In a new pilot program, the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education will provide teachers-in-training instant feedback to help them clear the biggest early hurdle to becoming successful educators: managing the behavior of students in the classroom.

The computer-based Mursion classroom mixed-reality simulator is specifically designed to increase the skill level of Curry students who are about to begin their teaching.

“Classroom management is the single biggest challenge faced by every beginning teacher, and the most frequent area they and their principals mention for needing additional training,” Robert Pianta, dean of the Curry School, said. “To be able to start teaching on day one with more proficiency in classroom management and more confidence in your management skills could not be more valuable to a beginning teacher and the students with whom they work.”

The Mursion classroom simulator allows a teacher education student, called a pre-service teacher, to offer 10 minutes of a lesson to a classroom of students. The pre-service teachers enter a small studio space and stand before a large video monitor. A faculty supervisor, who is also in the room, begins the simulation and the classroom of students on the screen comes to life. During the 10 minutes, students engage in a variety of actions and behaviors to which the pre-service teacher responds.

A teacher candidate might begin her session by establishing or reinforcing behaviors with a question such as, “Who can remind me what we do to be active listeners when we’re having group discussions?” As the teacher candidate continues her lesson, a student in the simulation classroom might make an unkind remark to a peer and then pick up their cell phone to send a text.

In response, the teacher candidate can use a number of classroom management strategies aimed at redirecting that student’s behavior and re-engaging everyone in the lesson.

While it might appear that this sort of teach-and-response would happen in a practicum or field experience, where a pre-service teacher offers a lesson live in a classroom setting with “real” children, there are several features of this 10-minute lesson that make it uniquely valuable.

According to professor Catherine Bradshaw, a researcher on the project, pre-service teachers offering lessons in real classrooms often receive feedback from their supervisors that is significantly delayed, by hours and sometimes days or weeks. With the simulator, the faculty supervisors who are teaching the pre-service teachers are watching the pre-service teacher live and evaluating how they implement classroom management strategies. Upon completion of the lesson, the supervisor offers immediate feedback during a debriefing session.

“The simulator provides an opportunity for students to get guided practice and on-the-spot feedback on their use of different strategies used in the classroom,” Bradshaw said.

Pre-service teachers also have a chance to try and hone different classroom management strategies of their own. When teaching during a practicum experience, pre-service teachers often are using classroom rules and structures that were put in place by the veteran teacher.

“While a critical part of the learning process, a pre-service teacher’s experience of teaching in a veteran teacher’s classroom, even for an extended period of time, is not the same as starting from scratch with your own students,” said Jillian McGraw, a Curry doctoral student and supervisor of pre-service teachers using the simulator. “Often, they conduct their practicums in classrooms that are already ‘well-oiled machines.’”

The simulator allows pre-service teachers a unique opportunity for trial-and-error that cannot be duplicated within a real classroom.

“These simulation experiences are low-risk opportunities to practice essential professional skills to a level of fluency, which ultimately enables students to move into professional practice with ‘experience’ already under their belts,” Pianta said.

During the feedback session, supervisors walk through a series of questions aimed at identifying what strategies worked and why, as well as how the pre-service teacher felt during the lesson. Bradshaw is also working to identify the physiological toll that is taken during these sessions. She and her team of doctoral students are measuring these pre-service teachers’ heart rates and blood pressure during the lessons.

“Teaching is stressful for novice teachers, and a heavy cognitive load, as we are asking them to multi-task many things – instruction, engagement, management, monitoring, differentiation, self-monitoring, just to name a few,” Bradshaw said. “Furthermore, it is common for teachers to feel put down or insulted when students misbehave or are disrespectful.”

According to McGraw, the time offered to reflect immediately upon completing the lesson has allowed several students to acknowledge how personally they take a student’s disruptive behavior.

“In my conversations with these pre-service teachers, I have seen an incredible amount of self-awareness,” McGraw said. “When the pre-service teachers begin to notice how they feel in response to specific behaviors, they can become less reactive and more strategic in their response.”

Another benefit of the close supervision-feedback loop created with the simulator is that it informs the supervisors about the content of their lessons to the pre-service teachers.

“As a supervisor and co-instructor of these pre-service teachers, I am learning by watching them,” McGraw said. “I am reminded that I consistently make assumptions about how my students will do in the classroom. Watching these simulations allows me to shape what I teach.”

In addition to its impact on varying levels of the teacher education program, Pianta believes this low-risk, high-return technology is applicable across the Curry School.

“This use of the Mursion simulator in our teacher preparation program is, I hope, just the beginning of our developing a very robust and deep capacity to use simulation in our professional preparation programs,” Pianta said. “Clearly this type of experience is of great value in preparing teachers, but we also see its value in preparation across a number of professional roles – for example, in school counseling, psychology, educational leadership and in the broader area of working with youth.”

Teachers who regularly use stress-reducing strategies increase their abilities to cope with the demands of the career and are positioned to do a better job educating students, according to results from a program administered by the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education.

Teachers in New York City public schools who participated in “Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education,” or CARE, a mindfulness professional development program, not only felt an improvement in their own well-being, they also improved the quality of their classroom.

“Today, many teachers are not well-prepared for the social and emotional demands of the classroom,” Patricia “Tish” Jennings, associate professor and lead researcher on the study, said. “While spending a great amount of cognitive energy on the content of their lessons, teachers are also constantly managing a classroom of students, some of whom have difficulty attending to learning activities, sitting still or getting along with their peers.”

For every teacher, these conditions increase anxiety, depression, emotional exhaustion, sleep problems and stress. What differs from teacher to teacher is how well they know and exercise the tools needed to cope with such a cognitive and emotionally demanding environment.

The CARE program’s goal is to increase the well-being of participating teachers by providing them with specific skills and practices to better cope with classroom demands.

Over the school year, 224 teachers from 36 New York public elementary schools located in the Bronx and Upper Manhattan participated in a series of five six-hour sessions. Between sessions, teachers received individualized phone coaching through two 30-minute calls over two weeks. The program content consisted of: emotion skills instruction; mindfulness/stress reduction practices to promote self-regulation of attention and non-judgmental awareness; and caring and listening practices to promote empathy and compassion.

“We know that when teachers are aware of their increased stress in a particular moment, that awareness allows them to intentionally respond to that stress by taking small measures to de-escalate it,” Jennings said. “When teachers can reduce stress, they can choose how best to respond to their class or an individual student.”

The study, presented at the peer-reviewed American Educational Research Association annual conference, shows that CARE has significant positive impacts on teachers’ well-being. It reduces personal distress and the stress associated with time pressure and improves emotion regulation. It also promotes mindfulness.

“Teachers who are able to reduce the level of stress they are experiencing have an improved ability to recognize a student’s perspective and how their own judgments or biases are impacting their reaction to a student,” Jennings said.

According to Jennings, improving well-being also can work against the cumulative effect of stress that often results in burnout and teachers leaving the profession. Current data shows that nearly 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession within their first five years of teaching.

The impact of participating in the CARE program went beyond each individual teacher. The study shows that those participating also improved the quality of their classrooms.

The participating teachers were observed using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, or CLASS. The CLASS tool, created by Curry School Dean Robert Pianta, is an observational instrument used to assess classroom quality by effectively measuring teacher-student interactions.

The classrooms of the teachers who received CARE were rated as more emotionally supportive compared to those who did not do the program. The interactions in the classroom were more emotionally positive and the teachers demonstrated greater sensitivity to their students’ needs than controls.

According to a number of previous studies, improved elements of teacher practice as measured by the CLASS have known links to improved student learning. 

“What’s truly amazing about these findings is that CARE focuses entirely on teachers’ own well-being and social and emotional skills,” Jennings said. “It does not provide any training in classroom management or teaching strategies.”

According to Jennings, this study is the first of its kind to demonstrate that mindfulness-based training can have significant impacts on observable dimensions of classroom interactions.

The study also showed the CARE program directly impacted students, as the students in the CARE classrooms were rated as more productive than those in the control group. CARE teachers made better use of instructional time, resulting in students being more involved in learning activities.

“The findings definitely suggest that mindfulness-based interventions can have ‘downstream’ effects on the classroom environment and on the students.”

For her next project, Jennings is working to scale up CARE and take it into more New York City schools and other locations. She is also exploring adaptations of CARE for special populations, such as infant/toddler caregivers and special education teachers.

In the summer of 2013, Ana Mendelson was working with a young girl in the Charlottesville area who had a developmental disability. One day they tried going to a local movie theater.

“She had a completely overwhelming experience,” Mendelson said.

They tried sitting in different areas.

“In the front row she kept turning around to see what all the other people were doing,” she said. “In the back row, she enjoyed the feeling of pushing on the seat in front of her with her feet. The aisle seemed like the most flexible option.”

The ushers would not allow them to sit in the aisle, however. By this time, audience members were casting disapproving glances their way, so they decided to leave.

This distressing incident provided inspiration for Mendelson, who graduates from the University of Virginia on May 22 with a Bachelor of Science in Education degree in communication disorders from the Curry School of Education and a Bachelor of Arts in psychology from the College of Arts & Sciences.

“Having many fond memories of attending theater with my family, the idea of creating a stigma-free space where all families could enjoy this experience was extremely appealing,” Mendelson said.

Autism-friendly, or sensory-friendly, performances that make live theater more accessible have been expanding on and off-Broadway and at community theaters around the country over the past decade, but had not yet found their way to Charlottesville. After some online research, Mendelson contacted the Theatre Development Fund in New York for guidance on accessibility.

In the spring of 2015, she wrote a successful grant proposal for a UVA Coffelt Public Service Award and founded the Autism Theatre Project. College undergrads Jaclyn Lund, Ashley Houze, Olivia Cosby, Annie Frazier and Madi Lahey worked alongside Mendelson on the project team.

“Ana is amazing,” said Jane Hilton, an assistant professor of speech language pathology in the Curry School and director of clinical services in its Speech-Language-Hearing Center. “She is an exceptional young woman who truly cares about providing sensory-friendly performances to this population.”

Mendelson approached Hilton about the idea, then spearheaded every aspect of the performances, Hilton said.

Last fall, Mendelson’s Autism Theatre Project partnered with DMR Adventures, a local production company, to produce its first autism-friendly performance. It was a musical called “Captain Louie, Jr.,” about a young boy finding the courage to make new friends in his new town.

The production was performed as written, with special accommodations for potential sensory challenges such as jarring sounds or lights. For example, when a sensory surprise was coming up, volunteers held out glow sticks to warn the audience.

Most of the 10 volunteers who assisted at the evening’s performance were either fellow undergraduate and graduate students in the Curry School’s communications disorders program or members of UVA’s chapter of Autism Speaks.

