9.5-year period. And in a 2006 study, scientists found a correlation between better hand-grip strength and higher cognitive function and hemoglobin levels among 3,522 people age 71 to 93.
Other interesting grip-strength correlations have emerged in studies. One has to do with diet. A 2008 report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society showed a correlation between eating more fatty fish — a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids — and better grip strength among 2,983 men and women age 59 to 73. Other studies have shown that omega-3 fatty acids may promote muscle protein metabolism.
And it looks as though early events may influence the grip strength — and presumably overall muscle strength — you get. A 2007 study found that women in their 20s and 30s with higher birth weights had greater grip strength than those with lower birth weights — implying that fetal development could influence muscle strength later in life.
A weak grip may not always need shoring up, Bohannon says. Not being able to get out of a chair or walk without falling has more serious consequences than, say, not being able to open a jar. But if it interferes with daily functions, then strengthening exercises may be in order — “though that doesn’t mean grabbing one of those hand grippers or a palm-size ball and squeezing away.”
“Exercise physiologists and sports medicine specialists want you to use large muscle groups that burn calories and train the heart and vascular systems,” Bohannon says. “In the weight room, you’ll constantly be using those gripping muscles,” as well as other muscle groups.
The larger take-home message from all of this is less about grip strength per se and more about the importance of staying generally fit and strong throughout life.
“A strength program is important, no doubt about it,” Bohannon says. “Even if your grip strength is normal, you still want some reserves.”
Sandra Chafouleas, professor of educational psychology, observes a third grade class at Tolland Intermediate School. Photo by Peter Morenus
As a school psychologist and school administrator who specialized in working with behaviorally challenged children, Dr. Sandra Chafouleas learned first hand that schools are held accountable, not only for educating students, but also for addressing students’ behavioral issues and helping them to develop their social skills.
“We’re well beyond the days of reading, writing and arithmetic,” says Chafouleas, who joined the Department of Educational Psychology faculty at the Neag School of Education in 2000, noting that schools “have to be able to identify problems early and make informed decisions about what to do when these problems arise.”
With her distinctive professional expertise, Chafouleas is able to offer valuable insight into the field of school psychology as a professor in Neag’s program. Today she works closely with students of a different age – graduate students and postdoctoral fellows whom she teaches, mentors and guides in a diverse range of research projects in educational psychology.
While her teaching skills earned her the UConn Alumni Association‘s Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award in 2009, Chafouleas’ own scholarship as a research scientist in Neag’s Center for Behavioral Education and Research has been significant as well. Publishing prolifically over the past 10 years, including more than 80 journal articles, she has been awarded nearly $3.5 million in research grants. Much of her recent work has focused on the area of behavioral assessment –an area where she, having worked alongside children with behavioral issues, saw a gap in the research.
Funded by a four-year, $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Chafouleas’ current research has centered in part on a rating system used by schoolteachers to monitor students’ patterns of behavior in the classroom. Using the data they collect with this behavior rating system, teachers can more easily evaluate students’ conduct and provide them and their parents or other teachers with specific feedback about their behavior. With a new $2.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education coming into place, Chafouleas will continue to evaluate the utility of this behavior assessment system on a larger scale over the next four years.
Chafouleas and her co-investigators are working to evaluate the validity and usefulness of such behavioral assessment tools. As she explains, expanding on research in this area is essential to determine “how we can build tools to communicate better across systems such as home and school, and how can we track student behavior over time in a way that is efficient and easy.”
Developing effective behavior rating tools may not only offer reliable quantitative data about students’ behavior, Chafouleas says, but also ultimately help prevent disruptions in the classroom and improve students’ academic performance as well as their behavioral and social interactions
This year’s graduating Neag School of Education’s Robert Noyce scholars of the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates (TCPCG) come from particularly diverse backgrounds, yet have all found a common thread weaving together their current professional lives and future: a passion to teach in the STEM fields of either science or mathematics.
The student diversity in degrees and personal experiences vary, including previous positions ranging from a consumer food industry chemist to a transportation design engineer. TCPCG was ideal for each individual, in their own way, as a one-year accelerated M.A. in Education program designed for non-traditional students out of UConn’s Greater Hartford and Waterbury campuses.
“As career changers, they bring real-world, industry-related experience into their classrooms. At the secondary level, this is noteworthy as many young people at this age are beginning to focus on vocational choices,” said Michael Alfano, director of the TCPCG program. “By having experience working in a related field, TCPCG graduates bring something ‘extra’ to the table.”
