Service learning has been established as a promising method of teaching and learning that engages youth as change agents in their schools and communities. But service learning has not been widely implemented or studied in rural K-12 schools. This study explores the case of a service learning curriculum, the Working Together Project (WTP), in a…

Jean Kirshner holds a Ph.D. in Education and Human Resource Development from Colorado State University and specializes in literacy and teacher education. Jean started her career as the Early Childhood Director at Saint Ignatius Grammar School, Chicago in 1988. After two years she joined the Child Opportunity Program in Denver as a Head Start…

The start of kindergarten signifies the beginning of elementary school and everything that may come with it: a new building, new teachers, new expectations, and a different routine and culture. These new students transition into kindergarten from different settings, bringing with them a variety of assets and experiences. From a holistic…

University educators (UEs) have a long history of teaching physics not only in formal classroom settings but also in informal outreach environments. The pedagogical practices of UEs in informal physics teaching have not been widely studied, and they may provide insight into formal practices and preparation. We investigate the interactions between…

The project setting was a remote rural county school district located in a mountain western state with some overrepresentation of English Learners (ELs) in special education. Referral issues are especially prominent in rural school systems due to continued challenges associated with limited resources and lack of contemporary professional…

Research has shown that few educational reform efforts have achieved significant, long-lasting improvement in student achievement. In order to accelerate growth in student achievement, many researchers have advocated the development of cultures of evaluative inquiry. In a culture of evaluative inquiry, teachers use data to identify instructional…

The MAST-EL University and School Partnership supports a strategic infrastructure for preparing preservice and in-service teachers ensuring high quality mathematics and science instruction for English learners (ELs). The partnership in its second year consists of thirty-two in-service elementary teachers, three instructional coaches, thirty…

This brief reviews results of an Annie E. Casey Foundation sponsored project that challenged local data intermediaries in eight cities (all partners in the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership, NNIP) to use their data to promote strengthening of their local school readiness systems. The project showed it was possible to develop rich…

This article features the Boulder Journey School located in Boulder, Colorado. Throughout the first 25 years of the school's existence as a learning community, it has maintained its vision of a school as a place that invites children's learning through relationships and interactions with the environment and with others. However, its vision has…

Public-school policy and federal law both emphasize parental involvement, yet there is insufficient research guiding meaningful collaboration between school practitioners and immigrant parents. This article reports on results gleaned from a larger study of school-based adult ESL classes, focusing on the role that these classes could play in…

The ULINCS Project research describes how elementary teachers learned a model for integrating skills of mathematics, reading, and writing with the teaching of science which led to increased teaching skills and enhanced student achievement. This joint university and school district project was funded by an Eisenhower Grant, and focused on educators…

The experience described by Kay Hoag, Advocacy Chair of the National Network for Early Language Learning (NNELL), exemplifies the threat of program elimination and/or cutbacks that elementary school foreign language programs across the nation experienced with increased frequency during the 2002-2003 academic year. Reports of these threats…