Both the volunteers and actors participated in workshops that Hilton led.

“We train the actors in what the audience members with autism may do during the performance,” she said.

In reaction to their sensitivity to noise or bright lights, some people may yell, cover their ears, or rock back and forth, maybe even run out, she said.  

“Not all people with autism will have these reactions, but the actors need to know it may happen during the performance so that they can understand that nothing is wrong and to keep the play going,” Mendelson said.

A quiet room was also available during the show for anyone who needed to take a break. Mendelson even produced a “Coming to the Theater” video to help families prepare for their outing.

The funds she received from the Coffelt Award and other sources went toward royalties and rental costs, enabling DMR Adventures to provide a free performance for the children and their families. It also covered advertising, quiet room supplies and T-shirts for the volunteers.

The event was a success, based on surveys of the 13 families who attended “Captain Louie, Jr.”

“We really enjoyed the performance,” said Charlottesville mother Janice Mills, who brought along her 12-year-old daughter. “Trin cheered at the end of scenes. She loved the group singing the best.”

Trin’s primary diagnosis is Angelman syndrome, with a secondary diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder. They have tried mainstream theater performances in the past, Mills said, and are always challenged by the need for wiggle room.

“We usually sit near an exit where we can go out and come back,” she said.

They found the most helpful features of the “Captain Louis, Jr.” performance to be the floor seating and the quiet room.

“It quickly turned unquiet when Trin found all the UVA girls in there to hang out with,” Mills said. “It was definitely a great sensory break area for her.”

This spring, with support from the office of the UVA Vice Provost for the Arts, the Autism Theatre Project offered two shows: Spectrum Theatre’s “25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee” and another DMR Adventures production, “Annie, Jr.”

A new crop of students have joined the project and will keep it going.

“In the future, I see Autism Theatre Project as a community-based consulting group that helps theaters put on accessible performances,” Mendelson said. “I hope all Charlottesville-area theaters would be interested in increasing their accessibility.”

After graduation, Mendelson – who also was involved in First Year Players, Challah for Hunger, Phi Sigma Pi honor fraternity and the University Singers, and was a resident adviser and a summer orientation leader – will relocate to New York City to work at the Medicare Rights Center through the Avodah volunteer program.

As a classroom teacher in a low-performing school on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Daniel Duke, now a professor at the University of Virginia Curry School of Education, experienced first-hand the struggles of the public school system.

At the conclusion of the first semester of his ninth-grade classes in African-American and American history, Duke was prepared to award his students their final grades, many of which were A’s.

“They earned them,” Duke said.

But a school administrator didn’t approve, stating that such a move would result in Duke’s students, who weren’t considered college-bound, shaking up the school’s student rankings by knocking down students who were.

Duke couldn’t fathom the idea of not rewarding students with the grades that they had earned and deserved, and took that as his cue to create change.

dan_duke_02hr_da_inline.jpg

“That convinced me that there was a need for a different kind of leadership,” Duke said.

The experience propelled Duke to earn his doctorate in educational leadership from the University of New York at Albany, arming him with the tools to become a school administrator in upstate New York. Still, Duke knew there was more he could do to address the problems he had witnessed.

So Duke entered the world of academia when he was hired by Stanford University to direct its Instructional Leadership Program, focusing his attention on guiding and shaping America’s future educational leaders and administrators.

Now at UVA, Duke researches America’s low-performing schools. An internationally known specialist on school improvement, Duke has conducted numerous studies on the school-turnaround process and has designed training programs on improving struggling schools. Duke was also instrumental in establishing the Darden/Curry Partnership for Leaders in Education, a joint venture of UVA’s Darden School of Business and the Curry School that strives to help leaders in education operate school systems effectively and efficiently.

In Duke’s newest book, “The Children Left Behind: America’s Struggle to Improve Its Lowest-Performing Schools” (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016), he discusses the issues facing the public education system as the No Child Left Behind Act gives way to the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Q. What problems did the No Child Left Behind Act intend to address?

A. The No Child Left Behind Act received bipartisan support. At the time, the intent was to focus attention on the very lowest-performing schools. Never before had the federal government zeroed in on the lowest 5 percent.

Also for the first time, there was an actual prescription for what these schools could do. Those four prescribed strategies reflected a range of opinions about what needed to be done, including closing the schools; converting them to charter schools; firing the principal and making changes to the curriculum and in how time was allocated; and firing the principal and half of the teachers.

Q. In what ways did NCLB succeed and in what ways did it fail?

A. While some states have done reasonably well in assisting their lowest-performing schools, others have really struggled.

The Recovery School District in Louisiana has been a reasonable success. Out of over 100 schools in the district, only three or four of the highest-performing schools were kept and the others were converted to charter schools. The average performance on state tests of the African-American students in the charter schools has exceeded the performance of African-American students elsewhere in Louisiana.

Cincinnati, Ohio is the poster child for a successful district turnaround. UVA worked with Cincinnati during the early years of the Darden/Curry program.

Unfortunately, while there have been successes, they haven’t been nearly as plentiful as folks had hoped. One of the strong beliefs in our political system is that of local control, which is probably as much myth as it is reality. People cling to that belief in terms of low-performing schools. Some of the greatest successes I’ve seen have been at local level, but so have the greatest failures.

Q. What do you think the reasoning is behind some of NCLB’s failures?

A. Trying to understand the reasons why some states did better than others is a major part of the book. What comes out of the analysis is predictable: The states that have done poorly allowed the mission of helping low-performing schools to get caught up in the political process.

It’s very hard to export one state’s innovation to another state. So that’s a lesson that we can take away – the grail we’ve been seeking for years of having a model you can scale up nationally just hasn’t worked. Local solutions are the preferable option because each locality has its own idiosyncrasies.

Q. Have there been any lasting effects on the teaching profession as a result of NCLB?

A. The major problem and yet unresolved issue is “How do we staff our lowest-performing schools with qualified teachers?” The turnover rate is enormous, and we are struggling to find minority teachers to go into minority schools. We can’t have effective education solely through virtual instruction, at least not for the lowest-achieving students. We desperately need teachers and administrators, but fewer and fewer people want to tackle that job.

Q. You point out in the book that NCLB was in place for seven years under the Bush administration and seven years under the Obama administration. In what ways did NCLB change or evolve over the course of those 14 years?

A. No Child Left Behind continued under the Obama administration because Congress could never reach agreement about reauthorization. So it continued in effect, but the Obama administration modified NCLB in significant ways.

During the recession of 2008, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act poured an unprecedented amount of money into turning around schools. The Bush administration, on the other hand, never fully funded school improvement grants. Obama, acting with the support of Congress, was able to allocate $4.5 billion to school improvement. That was unprecedented in American history. I can’t say all the money was well spent, but there were some successes – and just as many unsuccessful experiences. The Obama administration also tied more strings to the money.

Q. What is your outlook for the Every Student Succeeds Act?

A. The Every Student Succeeds Act has shifted the focus from the federal government taking the initiative to the states.

Because this new legislation has turned greater control over to the states, it would suggest people believe the states are capable. That hasn’t been demonstrated. What has been demonstrated, though, is that there is political will to get the federal government out of the process of directly monitoring school improvement.

It’s too early to tell what the impact of ESSA will be. Once a piece of legislation comes out, how it is translated into action is embodied in a set of rules and regulations. There is a lot of debate right now about what those regulations should be.

Q. What other pieces of the puzzle must be considered in order to address the issue of low-performing schools?

A. Community involvement is extremely important. It was a big part of Cincinnati’s success. A consortium of Fortune 500 company executives pulled together and saw to it that schools got volunteers and supplementary funds for teachers to purchase materials. Community involvement at that level is essential.

Another essential ingredient to Cincinnati’s success has been the stable leadership of a visionary superintendent of schools. Too many low-performing districts suffer a continuous churn of top-level leaders.

Q. What do you think the future of the public school system holds and what do you hope to see be done?

A. There’s a chapter in the book that looks at three positions – the idealist, the pragmatist and the cynic. The idealist says, “If we can turn around one low-performing school, I know it’s possible, so let’s find out how to do it elsewhere.” The pragmatist recognizes that it will probably never be the case that many of the low-performing schools will be moved up into the top half of distribution of schools. They believe improvements can be made, but also believe equity is an illusion. The cynic, on the other hand, would say, “Let’s just close them.”

What policymakers seem to overlook or minimize the importance of, though, is student motivation. What can we do to increase it?

Well, spending a whole day on math or reading is not likely to motivate a lot of people. There’s got to be some hook in there, some way of engaging the interest of young people. It’s got to be in the context of some other, more meaningful pursuit.

The Smithsonian Institution is collaborating with the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education to allow middle school students to reconstruct key inventions that shaped the world, using 3D printing and other fabrication technologies.  

Selected inventions such as the telegraph, the telephone and early electric motors are being digitized and made available on the Smithsonian X 3D website, along with patents and inventor’s journals. The Smithsonian has also invited the students to be the first-ever external group of students to demonstrate their recreations of these inventions in the Draper Spark!Lab in the National Museum of American History. Up to 2,000 members of the public, along with officials from the White House, Smithsonian, and the National Science Foundation are expected to view the exhibit on Thursday.

The students’ work is being featured this week as a part of the White House’s National Week of Making, a celebration of the revival of the inventive and entrepreneurial spirit that has long characterized America. In recent years, students and adults have begun a new wave of tinkering, building and inventing with increasing access to technologies such as 3D printers and laser cutters, as well as design software.

students_with_inventions_-_curry_29_da_inline.jpg

The project is part of the Lab School for Advanced Manufacturing’s summer engineering academy, a partnership between the Curry School and the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County school divisions. The goal for the students is not to create an exact physical replica, but to reinterpret and reinvent the device using modern manufacturing technology.

“Students in the summer engineering academy have years of experience, now, in designing and fabricating using a variety of technologies,” said Glen Bull, professor at the Curry School and faculty advisor for the Lab School. “Our local schools are equipped with Maker Spaces, where students are invited to design and tinker with ideas.”

The 12 students, who hail from Buford Middle School and Sutherland Middle School, use Invention Kits developed in collaboration with the Smithsonian to reconstruct the inventions. During the academy, which began June 13, the students developed exhibits that will be used to demonstrate the reconstructed inventions.

According to Bull, retracing the steps of early American inventors illustrates ways in which a project or lesson can incorporate a wide variety of subject matter.

“When students analyze and then re-create these inventions, they are learning elements of mathematics, science, engineering and history,” Bull said.