Each member of the graduating class of 19 was provided a $15,000 scholarship, funded by a $900,000 grant through the National Science Foundation. In turn for the endowment, recipients are required to complete two years of teaching in a high-needs Connecticut school district for each year of support.
“I want to have a more profound impact on my community. I was so disappointed to hear President Obama quote assessments stating that American 15-year-olds rank 21st in science when compared to their global peers. I felt a personal vocation to help change these numbers and what these numbers represent by inspiring passion for science and scientific careers in today’s youth,” said Megan Hurley, who in May earned her Initial Educators Certification in chemistry for grades 7 through 12.
Hurley decided to pursue a profession in education after a successful career in the consumer goods industry, as a patent-holding formulation scientist at Unilever Home & Personal Care. After Unilever moved its headquarters out of state, she accepted a brand manager position at Hasbro games, which is where she “realized the importance of laughter, play and family support in the development of each child.”
“I feel a personal sense of reward when I see students grow and flourish in their skills and confidence,” said Hurley. “For example, I believe there are many ways for students to demonstrate understanding, so I often added creative summative assessments in addition to traditional chapter tests. I believe offering creative outlets helped many students master the content, demonstrate their knowledge and garner a sense of confidence in their ability to learn chemistry.”
Maureen Ringrose, another Noyce Scholar who will be going into mathematics education, decided to become an educator after getting involved in school activities with her children and facing the challenges of raising a child with a disability.
In 2007, Ringrose gave birth to her second child, Penny, who was born with Down syndrome and needed life-saving surgery for a serious heart defect just six days after being born. It was not until Penny was almost a month old that Ringrose was able to bond with her baby.
“I learned that in most ways she was just like any other baby and that she would reach all the same milestones, it would just take her longer to get there,” Ringrose said.
Ringrose knew that going into education was a good fit for her because she liked helping children succeed. She tutored a lot throughout school, was the Cub Scout leader for her son’s den and saw this opportunity as a way to help Penny.
“I thought that I could be a better advocate for Penny if I knew the other side of things,” Ringrose said.
Although terrified to go back to school after years of working in the insurance industry, Ringrose now encourages anyone contemplating going back to school for education to go through this program.
“It was difficult to keep up but I found that the instructors really cared about my success,” Ringrose said. “I would get overwhelmed when I first read a syllabus, but as the weeks moved on, the assignments were so well organized and laid out that everything was doable.”
Lorna Carrasquillo, another Noyce Scholar who will be teaching chemistry post-graduation, believes that her personal experience in education provided the fundamentals for her identity as an educator. At a young age, Carrasquillo was acutely aware of the stigma often attached to diverse learners in public education as an English language learner, the product of a dual-immersion program, an ESL program and special education. In addition, she was susceptible to petit-mal seizures.
Despite the obstacles, Carrasquillo persevered and attributes her success to those teachers who capitalized on her differences for overall learning. Her personal struggles helped Carrasquillo to believe that all students can learn and do so differently. Although she originally saw herself with a Ph.D. in chemistry, pursuing a career in chemical research, Carrasquillo changed her mind after tutoring chemistry and calculus as an undergraduate at UConn.
Similar to her TCPCG peers, Carrasquillo found it rewarding to witness student progress and to see overall confidence increase when grasping new materials. Carrasquillo, like the educators that helped her through what many consider to be immeasurable odds, promises to never give up on her students’ ability to learn and achieve.
For more information on the Robert Noyce Scholarship or TCPCG, please visit the Neag School of Education’s website at http://www.education.uconn.edu/. Click here to read a previous story on the Noyce Scholars.
Friday, March 25, was an adventure, and not just because six of us were breaking out of the house. The ninth annual Northeast Media Literacy Conference at the University of Connecticut ran from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., packed with two keynote addresses, three workshop sessions with 15 topics to choose from, and a panel presentation by four of 23 international guests from Africa, Asia and eastern Europe. These guests were media educators participating in a three-week tour of the U.S. as part of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program. According to the U.S. Embassy’s press release, “the IVLP is the U.S. Department of State’s premier professional exchange program. It seeks to build mutual understanding between the U.S. and other nations through carefully designed short-term visits to the U.S. for current and emerging foreign leaders.” It marked the first time that the State Department sponsored a media literacy event.
Press “Pause.” What exactly is media literacy? Like traditional literacy at its most basic level, it’s the ability to decode communication symbols to understand and analyze the message being communicated. In the case of print, those symbols are letters and words. In our day with the variety of media within our reach, those symbols also include images, sounds, movements, colors, rhythms and techniques.
But there’s more. Media literacy presupposes the skills of understanding the communication systems and the cultures that are shaped by these media — whether print, broadcast, recorded or digital. It also involves knowledge of the political, social and economic powers behind them.
If you’re thinking that’s plenty, wait. To be really literate we need to not only have access to media and understand them and the culture, but we have to be able to evaluate them, conform our behavior to the values we’ve adopted, and then produce media messages, communicating in turn, not only for our own benefit, but for the community, family, work environment and, in our case, the Church.
“Resume Play.” The sheer scope of this aspect of modern life explains the array of topics related to this year’s theme at the conference we attended: “Media Literacy in a Digital Media Age.” We divided up the sessions among us so we could benefit from their richness and share that with each other: pediatrics and digital devices, media literacy in middle school, Facebook and mood management, trends in kids’ media, Internet privacy, toxic media, and the influence of media and incarceration are only some of the entries we found on the menu.
What we walked away with was a more complete tool kit for our mission, plus direction for planning. Three of us, in fact, serve on our FSP province’s ad hoc committee for media literacy education, or MLE, (“media mindfulness”). We’re preparing a proposal for implementing MLE at all stages of our own life, from vocational discernment through to the “senior years.” Of course, we’ll be offering mission strategies for integrating Gospel values with the principles of MLE: How do we draw people to discover the message of faith through their media encounters, then deepen it, live it, and pass it on?
Like last year –was it because the nuns were there? –one of the presenters referred to MLE educators there as “media literacy missionaries.” If my barometer reading of the room was accurate, I would say that, with its distorted image of the self-righteous Bible-thumper, “missionary,” is not the word most of the people there would ever choose to describe themselves. Yet, with MLE’s imperative to conform one’s behavior to one’s principles, as well as to exercise social responsibility, they were all, in an MLE sense, regardless of the prayers they say or the rituals they practice, as “missionary” as we were.
Several international guests were visiting from countries where the Daughters of St. Paul and the priests and brothers of the Society of St. Paul carry out their media mission for the Gospel: Romania, India, Uganda, the Philippines, Russia, United Kingdom. These Paulines labor within very different political, religious and educational environments, within diverse media parameters, attempting to bring the Church’s religious and social teaching to bear on public policy as well as into people’s private lives. Listening to and talking with the conference’s visitors, I sensed that in spite of our different perspective on ethics, spirituality and human and religious values, when it comes to the goals of media literacy, they share a great deal in common with Paulines everywhere. Here at home, too, we can continue to work so that together challenges can be met, and both persons and society can hear “good news.”
Principal Alejandro Ortiz addresses the group at a parnet’s meeting on Commpact at Bassick High School on December 15, 2010. Photo: Lindsay Niegelberg / Connecticut Post
Warren Harding High School has clear hallways, new academies and a new principal who stands at the front door each morning to greet students. Bassick High School has committees, 15 of them, that some would say are working at breakneck speed to reinvent the school’s culture and curriculum by the fall.
Both schools, buoyed by federal School Improvement Grants — $2.2 million at Harding and $2.1 million at Bassick — are racing to reverse rotten test scores, sorry attendance records and graduation rates that not too long ago pegged them both as “Drop Out” factories. They are among 14 schools in the state to get the grants. They have three years to turn things around, yet the approaches being used at the schools are radically different.
Harding’s approach is from the top down. The district hired Global Partnership Schools, a private firm to “restart” Harding. Its first order of business was to establish order.
After a fall semester of determining what needed to be done, the new Harding was unveiled on January 31. Longer periods were introduced, classes and teachers were shifted around, and new rules dictating how students pass through the halls were instituted.
All of the changes, said Joseph Garcia, a senior vice president at Global, were needed to get the school to a point where the firm can now begin to improve teaching and learning.
At Bassick, the district turned to the University of Connecticut‘s Neag School of Education‘s CommPACT model for help. CommPACT — an acronym for Community, Parents, Administrators, Children and Teachers — allows teachers and administrators to work in so-called “cadres” to determine what’s best for their school. There is a cadre examining why some students had to repeat ninth grade, one looking into literacy programs and one examining technology. The model is already in two of the city’s elementary schools, Longfellow and Barnum.
Some expected CommPACT to sweep into Bassick and make changes. But Michele Femc-Bagwell, the director of CommPACT, says that’s not the way the model works. Change, she says, has to come from within.
To keep receiving the SIG grants, both schools have to show progress. In some areas, the two approaches appear headed in the same direction. At Harding, ninth-graders are grouped into one part of the building as an academy and have little contact with other grades. Bassick seems headed for a similar model.
Still, some clearly favor one approach over the other. Gary Peluchette, president of the Bridgeport Education Association which is considered a partner in the CommPACT model, said changes planned at Bassick seem more sustainable. At Harding, Peluchette doesn’t see the same level of buy-in from the teachers.