For example, while working with electromagnets, students successfully developed a formula to predict the strength of magnetic fields generated. One student told Kimberly Corum, a Curry doctoral student, and Joe Garofalo, the other Curry faculty advisor for the Lab School, “We figured out an equation without really any help. We went through the same process that [physicist Andre-Marie Ampere] went through. We figured it out and we’re seventh-graders. That’s pretty cool.”

The students’ inventions are not the only thing being created this summer under the auspices of the Lab School for Advanced Manufacturing. Buford and Sutherland Lab School teachers are collaborating with Curry faculty to develop lesson plans that will accompany the Smithsonian Invention Kits. The Invention Kits also include 3D scans of original artifacts in the Smithsonian collections and 3D-printer files that permit students to download and print key components. Animations depict operation of the invention and its moving parts. The Invention Kits also provide primary source documents such as patent descriptions, associated pedagogical materials and teacher guides.

The Smithsonian is publishing the Invention Kits on its X 3D website. The Smithsonian plans to make the first three Invention Kits available to schools nationally at the beginning of the school year. These are first in a series of 12 Invention Kits.

A team of local teachers and Curry School faculty members have been developing these engineering kits for a number of years. The team plans to publish the first three kits by summer’s end and ultimately publish a kit for all 12 inventions selected for re-creation by the engineering academy students.

The team has incorporated formative assessments to test the impact of Invention Kits on learning outcomes.

“These kits are intended to increase learning through engineering design,” said Garofalo. “We want to be sure they are fulfilling this goal before we publish them for wide-spread use.”

A critical learning element of the kits, and one the summer academy students are engaging in, is what comes after the re-creation of an historical American invention.

“In each of these experiences, the students are asked to then create their own invention based on the principles of operation discovered in the original invention,” Bull said. “This is where the spirit of the Maker Movement can be seen in these young students.”

According to Bull, some of the students experience a very similar discovery path the original inventors did.

“Students often experience the same challenges as the original inventors as they reconstruct the inventions. After reading inventors’ notes and journals related to invention of the telegraph, students have commented that they feel like a modern-day Morse,” Bull said. “It can be an empowering experience for these students.”

Another student commented to Corum and Garofalo, “Usually in class, we do worksheets on stuff that the teacher’s been talking about on the board. When you gave us this, it was something different. We had to think using our own brain to try to figure out what to do.”

These learning experiences are not limited to select students. While the summer academy is limited to a small cadre of students, the Lab School for Advanced Manufacturing at both Buford and Sutherland middle schools is open to all of the students in each school during the regular academic year.

According to Bull, Maker Spaces are being developed in schools all over the United States.

“A new generation of inventors is growing up in schools where they have the space to create, test and invent,” Bull said. “It is exciting to imagine what will come from these students.”

Colleges and universities can help drive social change in the fight against gender-based violence, according to Nancy Deutsch, an associate professor in the University of Virginia Curry School of Education.

That’s why last week on Grounds, Deutsch led the first National Leadership Institute on the issue, drawing representatives from schools around the country. The action-oriented program was designed to help universities identify strategies for preventing and responding to gender-based violence on their campuses.

“Given its prevalence, higher education professionals have no choice but to address gender-based violence,” Deutsch said. “It is incumbent on institutions to educate themselves on how to address campus gender-based violence and support affected students in a trauma-informed manner.”

gender-based_violence_conference_02_da_inline.jpg

Five universities attended the pilot implementation of the institute. UVA Today caught up with Deutsch to discuss the key takeaways from the institute and what everyone should know.

Q. Has the increasing frequency with which cases of gender-based violence are appearing in the media influenced public awareness of the issue?

A. I don’t think that the increased media attention makes the issue more important; it has always been important. But I do think that the increased media attention, as well as increased light being shone on this issue by the federal government, has forced schools to pay closer attention to their campus cultures, policies and practices. The institute comes at a good time, as institutions are looking for guidance on how best to respond to Title IX guidelines, but also on how to reduce the prevalence of gender-based violence on campuses overall.

Q. Based on your expertise, what are some of the key factors to addressing this issue?

A. At the institute we talk about a prevention-response-resolution loop. Schools need to be attentive to each of these on their campus and ensure that their efforts across these areas are coordinated and addressing the issue in a trauma-informed way that stems from a larger ethos of care.

Many schools, including UVA, have begun to engage bystander training as one aspect of addressing gender-based violence. And as we saw in the recent case at Stanford, that can be a powerful tool for stopping potential assaults, but bystander training alone will not end gender-based violence.

At base, campus-based violence is an outgrowth of larger cultural norms and behaviors. Schools need to look at the climates on their campuses, many of which are mirrors of larger society, and address those factors that may be consciously or unconsciously promoting gender-based violence.

Q. What do you hope that those in attendance were able to take away from the institute?

 A. The learning objectives for the institute are for participants to be able to:

• Recognize the importance of a sustainable, collaborative, multidisciplinary team to lead university-wide, gender-based violence prevention and response efforts.
• Operate from an ethos of care for all gender-based violence prevention and response efforts.
• Identify the cultural drivers on their campuses and pinpoint specific ways to influence their campus cultures to improve the prevention of and response to gender-based violence at their schools.
• Identify evidence-based programs, practices and policies that will enhance the prevention, response and resolution of gender-based violence on their campuses.
• Design an action plan with timeline in the areas of prevention, response and resolution.

We recognize that different schools have different issues and needs, however, so we purposefully had a range of institution types participate in the pilot (including urban schools, suburban schools, state schools, a community college and a liberal arts college). Our goal is to develop an institute that can achieve these objectives for multiple types of institutions of higher education.

Q. What else needs to be done to continue addressing the problem of gender-based violence?

A. Our goal is that we can continue to improve the institute and serve schools nationwide, helping change cultures, practices and policies on campuses. In the end, though, gender-based violence on campus won’t disappear until our larger culture changes. Like other systemic issues, it is a problem that takes all of us to address.  In addition to working to create campus climates and policies that are trauma-informed and based around an ethos of care, we must also commit to working to change the broader cultural narratives that foster gender-based violence. 

The institute was made possible through a partnership between UVA, Futures Without Violence and the Harvard Law School Gender Violence Program, as well as funding from the Avon Foundation for Women and the Jefferson Trust.

On Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced her mobile messaging campaign designed to provide students with guidance about college, financial aid and loan repayment. At the helm of the campaign is University of Virginia Assistant Professor Ben Castleman.

The “Up Next” campaign is a part of the First Lady’s Reach Higher initiative and her Better Make Room campaign, an effort to inspire students across the nation to pursue education after high school. This spring, the White House and the Better Make Room campaign asked Castleman to help lead the planning for Up Next.

“The aim of Up Next is to provide students across the country with the information, encouragement and assistance they need to pursue high-quality, affordable college options,” said Castleman, an assistant professor at UVA’s Curry School of Education and a researcher in its EdPolicyWorks research center.

Castleman, who has successfully tested using text messaging to improve education outcomes of students, is leading a coalition of behavioral researchers, technology experts, college advising organizations and designers who are working to bring Up Next to millions of American youth.

“We know that text messaging provides a powerful channel to communicate with young people, and prior campaigns have generated substantial increases in college enrollment and persistence,” Castleman said. “Our hope is that Up Next combines this strong evidence base with the power of the First Lady’s connection to young Americans to improve college outcomes at a national scale.”

Between now and the end of 2016, Up Next will launch three separate campaigns aimed at different populations of students:

• Seniors in high school who sign up to participate will receive text notifications that inform them about college search, financial aid and college applications.
• Students currently in college will receive texts about making use of campus resources available to them and about renewing financial aid.
• Recent graduates will receive messages to help them make informed decisions about loan repayment.

“The First Lady has drawn national attention to the importance of postsecondary education for America’s youth,” Castleman said. “Up Next will amplify this message, bringing helpful information and reminders about college and financial aid directly to millions of students.

 “Five years ago, as part of my dissertation, we were wrestling with the notion of how text messaging might be effectively used to help high school graduates successfully matriculate in college,” he added. “Not only have we been able to show that this strategy can improve college outcomes, we now have the chance to take this approach to millions of students across the country. It is pretty special.”

Students who want to participate in Up Next can text “COLLEGE” to 44044. High school and college faculty and administrators who would like to promote the Up Next campaign can download a promotional tool kit.

As schools work to close socioeconomic and racial achievement gaps between their students, a new study from the University of Virginia’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning suggests that the background of the teachers in the front of pre-kindergarten classrooms can make a big difference.

In a study conducted by Jason Downer, director of CASTL and a professor in UVA’s Curry School of Education, and his colleagues that involved matching a preschool student’s race with that of his or her teacher, it was found that male African-American students were reported to have fewer problem behaviors in pre-K when they were paired with an African-American teacher.

“Is it that African-American teachers have a better understanding of African-American boys’ behavior, or have more culturally relevant tools to help with supporting African-American boys’ self-regulation in the classroom?” Downer said. “Or is it that white teachers are over-reporting behavioral issues in African-American boys due to implicit biases? These would each lead to very different pre-service training and professional development for teachers.”

jason_downer_04_inline.jpg

“Is it that non-English-proficient Latino children in Latino teachers’ classrooms get more exposure to bilingual instruction, which gives the child an opportunity to draw on both English and Spanish language in learning emergent literacy skills?” Downer said. “If so, this could have policy implications for providing dual-language support in schools.”

The study’s findings are significant at a time when African-American boys are referred to special education more often than their peers and also receive harsher self-discipline at a much higher rate, Downer said.

Robert C. Pianta, dean of the Curry School of Education and co-author of the study, said examining these issues within the context of preschool education offers important insight into the years that follow.

“Preschools are the most diverse places in America and offer us an opportunity to examine some of the factors that may contribute to effective education for the wide range of children in the U.S.,” he said. “This specific study was designed to examine one factor – match – and its relation or not to kids’ performance.”

The race-matching study, which Downer and Pianta conducted in conjunction with fellow CASTL researchers Priscilla Goble and Sonya Myers, was recently published in Early Childhood Research Quarterly.

Downer spoke with UVA Today about the significance of the study and how the pre-K experience sets the tone for the rest of a student’s academic career.

Q. Why is this topic worth exploring?

A. In this study, and across early childhood programs nationwide, early childhood educators continue to be mostly white. In an increasingly diverse society with emphasis on a global economy, it is important to work toward diversifying the pre-K teacher workforce to be more representative of the population at large.

Q. What are the greater implications of this topic?

A. Access to early education in the U.S. has been expanding for low-income kids as a means of addressing the achievement gap between kids from low-income families and their more advantaged peers. The cultural and linguistic diversity of these low-income preschoolers is growing.

In this context, there are questions about whether early education in the U.S. is ready to serve the needs of diverse youth, particularly given the lack of diversity in the early educator workforce. This race/ethnicity mismatch between teachers and students only becomes more pronounced as kids enter the K-12 system.