“I think the teachers, while they are happy with some things, they feel very beat up by the whole process at Harding,” said Peluchette.
Pedro Noguera, a school reform expert from New York University, who did a study of what ails Harding two years ago, said there will be no significant reform at any school without the staff’s commitment to change.
“Nothing works, no reform will work without complete buy-in by the staff,” he said.
But there is impatience with the pace of change.
“I understand what they are doing, but other students, they don’t know,” said senior Juliemar Ortiz, a member of some of the planning committees.
Still, going slowly may actually help Bassick, because the high school can learn from Harding’s mistakes, she said.
At Harding, Myles Gordon worries more about his schedule and ability to get into his locker than some of the other changes at his school. He likes the clear hallways but also wonders where all the kids who used to hang out in the halls went.
“Were a bunch of kids expelled or something?” he asked his assistant principal when she stoped by his class. “There’s a big chunk of kids that just aren’t here.”
THE NEW HARDING
And that’s true. There are fewer students at Harding.
According to Garcia, Harding identified about 100 students over the age of 18 who had poor attendance records and few credits earned toward graduation. The students and their families were informed of other educational options, such as Harding’s Virtual Academy, Bridgeport at Night, or Adult Education. Garcia said several enrolled in one of these options and one has even graduated from the alternative school.
Courtney Baldwin, a junior, has noticed other changes. He doesn’t know much about common planning times or effective teaching strategies, but he has noticed his school has a new reading lab and new SMART Boards.
“I am not sure if (Global Partnership) inspired it or anything like that but, like, I haven’t seen any fights in the hallways. I really like it,” he told the Board of Education at a recent meeting.
Ny’Asia Winter, a Harding sophomore, likes the new principal, Kevin Walston, who, regardless of the weather stands at the school’s front entrance greeting students as they file through metal detectors. She’s also noticed more students actually attending classes.
Joyce A. Hennessey, an assistant principal, of Global, transferred to Harding from Bassick before the start of school. Hennessey was put in charge of the New Scholars Academy, which houses Harding’s 360 freshmen. Her job is to keep them in school and on track to graduate.
“I am trying,” said Hennessey. This year she knows of only 30 out of 303 freshmen who are failing core classes. Along with Gear Up, a state program that helps students prepare for college, a mentoring program and tutoring programs to help at-risk students, Hennessey said she has been able to introduce ideas of her own. She proposed an alternative program for about 20 freshmen who always came to school but never actually went to class. They now stay in one room all day and teachers come to them. She also started a student council.
The lunchroom environment has also changed. One recent Friday in the cafeteria, where last fall there was an all-out food fight, Hennessey, without warning, stood on a chair and handed out $1 coupons that are redeemable at the cafeteria snack bar to 40 students she saw modeling good behavior.
Hennessey said one advantage to the restart is that her whole academy is on one floor, which allows teachers to get to know the students. It also cuts down on passing time between periods.
Other academies in the building include communication and technology, law and international studies, and health and environmental studies. Each has its own colors, hallways, assistant principal, guidance counselor and climate specialist — a title given to individuals hired to help keep the hallways cleared and interact with students. They also free up the assistant principals to focus more on being an instructional leader.
“It’s a work in progress,” said Carmen McPherson, assistant principal of the Law and Public Service academy, pointing out a number of students who used to spend the day in the hall who were now in class working. She counted at least eight students in Leah Rosen‘s English 10 class, who used to be chronic cutters.
In an English 11 class, student Danae Phommachanh, who was trying to interpret a Langston Hughes poem, said at first she thought the changes to Harding were terrible because students’ schedules were all messed up. Now she thinks the changes are helping. “Being in one part of the school all day saves a lot more energy,” she said.
Donald Kubie, a business teacher, said he has been through several administrations. It’s too soon to say if Global has staying power, he said.
“I pray that it does,” he said. “They are doing the right things. The follow-through seems to be better. We’ve talked about small learning communities before but we never followed through like we’re doing now.”
Not all teachers are thrilled with the changes Global has made. Peluchette said there could be more than 100 contract violations at Harding over issues such as schedules, class sizes and the lack of prep periods for teachers. Several teachers were upset they had to move their classrooms to accommodate the new academy system.
Garcia said Global has strong views about what makes effective schooling but is not deaf to things that the faculty at Harding have brought to the table.
“One of the reasons that the energy is in the building is because we have engaged the faculty,” he said. “We have not done it in the same way Bassick is going about it, but it isn’t a process of essentially mandating. I think it’s been a collaborative process guided by what we know about effective schooling.”