Q. How does addressing this issue at the pre-K level influence the rest of a child’s school career and beyond? 

A. Since it is the first school experience for many young, low-income children, it is therefore setting the stage for how they think about the school environment. High-quality pre-K has the potential to help young, at-risk children become better prepared for school entry. This study suggests that racial/ethnic match between a teacher and pre-K child may contribute to how much children benefit from their pre-K experience.

Q. What has your research on this topic consisted of and what have you found?

A. Research at CASTL has established how important it is that children experience supportive, responsive and cognitively stimulating interactions with early educators, regardless of race/ethnicity. And, there is evidence to suggest that teacher professional development can improve these interactions and teacher-child relationships.

For example, I’m part of a team that developed online modules for teachers that focus on ways to build relationships with all kids in a classroom. We did an evaluation of it this past year in elementary and middle school classrooms, and found that participating teachers reported having closer relationships with the most challenging students in their classrooms (and those students were largely boys and African-American/Hispanic).

Q. What needs to happen next?

A. More research is needed to tease apart how teachers of different cultural and linguistic backgrounds think about the students in their classrooms; implicit biases are a sensitive topic – how do we identify, acknowledge and address them while also respecting teachers’ commitment to education?

We also need more observational studies to follow diverse students into different kinds of classroom environments to see what they are experiencing on a day-to-day basis, and how this might be linked to teachers with similar and different backgrounds.

Bottom line: Given that teachers’ daily interactions and relationships with children are central to learning, we need to dig deeper to learn how the race/ethnicity match between student and teacher is contributing to a child’s pre-K experience, so that we can identify the key ingredients for success and then ensure that teachers of all backgrounds receive training to meet the individual needs of an increasingly diverse set of children.

Science education curricula in elementary, middle and high schools across the country are getting makeovers.

In 2011, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences released “New Framework for K-12 Science Education,” a set of objectives that all students should be gleaning from their science courses.

The framework was followed up in 2013 with the creation of the Next-Generation Science Standards, which are part of a national movement to incorporate engineering design into kindergarten through 12 science education.

Through a National Science Foundation research grant, researchers in the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education and School of Engineering and Applied Science are aiming to develop a model for training pre-service science teachers to integrate engineering design into science teaching.  

frackson_mumba_portrait_ss_inline.jpg

“We can’t expect teachers to teach science from an engineering perspective when they have no training in engineering design,” said Frackson Mumba, an associate professor in the Curry School and the principal investigator of the project. “So, we at UVA are taking a step in trying to solve that challenge and prepare our teachers to effectively integrate engineering design in science classrooms.” 

A large number of states have already adopted the Next Generation Science Standards, while others are still considering the transition.

Charles Pyle, director of communications at the Virginia Department of Education, said the state is preparing to revise the public schools’ Science Standards of Learning, and the revision will include a review of the Next Generation Science Standards.

As a training ground for future teachers nationwide, Mumba said UVA should prepare Curry School students for the new expectations related to engineering design and science education they may face in their classrooms.

“We are investing in the future of science education by investing in our pre-service science teachers,” Mumba said. “They can’t apply something that they don’t understand. Teachers don’t teach what they don’t know.”  

Through the research project, Mumba and his team of Reid Bailey, an associate professor in the Department of Systems and Information Engineering, and Curry School professors Jennifer Chiu and Ji Hoon Ryoo, will train a cohort of approximately 50 education students by investigating their current knowledge, developing their foundations in engineering concepts and measuring their pedagogical content knowledge. Then, they will assess the impact that this training has on students in K-12 classrooms.

By equipping future teachers with the tools to include engineering design in science curriculum, Mumba said that the resulting increased exposure to engineering could influence K-12 students’ potential engineering and science career choices.  

“Research shows that the formation of engineers doesn’t start in college; it starts in school,” Mumba said. “We want to prepare citizens of the 21^st century, and engineering teaches skills that help students identify the real problems that humans are facing.”

Additionally, Mumba said that developing a model to train pre-service teachers will enable them to be leaders in their school systems who can help guide their colleagues in the integration of engineering design and science. But the first step toward developing the framework is conducting meaningful research regarding exactly how to prepare pre-service teachers to perform this task.

“We want to train future teachers by giving them a foundation in engineering and strategies to teach it in the science classrooms,” Mumba said. “The only effective way to do that is to do research and to find out the impact of this training of our pre-service teachers and how the knowledge they gain from the training impacts the students’ learning in the schools.”

Mumba, along with his team, completed a successful pilot study last spring, encouraging them to move forward with their research.

“Students participating in this project will be trained in the state-of-the-art engineering integrated science pedagogy, which will allow them to lead the engineering design in science education in the near future,” Ryoo said.

Ultimately, Mumba said that in order to create lasting impacts in K-12 schools, change must begin with the country’s future generation of educators.

“Teachers are the agents of change,” he said. “And we believe in changing our science teachers in order for them to be able to change the lives of thousands of kids.”

Among the University of Virginia men’s basketball players sampling the sights, sounds and cuisine of this country, there is one college graduate – and he has two seasons of eligibility remaining.

That would be Devon Hall, who in May walked the Lawn with his brother, Mark, a member of Virginia’s football team.

“It was amazing,” Devon said of graduation day at the University. “We were walking, and we saw our parents right beside each other, and it was amazing.”

Devon, who enrolled at UVA in 2013, graduated this summer with a bachelor’s degree in media studies. Mark, who enrolled in 2012, received his bachelor’s in anthropology. Both will take graduate courses in the Curry School of Education this coming year, and then Devon hopes to be admitted for 2017-18 to the one-year master’s program offered by UVA’s McIntire School of Commerce.

devon_hall_inline.jpg

“I talked to him [Saturday], and I talked to my mom,” Devon said. “He’s a little jealous. My mom is a little jealous, too. She said she was vicariously living through me.”

A graduate of Cape Henry Collegiate in Virginia Beach, Devon did not arrive at UVA with any college credits. But by taking full course loads and summer school classes at Virginia, plus doing some online work, he started piling up credits. By the start of the 2015-16 academic year, Hall realized he could complete work on his bachelor’s degree in three years.

“I just had the opportunity to finish earlier, and I took it,” Hall said Sunday evening in Valencia, the third city where the Cavaliers have stayed during their 10-day tour of Spain.

“I’m always getting my work done whenever I can, and I was able to get my work done earlier.”

Hall, who turned 21 last month, is the first player to graduate from UVA in three years during Tony Bennett’s tenure as head coach.

“It’s impressive,” assistant coach Jason Williford said of Hall’s feat. “He’s a smart kid. Quite honestly, I think he did that partly because he wasn’t sure how his [UVA basketball] career was going early. And so by graduating he had the opportunity, if he chose, to maybe look at other places.

“But he realized, I think, how important he was to the program. His turn came, and it’s a credit to him, because in today’s society for most kids it’s about instant gratification. They want it early. But it’s a process, and he’s trusted the process.”

Hall said: “This is where I want to be. I wanted to get my degree from UVA, and I just happened to be able to do it at a fast pace.”

A 6-foot-5, 209-pound guard, Hall redshirted in 2013-14 and had only a minor role in 2014-15, when he averaged 1.8 points and had 18 assists in 23 games.

As a redshirt sophomore, however, Hall cracked the rotation and ending up starting 20 games, including all seven in the ACC and NCAA tournaments, for a team that reached the Elite Eight.

The 2016-17 Cavaliers include only one scholarship player who’s in his final season of eligibility – point guard London Perrantes – but Hall has been in the program just as long as his close friend. (Two other redshirt juniors, Austin Nichols and Darius Thompson, transferred to UVA from Memphis and Tennessee, respectively.)

“Along with London, Devon has to lead,” Williford said, “with his work ethic, as far as practices go, what he does in the weight room, and just being vocal. He’s done a good job with that so far on this trip, talking to the young guys, being another coach on the floor, kind of taking those guys under his wing and giving instructions.”

Hall said: “That’s my job, that’s my obligation as a fourth-year [in school] and a third-year on the court, to be able to lead these young guys and teach them the ins and outs and have them follow me as a leader on and off the court.”

Increased leadership, though, is not all Hall will be expected to provide this season. “We need him to step up production-wise, too,” Williford said.

In 2015-16, on a team dominated by upperclassmen, among them seniors Malcolm Brogdon, Anthony Gill and Mike Tobey, Hall averaged 4.4 points and 2.6 rebounds in about 22 minutes per game.

He totaled 74 assists – third-most on the team – and 33 turnovers and shot 37.5 percent from the floor, 33.3 percent from 3-point range and 76.5 percent from the line. Like Thompson and Marial Shayok, Hall did not have to put up impressive statistics for the ’Hoos to succeed in 2015-16, but this season may be different.

“From a production standpoint, we’d love to see all of his numbers improve,” WIlliford said, “but both him and Marial have got to sort of tag-team that defensive role that Malcolm was able to do as one guy. We need both of them to be able to do that on the perimeter, and then make good decisions, and be a little more consistent in their productivity.”

Hall, who scored in double figures only four times last season, knows he can’t be content to be solely a supporting player in 2016-17.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I had a meeting with Coach Bennett, and I told him I plan on being much more aggressive than I was last year and making more plays and doing as much as I can for the team and having as much production as possible.

“I know I have a big role, and I’m ready to step into it.”

The 2015-16 season ended for Hall, and the rest of the Cavaliers, on a crushing note. In the NCAA quarterfinals, Syracuse staged a stunning second-half comeback to defeat UVA 68-62 in Chicago.

After the Orange rallied to take a 64-58 lead, Hall missed the front end of a one-and-one with 2:33 left. Then, with Virginia trailing 65-62, Hall missed an open 3-point attempt with about 12 seconds remaining.

“That’s something you learn from,” Hall said. “If I get in those situations again, I want to be able to learn from [the Syracuse loss] and knock those shots down. You don’t make every shot, sometimes you miss, but it’s important to be able to grow and learn and mature.”

He’s learned plenty on his first trip to Europe.

“Amazing,” Hall said of Spain, where life, at least in August, proceeds at a much slower pace than in the United States. “It’s different. I’ve learned to adapt to different cultures.”

Hall was one of the UVA players who rode a zip line across the Tagus River in Toledo. “That was fun,” he said. His favorite part of the trip so far, though, was one of the tours the team took in Madrid.

“The Royal Palace, I think, is probably the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen, all the architecture and the paintings,” Hall said.

Spain is thousands of miles from his hometown of Virginia Beach, but Hall is eager to expand his worldview. In the summer of 2014, he was one of the UVA players who flew to Los Angeles to see where Perrantes lives.

Earlier this summer, Hall and Perrantes trained with former UVA star Justin Anderson in Las Vegas.

“I’m not trading it,” Hall, with a smile, said of his basketball career. “I’m not trading it for anything.”

Good teaching is good teaching, regardless of whether the classroom is in the U.S., Ecuador or Kyrgyzstan, a research assistant professor in the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education is finding.

With support from two international banks, Jennifer LoCasale-Crouch is using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System, a trademarked observational assessment tool created by researchers at the Curry School’s Center for Advanced Teaching and Learning, to examine the interactions between teachers and students in Ecuador and Kyrgyzstan. She is then taking the results and using them to improve learning in both countries.

The efforts started five years ago, when LoCasale-Crouch said she was completely surprised to receive a phone call from Inter-American Development Bank economists.

She learned that, for nearly two years, a team of economists in the South American country had been using the CLASS tool to measure teacher-student interactions in the classroom. But they had a few questions and wondered if LoCasale-Crouch and her team could help answer them.

IMG_1436.JPG

That phone call has shaped the last four years of LoCasale-Crouch’s research and extended the impact of the Curry School’s research on effective teaching and learning to students in South America.

Within minutes of their first meeting, LoCasale-Crouch learned of the extensive study the team had been running on schooling effects on students. Teaching practices observed with the CLASS tool were proving to be as important in Ecuador as in the U.S.

CLASS involves observing classroom interactions in a specific, standardized way. Observers are trained to observe and score things like how teachers foster classroom relationships and respond to individual students’ needs, structure the day and engage with students to get the most learning out of their time together and engage in conversations and activities that stimulate higher-order thinking.

“We have more than a decade of research showing that the CLASS tool is effective in identifying and improving the quality of teaching and learning in American classrooms,” LoCasale-Crouch said. “But we were surprised to learn that the tool was also helpful in identifying the key contributors to children’s development in the same way in rural Ecuador.”

According to the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment surveying 15-year-olds in reading, mathematics and science, students in Latin American countries are scoring among the lowest in the world.

However, students participating in the multi-year study using CLASS in Ecuador showed significant gains in students’ learning. Students randomly assigned to a teacher that had higher CLASS scores gained on average 25 percent more on literacy, math and executive-function tests than similar students in another class.

The Inter-Development Bank invited LoCasale-Crouch to expand the research.

“Because these results were so positive, the Inter-American Development Bank approached me with the idea of funding a project that expanded the CLASS tool use, and added to it a professional development and coaching element for the teachers,” LoCasale-Crouch said.

The MyTeachingPartner program was developed at Curry as an online coaching program to improve teachers’ classroom interactions measured by CLASS. However, schools in rural Ecuador face significant system and technological challenges, making the online concept less helpful.

Instead, LoCasale-Crouch and her team are building an in-person, culturally responsive program for teachers that implements significant parts of the online coaching program without the requirement of a large technological infrastructure.

“This summer, we have been building the professional development elements of the project and will begin working with 100 early-elementary teachers for one year, beginning in this next school year,” LoCasale-Crouch said.

As progress is being made in Ecuador, Curry’s influence is also being felt in Central Asia, as LoCasale-Crouch was tapped by the World Bank to partner with the Ministry of Education in Kyrgyzstan.

“Kyrgyzstan schools are plagued with low literacy rates and low school completion,” she said.

In an attempt to tackle these issues, the education ministry is investing in early childhood education. Until 2015, students did not enter regular schooling until the age of 7. This past school year, Kyrgyzstan’s public schools added a new year of schooling for 5- and 6-year-olds.

With funding from the World Bank, Kyrgyzstan education officials partnered with LoCasale-Crouch to implement the CLASS tool to examine the quality of teaching in 250 representative classrooms from across the country.

“This past year, in addition to training observers and observing with the CLASS tool, we created a system to process the data collected,” LoCasale-Crouch said. “This year, we will work to build the country’s capacity to continue this work, as well as consider how to take what they are learning and create supportive professional development – something that is currently rarely available for a Kyrgyz teacher.”

Both the Ecuador and Kyrgyz projects have required LoCasale-Crouch and her team to balance the requirements of translating linguistically and culturally the assessments and professional development tools created in the U.S. with maintaining the elements of the tools that make them successful.

Combining the results of these projects with other researchers’ work on how the CLASS tool is used in Australia, China and Chile shows the crucial importance of teachers’ interactions with their students, LoCasale-Crouch said.

“What I find most exciting about these two projects is the fact that we are growing a community across countries and cultures that builds on what shows promise in creating positive classrooms and increasing learning, while making it culturally relevant,” she said.

“What has been particularly thrilling is to see that we are picking up on something consistent across very different cultures about the specific types of classroom interactions that matter for children’s development and learning.”

Growing up in Philadelphia, Valerie Adams-Bass had what she considers a well-rounded adolescence, marked by an esteemed education and fulfilling cultural experiences.

Upon finishing her undergraduate degree at Philadelphia University, Adams-Bass began working as a mentor for Philadelphia Futures, a nonprofit organization that helps provide resources to low-income and first-generation college students. She quickly realized that many of Philadelphia’s youth were not afforded the same experience she had enjoyed.

“That really influenced my desire to continue working with young people,” Adams-Bass said. “I became passionate about the idea that I could make a difference in their lives.”

After working on the ground in the youth-development field, Adams-Bass decided to put her newfound passion into the pursuit of graduate work. She went on to earn a master’s degree in education from Temple University and a Ph.D. in applied psychology and human development from the University of Pennsylvania. Along the way, she worked with 4-H programs in New York and Pennsylvania and conducted research in Namibia, South Africa and California.

adams-bass_inline.jpg

Now Adams-Bass is bringing her research-backed expertise in youth development to the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, as she joins the faculty of the Youth and Social Innovation program – a relatively new venture that aims to arm UVA students with the skills necessary in designing and implementing effective youth programming and policy.

“I’m looking forward to gaining newer perspectives from the students while growing my research on how to prepare and train professionals who work in our communities,” she said. 

Adams-Bass arrives at UVA following a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of California, Davis. There, she worked on a project sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that examined how public school districts throughout the country are integrating educational technology into their classrooms.

Prior to pursuing her graduate education, Adams-Bass had a stint as a youth extension agent in Penn State University’s Cooperative Extension program, where her goal was emphasizing the importance of out-of-the-classroom opportunities for adolescents, particularly in the area of 4-H.

“One of the biggest questions we got was ‘What is 4-H doing in the city?’” Adams-Bass said. “So we opened up the discussion about how 4-H isn’t just about agriculture; it’s also based on youth development and helping young people to grow and to explore.”

She later continued her work with 4-H at Cornell University, where she served New York’s 56 counties as the state director for 4-H youth development.

“That work revolved around thinking about how to ensure that the programming occurring in the community is researched-backed, and how to help extension educators evaluate it,” Adams-Bass said. “We wanted to see if it’s really working from a research-based lens and if those programs are based on what we know are the best practices for working with young people.”

Through her work, Adams-Bass began to discover that there was a noticeable lack of culturally inclusive materials that were available to use for teaching the 4-H curriculum.

“There just weren’t a lot of images that were reflective of the young people living in Philadelphia,” she said. “So I found myself trying to find more information to modify the materials I was using in order to make them more appealing to teachers and after-school providers, and, more importantly, to young people.”

According to Adams-Bass, after-school programs are an invaluable setting, particularly in diverse and low-income communities.

“In the classroom, even before the No Child Left Behind Act was implemented, there has been this focus on standardized test scores and teaching in a particular way,” she said. “I like non-classroom youth development because it gives us the flexibility to work with young people based on what interests them.”

At Penn, Adams-Bass’s dissertation work focused on negative media stereotypes, a topic that was also partly informed by previous experiences she had working in Namibia and South Africa. Adams-Bass spent a year in Namibia as a fellow at a teacher’s training college. 

“That was an experience teaching in a totally different educational system,” she said. “They were recently post-apartheid – the country was only about 10 years old – and the teachers there had preconceived notions about what the students could do. We really had to work around learning how to teach young people who came from different backgrounds.”

In Durban, South Africa, Adams-Bass studied culture communication and media studies at the University of KwaZulu Natal.

“African-American youth have the highest rates of television viewing among all other youth,” Adams-Bass said. “That really got me interested in seeing how racial stereotypes are played out and what they mean for young people who are growing up in the world today.”

The issues of race and identity among African-American adolescents remain a topic Adams-Bass intends to explore in more depth as she takes on her new role at UVA.

“I’d like to continue that work and make sure that it’s inclusive of the social media that young people are involved with now,” she said. “I’d also like to explore racial identity and socialization experiences among African-American female adolescents and whether or not it influences body image, especially when we consider public health interventions and issues of obesity.”  

Editor’s note: This is another installment in an occasional series profiling members of a generational wave of new faculty members at the University of Virginia.

Stacks of unopened mail pile up on kitchen tables. Hundreds of unread emails clutter inboxes.

“These are delivery challenges,” said Ben Castleman, an assistant professor of education and public policy in the University of Virginia Curry School of Education. “We continue to send very important communications through channels that aren’t reaching people.”

Castleman’s research at UVA is aiming to alleviate that problem, particularly in the realm of education.  

“A lot of the work I do applies a combination of behavioral science insights, data science and interactive technologies to help students and families navigate complex decisions in education,” Castleman said.  

Castleman referenced his research on the power of texting when it comes to helping college-bound high school seniors with the financial-aid process.

“Every year, there are hundreds of thousands of students who go to college who would be eligible for financial aid, but they don’t actually complete the application,” Castleman said. “Others don’t apply, and if they had, they might go to college as well.”

In that scenario, Castleman believes strategic improvements in the delivery and design of communication efforts can boost student outcomes.

Similarly, public school teachers, administrators, students and parents can also benefit from a conscious effort to more effectively communicate the less-complex, but equally important educational topics they are concerned with almost daily.

“We have to think both about how we deliver and design communication. Increasingly, even texting is getting more saturated as a channel. Instead of using words and phrases, we’re starting to embed well-designed images and infographics as a way of garnering and capturing attention,” Castleman said. “That’s my motivation for thinking more broadly than just financial aid about how schools can more effectively communicate with their populations.”

According to an article recently published by the Brookings Institution and written by Castleman and Jo Skillman – art director for The Black Sheep Agency LLC of Houston, which specializes in “non-traditional public relations, social media and experiential marketing” – incorporating private-sector marketing techniques into school communications systems could prove valuable.

“On the design side, we can be much simpler and straightforward by using a lot more media imagery, graphic design and white space,” Castleman said. “Whether the message is about free lunch, report cards or after-school program opportunities, we need to convey that information in ways that people are going to actually digest and take informed actions based on.”