Garcia said there is more to come. “It’s all about leveraging what we have done to do deeper work,” he said. “If you walked into a classroom at Harding right now, I am not sure the instruction would be entirely different from what you might have seen prior to restart.”
The next focus will be on instruction. Also, Harding plans a summer bridge program for rising ninth-graders to introduce them to the expectations and figure out where they are academically.
“I know when we leave in two years,” Garcia said, “more ninth-graders will be on track for graduation.”
REBUILDING BASSICK
The hunger for change at Bassick High School can be heard in the voices of teachers.
Walter Brackett, who teaches English, is leading an instruction cadre that is wading through literacy programs. The team will eventually report to a steering committee on the best ones that will help students reading below grade level. After that, they’ll tackle math.
His cadre is one of 15 groups charged with inventing a better Bassick. “Let’s face it, the reason we are in this boat is because our scores are low and we have this huge achievement gap,” he said. “Somebody’s got to do something about closing it.”
In the discipline cadre, English teacher Katrina Pacific said her group is looking for sustainable ways to keep students in class and out of the hallways.
Jerry Coleman, a graphic arts teacher, is trying to design a class schedule that will provide for more learning time, less passing time and common teacher planning time, though he acknowledges the idea isn’t universally loved. Most of these ideas percolating through the school won’t be launched until the fall. Some students say the first issue they want addressed is the school’s appearance.
In a letter to CommPACT director Michele Femc-Bagwell, Stephanie Lugo, a senior, called the school, which was built in 1929, boring and dull.
“Bassick High School should be known as something good,” Lugo wrote. “When we walk in this school no one cares that this is a school.”
Femc-Bagwell enlisted a service learning class at the school to spend April break painting murals on the walls. To further enhance the way the school looks, home school coordinator Debbie Wong asked parents, alumni, community members and even a night custodian to walk the school and identify what makes them feel welcome and what needs to change.
Parent Rosemarie Brown, who has a freshman and junior at the school and took the walking tour, said appearances are important. The school needs paint and better cleaning, but also needs community support, she said. It’s why she started to go to parent meetings. She’s also offered to help plant a garden outside.
Rejinee Reese, 17, a Bassick senior, said things are slowly progressing. “Teachers are more excited and stuff. I am excited,” she said. “Last year I feel I didn’t take enough with me into my junior year. I will take more with me into senior year.”
Bassick Principal Alejandro Ortiz, who was reassigned from Central High, said his aim is to make Bassick a place anyone would want to send their children. He said rather than compete with Harding, he regularly meets with Walston and realizes they are coming up with the same kinds of ideas, such as separating the grades and creating small learning academies.
Patti Foley, a state Department of Education consultant who oversees how the federal grant money is being used, visits both schools as often as once a week. She said they are both showing progress. “I feel good where they are. I definitely, definitely see positive changes at both schools. Mind set is where it starts and at both buildings, teachers all seem to want same thing,” Foley said.
To sustain that feeling, she added, teachers — and the public — need to see some quick wins. “The key is to stick with it,” she said. “Any major change takes three to five years, but you need to see growth.”
Melissa Bray, Ph.D., and Thomas Kehle, Ph.D., published The Oxford Handbook of School Psychology in February, one of 13 handbooks that constitute the Oxford University Press’ Library of Psychology.
At the University of Connecticut’s Neag School of Education, Bray, a professor of educational psychology, and Kehle, professor and director of school psychology, have concentrated their research on interventions. Their book focuses on these developments and scientific findings through historical and theoretical information, research analysis, assessments, treatments, consultations and medical issues.
A topic both are specifically interested in is the advancement of video self-modeling, which provides the individual with edited footage of adaptive behavior. “Video self-modeling is a very powerful intervention. Basically, what is done is editing the video to depict the desired exemplary behavior. The self-modeling video is viewed by the individual on four to six sessions over a period of several weeks. This edited video using oneself as a model is very potent,” Kehle says.
Bray and Kehle have had considerable success in using this intervention to address a variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including selective mutism, stuttering, depression, autism spectrum disorders and classroom disruptive behaviors. They, along with their students, have also employed the technique to enhance free-throw and three-point shooting abilities by college basketball athletes. Kehle says current studies are investigating how the use of video self-modeling appears to be replacing maladaptive memories of behavior with adaptive memories.
The Oxford Handbook of School Psychology is tailored to school psychologists, educators and parents, along with mental health counselors and practitioners. For more information, contact Bray at melissa.bray@uconn.edu or Kehle at thomas.kehle@uconn.edu.