Castleman, a former school administrator, said most school leaders are cognizant of the communication challenges they face and are receptive to learning how to implement these marketing strategies.

“On one hand, it seems like, ‘Of all the things we could focus on in education, why focus on better brochures?’” Castleman said. “But the reality is, from pre-K through college, students and families are making a series of complex and hard decisions. If we can more effectively communicate what’s available to them and support them to make decisions about the opportunities they pursue that best align with their own goals, that’s a pretty simple and cheap fix.”

Castleman said this concept is especially important when considering under-resourced schools and parents who may be under considerable financial stress.

“There’s some really important research that shows when a person is experiencing financial stress, their cognitive performance declines,” Castleman said. “That’s why it’s important to simplify information and convey it effectively so people in these situations can be just as informed.”

Time and financial resources are two factors of – and potential barriers to – implementation that Castleman has identified. 

“Every school administrator will tell you we can’t just add more on to our teachers’ plates,” Castleman said. “But it’s important to note that there is an increasing number of firms that are trying to bring what traditionally had been private-sector marketing and communication strategies to nonprofits and schools in the public sector.”

According to Castleman, outside assistance could take different shapes. One option, he said, is to hire a firm to do the design work.

“By spending an upfront investment on more effective delivery and design, schools can help people make decisions more effectively,” he said.

A more cost-friendly option could include hiring a firm to lead a professional-development session for school employees.

“They could come and sit with department chairs and principals for a day, giving them templates and models for auditing their own communications,” Castleman said. “That way, they are building capacity. I don’t think this has to be an expensive venture at all.”

Additionally, Castleman said many universities are willing to partner with local schools on topics like this one.

“A rapidly growing number of academics are interested in the intersection of behavioral science and education,” he said. “That presents an opportunity for synergy, and that’s a logical connection that doesn’t have to cost the school much.”

For example, Katharine Meyer, a doctoral student in the Curry School, recently led a collaboration with Arlington public schools that focused on communicating with elementary school students about their summer reading.

“She and Arlington public school leaders had various trusted voices in the school – classroom teachers, gym teachers, custodians and lunch personnel – record short videos about what and why they read over the summer and encouraging kids to do the same,” Castleman said.

According to Castleman, improved communication strategies could result in less frustration for school administrators and teachers, and, more importantly, a lasting impact on the lives of students.

“It has the potential to lead people to better opportunities and better outcomes,” he said.

With the 2016 U.S. presidential election looming, Patrice Grimes, a former middle school teacher who is now an associate professor in the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, said teachers shouldn’t shy away from the topic of politics, but embrace it.

“Some people say schools mirror society,” Grimes said. “I think it’s possible for teachers to be change agents in that process as well. That’s why it’s so important for teachers to provide the space and skills for students to be able to have political conversations.”

According to Grimes, exposing students to different viewpoints and encouraging them to engage in respectful discussion at a young age could serve to positively shape generations to come.

“It’s about teaching children the skills of decision-making and deliberation,” Grimes said. “We can clearly disagree, but that does not mean we have to be disagreeable. And unfortunately, we’re not getting enough examples of that on a broad scale for children to be able to emulate.”

Grimes recently spoke with UVA Today to offer some insight into how teachers can effectively incorporate politics into their classrooms.

Q. What is civics? Why is it an important subject to teach in the classroom?

A. Civics is a part of social studies education that is about teaching people how to get along, how to be tolerant, how to respect differences, how to engage in arguments in a constructive way, and how to argue with evidence.

Reading, math and the natural hard sciences all very important, and yet none of those subjects can be taught if we don’t have the context or premise of how to get along, communicate and resolve arguments. That’s social studies.

In the U.S. 100 years ago, we had this aggregate of people and cultures, and social studies was designed to help teach everyone how to be citizens and how to get along. Now it’s years later, and we’re still in same space, so we need it more than ever before.

Q.  What are some of the challenges to teaching civics, both generally and in the midst of an election cycle?

A. Teaching civics is challenging because in many states, it is not tested. And unfortunately, if certain subjects are not tested in a standardized way in schools, then they’re not taught with the fidelity they should be. So from the very outset, teaching social studies and civics in schools is a challenge because while there are Standards of Learning that outline what children should know, understand and be able to do in each particular grade, but there’s not necessarily uniformity in the way that it is taught.

Our current climate is an example of why it’s so important to teach civility, rights and responsibilities, and not only facts about our government, politics and policies, but also the skills and processes of decision-making, being discerning and how to disagree in ways that are respectful.

Q. Why might teachers be hesitant to teach politics in the classroom?

A. We are living in an environment where political correctness has been emphasized, and in all fairness to teachers, we also live in a society where teachers are concerned legally in terms of the things that they say or do because it could have a bottom-line effect for them. That’s why it’s important that teachers have a good fit or match with their school’s culture and climate, but that doesn’t mean their ideas or values have to be in sync.

Before teachers can teach anyone anything, though, they’ve got to know who they are, what they think, and what their values are. Going into a classroom, it will be easier to engage in discussions when teachers have done that self-examination. And again, it’s about the process. A teacher’s responsibility is to teach students the processes for thinking and learning and to expose them to various forms of evidence.

Q. Are there any other obstacles to teaching civics/politics effectively?

A. One of the consequences of our technological age is that people now are tending to dig deeper into listening, reading and engaging in points of view that are similar to theirs as opposed to going broader and listening to opposing points of view. In some ways, when we had more limited sources, people did more homework or research on their own. It’s just so easy now to access those particular points of view that are in alignment with our own.

Q. Should teachers cite examples from the current election cycle in order to teach more broadly about politics?

A. It’s crucial for teachers to be relevant in order to address these issues. Controversy in the classroom is something that teachers should welcome. It’s not about having the right answer or fixing things, but about teaching students to think critically. The presidential election becomes an example that can lead to deeper research about this incredible constitution and process that we have. So rather than fixating on specific people, those people can be the introduction to the study of how our political system has been designed and what the things are that make our system work, as well as its flaws.

Q. What makes this election cycle different from previous ones?

A. In all my years of teaching, I’ve never seen a political climate or a time such as this. That does make it challenging to be in the classroom, and yet it can be very rewarding to help ourselves and our children learn to navigate these times. It is something that we should lean into and not run away from.

Q. How is the approach to teaching civics/politics in the classroom different when the students are of elementary or middle school age?

A. Developmentally, there are differences in the way we approach the subject with children as opposed to high school students. Research shows that children form concepts about many topics very early, and we don’t give children enough credit for the decision-making, problem-solving and critical thinking that they’re capable of doing at that age. Research also indicates that exposing younger children to different people, ideas and ways of thinking expands their abilities to engage with people who are not like them, and it also helps them to affirm those things they really do believe.

Children are not living in a vacuum. They can turn on the television and see people argue and engage and they can see political advertisements. They also clearly pick up on the adult sentiments around them and will bring that into the classroom and not necessarily know why or how. That’s why teachers need to provide a space for students to be able to have discussion. I tell my teachers it’s not about controlling the conversation or about being the sage on the stage having all the answers; it’s about creating a cooperative, tolerant and respectful environment in the classroom.

Six schools across the University of Virginia have joined forces to create the University’s newest minor for undergraduate students. The “Health and Wellbeing” minor allows students to actively obtain knowledge in the full scope of disciplines represented in the integrative concept of health and wellbeing.

Understood as more than the absence of disease, the concept of health and wellbeing combines elements of genetic, biological, psychological, behavioral and social practices and processes.  UVA students eager to expand their knowledge base in all of these areas will have access to classes in the Curry School of Education, the College of Arts & Sciences, the School of Medicine, School of Nursing, School of Architecture and the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy.

“Linking the scholars and scholarship across these schools reflects an opportunity rarely seen across the nation,” said Arthur Weltman, professor and chair of the Curry School Department of Kinesiology. He also chairs the minor’s executive committee, which includes Ruth Gaare Bernheim from the School of Medicine, Randy Jones from the School of Nursing, Adam Leive from the Batten School, Rachel Most from the College and Jennifer Roe from the Architecture School.

While it is well-understood that a variety of factors contribute to health and wellness, students are rarely introduced to the topic from that wide spectrum, Weltman said. Instead, they are often pushed to focus on a singular area, such as physical wellbeing or psychology.

“This new minor is an innovative response to both students’ desires and current science,” he said.

One goal of the program is to engage students in obtaining relevant knowledge that provides a deeper and more expansive knowledge base for graduate study in a specific discipline, while at the same time promoting intelligent decision-making that can improve their quality of life, Weltman said.

A second goal is to amplify the curriculum for students who wish to work in the health or mental health professions (perhaps as physicians, psychologists, counselors, physical therapists or other types of health or mental health service providers) or plan to be engaged in designing healthy environments or contribute to public policy related to health and wellbeing.

During their coursework, students will take courses in three major domains. In the Physical Health and Wellbeing area, students will take courses on exercise science and nutrition in the Curry School and the College.

In the second area, Emotional/Mental Health and Wellbeing, students will take courses covering topics such as psychology, the science of happiness, mindfulness or substance abuse offered in the Curry School, Nursing School and the College.

In the third area, Health Policy and Healthy Environments, students will take courses such as “Healthy Cities” or the “Psychology of Environment and Space” in the School of Architecture, “Global Public Health” or “Health Impact Assessment” in the School of Medicine’s Public Health Sciences department, and “Health Care Politics and Policy” in the Batten School.

Luke Kelly, a professor in the Curry School’s Department of Kinesiology, will serve as the faculty coordinator for the new minor. Students interested in the 19-credit should click here for details about application deadlines and the academic program.

When Walter N. Ridley earned his doctorate from the Curry School of Education in 1953, he was the first African-American student to graduate from the University of Virginia.

Ridley, who was already a distinguished educator, went on to become a champion for black education. He inspired generations of Curry graduates to become active advocates for their students, and every year, the school honors his legacy with the Walter N. Ridley Distinguished Speaker Series.

In the latest edition of the series on Wednesday afternoon, the school hosted U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King Jr. as its Ridley speaker. King began his career as a high school social studies teacher and then a middle school principal – experiences that taught him the importance of preparing children for success as early as possible.

King argued that the evidence is overwhelming that giving children a strong start in early education has profound effects on their lifetime success. While there are many factors that lead to quality early education, King told the room full of future educators that it is the teachers themselves who have the power to make the biggest difference.

“The essence of quality is in the interactions between teachers and children,” he said.

He went on to explain that despite national efforts to increase preschool enrollments and open access to more low-income children, fewer than 50 percent of American 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool today.

john_king_event_ss_11.jpg

“We know we can do better and we must do better,” King said.

In light of King’s words, UVA Today takes a look at four major Curry School efforts to improve early childhood education.

In School: Creating a First-of-Its-Kind Preschool

In early 2015, an innovative laboratory school aiming to prepare children between ages 1 and 5 for kindergarten opened its doors.

The New E3 School in Norfolk is the result of a partnership between Elevate Early Education, or E3, and the Curry School’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning. Amanda Williford and Bridget Hamre, both research associate professors, lead the effort in developing the school’s curriculum and professional development approach.

A recent study led by Williford shows that 34 percent of Virginia children entering kindergarten lack key skills needed for success.

The New E3 School, the first of its kind, aims to change that. The curriculum builds from the latest science about how young children learn, with a focus on supporting teachers to interact with children in ways that help them become critical thinkers, problem-solvers and effective communicators early on in life. 

“The New E3 School is designed to be a statewide model of best practices of early childhood education spanning from infancy to preschool,” Williford said.

Across the Commonwealth: Assessing Kindergarten Readiness Statewide

As a result of the Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Project report, released in January 2015, which found about one-third of Virginia students lacked at least one important element of readiness for kindergarten, the Virginia General Assembly awarded $1 million to researchers at the Curry School’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning to expand the assessment of entering kindergartners across the commonwealth.

The Virginia Kindergarten Readiness Project is a statewide collaborative venture supported through public and private investments that involved creating, testing and implementing an assessment tool for incoming kindergarteners across the state. The additional funding allowed the team to begin the process of statewide implementation of the expanded assessments, with the ultimate goal of making these assessments available to all Virginia schools over the next five years.

Twenty-one diverse school divisions implemented an expanded battery of readiness assessments, including measures of students’ math, self-regulation and social skills. Teachers and division leaders engaged with the Curry researchers to provide insights and ideas for improving the teachers’ online experience and the overall implementation of the project.

During the current school year, the project will roughly double the number of participating school divisions to 40. This continued voluntary rollout will allow for further input from stakeholders to enhance feasibility and usefulness of the assessment system.

“The project is really Curry at its best,” Robert C. Pianta, dean of the Curry School, said. “It draws together world-class faculty with expertise in young children’s development and education, and pairs that expertise with a strategic need of the commonwealth. The new and expanded tools developed in this project will enable teachers, school divisions and the state to make much better-informed decisions to support the success of young children across all areas of their development.”

Across the Nation: Building Strategies for Early Childhood Reform Statewide in Louisiana

Louisiana is developing a unique early childhood accountability system aimed at improving the quality of all public preschool programs serving children from birth to age 5. More than 1,000 4-year-olds and their parents will participate in a $1.6 million exploration study that seeks to validate the state’s approach to measuring preschool quality and better understand how parents factor quality into their preschool decisions.

Daphna Bassok, assistant professor of education policy and associate director of UVA’s EdPolicyWorks research center, will lead the study, along with Williford. The researchers are collecting data in approximately 90 classrooms serving 4-year-olds in child care centers, Head Start classrooms and state-funded pre-kindergarten, where they will conduct multiple classroom observations and direct child assessments, parent surveys and teacher interviews. 

Around the World: Assessing Interactions in Kyrgyzstan’s Early Education Classrooms

In collaboration with the Kyrgyz Ministry of Education and the World Bank, CASTL researchers are conducting a systematic study of classroom interactions in early education settings across the Kyrgyz Republic.

In recent years, Kyrgyzstan has implemented a new school experience aimed at 5- and 6-year olds, with the goal of better preparing children for later learning and closing the existing education gap that exists in this Central Asian nation.

CASTL researchers are working to train and guide educators in Kyrgyzstan to conduct classroom observations in more than 2,000 schools. The goal is to better understand what young children are experiencing in early childhood classrooms across the country, with the hope of providing suggestions for policies and supports that will improve overall classroom instruction and children’s development.

“This past year, in addition to training observers and observing ourselves, we created a system to process the data collected,” Jennifer LoCasale-Crouch, research assistant professor and project leader, said. “This year, we will work to build the country’s capacity to continue this work, as well as consider how to take what they are learning and create supportive professional development – something that is currently rarely available for a Kyrgyz teacher.”

Better classroom instruction is one answer to reducing the racial discipline gap, according to a study conducted by researchers from the University of Virginia, Rutgers University and University of British Columbia.

The finding, reported in the current issue of School Psychology Review, has important implications for addressing one of the most alarming and persistent trends occurring in high school classrooms across the country – that African-American students are typically disciplined, suspended and expelled at much higher rates than adolescents from other racial backgrounds.

To address this racial discipline gap, professional development programs for teachers typically place an emphasis on classroom and behavior management. But this study, in which high school teachers participated in a two-year-long, video-based coaching program called MyTeachingPartner – developed at UVA – found that the gap closed when a greater emphasis was placed on improving classroom instruction.

Erik Ruzek, a research assistant professor at UVA’s Curry School of Education, said the study points to a specific change in instruction. “When teachers provided ways for students to engage in more critical thinking, analysis and problem-solving, the rate of disciplinary referrals for African-American students in that classroom decreased and was not significantly different than referrals of students from other racial groups.” In other words, there was a racial equity effect.

Anne Gregory, associate professor at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Applied and Professional Psychology, said she suspects that the improved instruction changed the dynamic of the classroom, and in turn, the relationship between teacher and students.

“I imagine that African-American students detected higher academic expectations and that they experienced being treated as scholars,” she said. As a result, a dynamic may have been established that increased positive expectations and trust between teacher and student, and reduced the overall focus on disciplinary issues.

Gregory, a leading expert in educational equity and discipline reform, said she is hopeful that the findings encourage school districts to consider a different type of professional development, one that is holistic in its approach.

“In the national dialogue on improving racial disparities, there is an emphasis on improving classroom management, but this study pushes back on that,” she said. “MyTeachingPartner is the first coaching model that has been rigorously tested using a randomized control trial and shown to reduce the racial discipline gap, but it is not singly focused on disciplinary practice.”

The MyTeachingPartner coaching model, originally developed in 2003 by a team of researchers at UVA’s Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning, focuses on a range of classroom topics, from social-emotional support to behavior management to instructional interactions. One of its hallmarks is that coaching can be individualized to focus on the topics that are most relevant to a given teacher and classroom.

The findings not only point to a new direction for professional development, but also aim to address a much larger problem facing today’s schools and society.

“When students are referred often, it typically leads to school suspension, which leads to time outside of the classroom, which leads to activities that are risky and that we don’t want students to engage in,” Ruzek said. “Ultimately, student begins to display a pattern of disengagement in school. Long term, it can lead to what we call ‘the school-to-prison pipeline.’”

The idea that improving classroom instruction is one way to minimize this negative chain of events is promising and has researchers like Gregory thinking about long-term implications.

“I think a coaching model like MyTeachingPartner fits right into creating higher-quality classroom experiences for African-American students, who are often unfairly criminalized and associated with negative social stereotypes,” she said. “The more we can reduce exclusionary discipline from classrooms as an early precursor to later problems, the more potential we have to reduce the school-to-prison pipeline.”

As a next step, Gregory and Ruzek are following up with a study to see if MyTeachingPartner coaching was able to create a true behavior shift in the way teachers approached discipline. During the original study, the researchers collected data about discipline referrals and academic outcomes for one classroom that was the focus of the two-year coaching experience, and one additional classroom that the teacher selected in a follow-up year when the coaching was discontinued. Now, the research team is heading back to collect the same data from each teacher’s full schedule of classrooms during that three-year time period.

The researchers are hoping to find a ripple effect, evidence that an individualized coaching experience focused on just one classroom impacted the way teachers address student behavior across the entire school day.

“We have found a hint of a ripple effect from the initial study,” Gregory said. “In year three, when the coaching had been discontinued and teachers selected a focus classroom for their follow-up year, we continued to see an effect.”

By analyzing a larger data set, the researchers are hoping to see an even bigger impact.  “We will investigate whether the effect of the coaching on reduced discipline referrals is present beyond a single classroom and spreads across more classrooms the teacher worked with throughout the day,” Ruzek added.

If so, Gregory believes it will be a first step in rethinking professional development for high school educators, shifting from a one-day, whole-school approach to an approach that drills down to one classroom and takes a firsthand look at the interactions taking place across the year.

The new study is funded by the William T. Grant Foundation and will take place over two years. It will shed even more light on what teachers can do in the classroom to improve the learning experience for all students and, ultimately, close the racial disciplinary gap.

Read the Article: Anne Gregory, Christopher A. Hafen, Erik Ruzek, Amori Yee Mikami, Joseph P. Allen, and Robert C. Pianta (2016) Closing the Racial Discipline Gap in Classrooms by Changing Teacher Practice. School Psychology Review: June 2016, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 171-191.

 

Students watch as pieces of glitter float furiously around inside a recently shaken jar. The glitter, their teacher tells them, is akin to their emotions; after being provoked, if they wait and give it time, the glittery chaos inside the jar will eventually settle and calm will be restored.

This lesson is just one of many elementary school students learn in Louisville, Kentucky, where the Jefferson County Schools district is partnering with the University of Virginia’s Youth-Nex Center and the Contemplative Sciences Center to implement a health and wellness program called the Compassionate Schools Project.

“The focus of the Compassionate Schools Project is on contemplation, in a broad sense,” said Patrick Tolan, who is the principal investigator of the project, alongside fellow Curry School of Education professor Patricia Jennings. “We’re trying to innovate and improve education for the 21^st century by creating programs that will help kids develop into healthy, capable people.”

The Compassionate Schools Project was developed as a collaboration between UVA’s Contemplative Sciences Center and Youth-Nex Center. The latter is directed by Tolan and emphasizes promoting positive development among children. The project is intended to incorporate four essential components into the standard physical and health education curriculum: social and emotional learning, stress management, nutrition education and physical awareness and fitness.

“These are all ideas that we know can help, but they’ve never been put into a package that could be implemented in schools as a regular part of education,” Tolan said. “These are things that are really valuable because they educate the whole child, with attention to both long-term and short-term implications.”

The Compassionate Schools Project is aiming to produce concrete, scientific results that will lend themselves to regular use of the curriculum in schools across the country. A pilot version of the project that was completed last year suggested that it was received well by students, teachers and parents, and that it could be easily implemented in other schools.

“We wanted to make sure we conducted this study in a school system that is typical of America,” Tolan said. “Louisville is a mid-to-large sized city with the diversity and challenges of large urban districts, but also a place where we can say if it works here, it can work anywhere. Overall, the kids in these classrooms appeared more engaged.”

Now in its third year, the project has received an additional $1 million from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropic organization that supports projects and research related to pressing health issues, to evaluate its effectiveness. The evaluation includes a trial involving 50 schools and more than 20,000 students. Half of the schools will continue to implement their current curriculum; the other half will implement the Compassionate Schools Project curriculum. For two years, students partaking in the latter will participate in a “practical living” course two times a week in place of typical physical education and health classes.

“They’re learning things like how to work together, how to develop healthy eating habits, physical poses that are very important in terms of agility and fitness, and how to be compassionate with, and care for, people who are different than them,” Tolan said. 

The study will continue to evaluate the students for two years after their participation to determine whether it provides long-term benefits.

“We have learned that these projects tend to have more benefits over time rather than immediately,” Tolan said. “Also, they help the kids who need it most – the ones with fewer resources and more challenges – so we want to see if the benefits last and are greater for those with most need.”

Tolan said the project has the potential to have a positive impact on teachers as well.

“Half of the people in the teaching profession quit after five years. It’s an enormous waste of capability, training and resources and it hurts our education system,” he said. “The number one reason teachers quit is because the kids are too difficult to control, and that takes time away from teaching, which is what they are trained to do and find rewarding. This curriculum helps kids maintain their focus, which will result in them behaving and paying attention better, allowing teachers more opportunity to teach.”

According to Tolan, encouraging findings from the trial would mean the possibility of the Compassionate Schools Project curriculum becoming more widespread and reaching more youth at a critical point in their development.

“It could be put into schools anywhere as a regular part of the curriculum, while still meeting state and federal health education requirements,” Tolan said. “We want curricula to consider a child’s physical and mental health as well as their social capabilities so that they can learn more and achieve more.”

A special shelf at Gordon Avenue Public Library holds not books, but toys that children can check out, as part of a new program from Madison House, the University of Virginia’s student volunteer center.

With Charlottesville’s first toy library, 2- to 12-year-olds can experience the joy of new toys all year round – everything from blocks to brain games.

Playing with toys helps grow children’s imaginations and supports areas of development, including physical coordination and social interaction, said UVA third-year student Madison Lewis, the program director, and Gordon Avenue librarian Glynis Welte, who promotes the toys during other library activities.

toy_library_04hr_da_inline.jpg

Lewis, who’s majoring in the Curry School of Education’s five-year elementary education master’s program while majoring in youth and social innovation, leads 10 volunteers who first prepared the toys and games for lending and regularly keep them cleaned. A longtime babysitter, Lewis said she loves kids and wanted to offer a wide range of items for them.

Launched this fall, preparation for the toy library began last year, Lewis said. She and her friend David Birkenthal, another third-year undergraduate, were on the UVA Student Council’s Community Affairs Committee when he shared the idea that he had first heard about from a professor who had seen toy libraries halfway round the world in Australia. He found out there were toy libraries in America, but Birkenthal thought, “Well, there isn’t one here.”

“I wanted to start a toy library in Charlottesville,” Birkenthal said in an email, “because I have an affinity for projects that strike me as inarguably good in nature, but just seem to need individuals and partners to coordinate their investment of time, effort and resources. Also, I really do enjoy personally working with kids, so I hoped that the project would provide the opportunity for other UVA students to also find enjoyment through interacting with kids.”

Since he was already working with Madison House’s Housing Improvement Program, for which he’s the program director this year, he proposed the idea to Lewis. They got funding from Student Council’s Public Service Programming Board to purchase a wide variety of toys and games, and turned to Madison House to recruit volunteers and to ensure the program would be sustainable, Lewis said.

The volunteers repackaged each item in a plastic box that has a picture of the toy or game and a list of all its pieces to ensure it all comes back after being checked out for three weeks. When toys come back, the volunteers clean them before they go back on the shelf for another child. About half of the toys are displayed on the library shelf and rotated with another batch every two weeks “to keep up the excitement” for the children, Lewis said.

uc162_1617_rotunda_sub_house_c.jpg

She and Welte have noticed that the toy library is popular with international families, giving them another way to become familiar with American culture, Lewis said.

One simple task that makes the toy library possible, Welte added, “is the time the volunteers spend at Madison House cleaning the toys after each use. Without their time volunteering, we would not be able to provide the toys, because the cleaning would be too time-consuming for library staff.

“I find it exciting that the [UVA students] are so enthusiastic and wanted to give their time to volunteering,” she said. “They have all been very focused on the children, helping them and asking them questions about their projects.”

The projects she’s referring to take place during the library’s biweekly “Creation Station,” when Welte sets up arts and crafts activities, aided by Madison House volunteer helpers. Earlier in December, several UVA students dropped in to work with children from nearby Venable Elementary School’s after-school program as they made brightly colored snowflakes out of chenille stems and beads.

Lajja Patel, a third-year biology major, and Darya Tahan, a second-year student, said they enjoy working with the kids on these creative projects as a break from their science-heavy coursework.

During that activity, as well as the library’s story-time sessions, Welte frequently mentions the toy library or shows toys that go with the books that she’s reading to children.

“The toys do not compete with the books, but enhance the experience in the library,” she said. “I already provide some in-house toys and puzzles to enrich library visits. Having toys to take home has added to that experience.”

Two examples she gave were recommending “Astronaut Handbook,” by Meghan McCarthy, when a family checked out an astronaut and space shuttle set, and the book “Dig Dig Digging” to go with construction vehicles. “The books provide vocabulary and topics to enhance the play experience and [playing] makes the words and information meaningful,” Welte said.

The toy library is part of Madison House’s Youth Mentoring network, which includes a Big Brothers and Big Sisters program and Bridging the Gap, a program devoted to refugee children. These volunteers also use the toy library when they take the children they work with to Gordon Avenue Library.

The youngsters think the college students are “cool,” Welte said. “The Madison House volunteers have been wonderful.” 

Five pioneering University of Virginia alumnae are among the honorees on Forbes’ 2017 “30 Under 30” lists. These women represent the power of UVA ingenuity across disciplines and are leading their fields in education, microbiology, economic policy and e-commerce. Each “30 Under 30” list covers one of 20 areas and industries, and more than 15,000 nominations were submitted.

As members of this year’s list, these UVA alums are among powerful company like Olympian Simone Biles, future White House Press Secretary Hope Hicks, singer Charlie Puth and Pulitzer-Prize-winning Washington Post journalist Wesley Lowery. Below, UVA Today takes a look at the five Wahoo honorees and how they’re shaking up the world.

Tamara Wilkerson: 30 Under 30 – Education

Tamara Wilkerson earned her bachelor’s degree and master’s in education from UVA’s Curry School of Education in 2012. After several years working as a middle school teacher in Charlottesville, she changed careers to become the executive director of the African American Teaching Fellows program.

wilkerson_inline.jpg

Through the program, Wilkerson is helping inspire new generations of African American students by helping to recruit, train and retain more people of color to teach and mentor in Charlottesville and Albemarle County public schools. While there are many teaching recruitment and support programs in the United States, the African American Teaching Fellows program is the only one to work long term and one-on-one with fellows. It offers guidance through college and professional support once the fellows enter the workforce.

“UVA taught me the importance of serving others and contributing to something bigger than myself,” Wilkerson said. “I am very excited to not only lead a nonprofit that is based in Charlottesville, but is also influential in the education system where I began my teaching career as a Curry student. I am forever grateful to be a two-time UVA alumna and to serve the community that gave so much to me as a student.”

Ryan Burke: 30 Under 30 – Law & Policy

A 2009 graduate, Ryan Burke was an extremely active student. She lived on the Lawn, was a member of the University Guide Service, the Raven Society, the Honor Committee and the residence staff. Over the past three years, she’s turned her attention to government service as the special assistant to the president for economic policy.

Burke has been a member of the White House Economic Council since 2014 and was responsible for the design and implementation of President Obama’s TechHire initiative – a campaign to expand local technology sectors by building industry talent pipelines across the country. She also led White House engagement on skill and job training-related issues with the National Economic council.

As Obama’s term comes to a close, Burke may consider an entrepreneurial path for her next career.

Carrie Cowardin: 30 Under 30 – Healthcare

Carrie Cowardin was earning her doctorate in microbiology and immunology at UVA when she uncovered the true power of the dangerous pathogen C. difficile. Until recently, scientists did not understand what made this particular strain of bacteria so deadly; it kills up to 15 percent of infected patients.

carrie_cowardin_inline.jpg

While researching in the lab of Dr. Bill Petri, chief of UVA’s Division of Infectious Diseases and International Health, Cowardin found that C. difficile produces a toxin that kills protective cells, called eosinophils, in the gut. This erodes the natural barrier there and allows the bacteria to spread inflammation throughout the body. In discovering how C. difficile operates and spreads, Cowardin also opened the door to new treatment options for combatting the toxic bacteria.

Her findings were published in the scientific journal Nature Microbiology and she’s now working as a postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis.

“As a proud ‘Double Hoo,’ I can say that my undergraduate degree prepared me exceptionally well for graduate school and served as the foundation of my interest in science. In turn, my doctoral research in the department of Microbiology, Immunology and Cancer Biology taught me to think critically and ask meaningful questions about human and microbial biology, and helped me turn my interests into achievable research goals,” Cowardin said. “I’m honored to be included in this year’s list and grateful to all of my professors, colleagues and friends at UVA who have taught me so much.” 

Katherine Kapnick: 30 Under 30 – Retail & E-Commerce

Katherine Kapnick is still completing her MBA at the Yale School of Management, but that hasn’t stopped her from grabbing an early foothold in the world of e-commerce. The 2013 graduate is co-founder of Hill House Home, a luxury direct-to-consumer bedding and home business.

She launched the company in January 2016 with fellow MBA student, Nell Diamond, and their brand has already received national recognition. Vogue and Town & Country both praised Hill House Home products for their extreme comfort and chic looks.

Kapnick majored in English with a minor in computer science and is set to earn her MBA at Yale in 2018.

Jia Tolentino: 30 Under 30 – Media

Jia Tolentinograduated in 2009 after studying English and political and social thought. Forbes cited her recent work as a writer for the New Yorker and elsewhere: “Now a writer for NewYorker.com, Jia Tolentino is a former deputy editor of Jezebel. She was a contributing editor to the smart and hilarious women's blog, The Hairpin, and her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Pitchfork and other outlets. She's represented by Amy Williams literary agency.”

inline_headhshot.jpg

Prior to her career in media, Tolentino was a Peace Corps volunteer teaching English to children in Kyrgyzstan. She also spent a year teaching creative writing short courses in a Houston-area public elementary school.

By the very nature of their inclusion on a 30 Under 30 list, each of these women is still at a relatively early stage in their career path. The University is sure to see further accomplishments from them as they continue sharing the power of UVA ingenuity in their fields.