Across America, the numbers of homeless children and families are growing as a result of many factors including the recent economic crisis, home foreclosures, and natural disasters. Because of an increase in the number of homeless children throughout the United States, this population has unmet needs that can be targeted in school settings under…

"Education Week" Staff Writer Michelle R. Davis sat down with Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings, on January 9, 2006, in the secretary's office at the U.S. Department of Education. This article contains excerpts from that interview. Secretary Spellings notes that being a parent of school-age children has given her an unusual…

This article offers an interconnected, grounded understanding of how two Gandhian endeavours in the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, India, make us rethink the notion of "education" in terms of civic and communal engagement. Drawing on local, vernacular ways of living, learning, being, reasoning, and believing--in this case Gujarati--I show…

This article features the text of a speech by Richard Whiteside, Vice President for Enrollment Management and Dean of Admission at Tulane University in New Orleans, that was presented during AACRAO's Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Conference, November 15, 2005, in Chicago. In his speech, Whiteside recounts his personal story of living…

The literature notes that natural disasters, including wildfires, that damage human settlements often have the short-term effect of "bringing people together." Less recognized is the fact that such events can also generate social conflict at the local level. This study examines the specific sources of such social conflict during and after…

This study evaluated a community-based grief and trauma intervention for children conducted postdisaster. Fifty six children (7 to 12 years old) who reported moderate to severe levels of symptoms of posttraumatic stress were randomly assigned to group or individual treatment. Treatment consisted of a manualized 10-session grief- and trauma-focused…

This study examined the influence of aspects of the post-Hurricane Katrina recovery environment (i.e., discrimination, social support) and coping behaviors on children's posttraumatic stress reactions (symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder [PTSD], anxiety, and depression). Data corresponding to 46 youth (M = 11.43 years; 39% girls; 33% African…

Following the devastation of hurricane Katrina, a university located in the southeastern United States created a service-learning program. This program was established so that physical education teacher education (PETE) students could provide physical activities to children living in a temporary, government-funded housing community. The purpose of…

Cell phones have become prevalent on college campuses. Most students use them as their primary phone to avoid changing phone service every year or dealing with university-based long-distance charges. In the wake of recent college shootings and threats of violence on campus, administrators have begun to deploy cell phone solutions to send emergency…

This article describes the independent reading and research project of an early childhood education graduate student who taught in a school district heavily impacted by Hurricane Katrina. She surveyed a sample of kindergarten teachers in the district to determine how they were responding in the aftermath of Katrina. The voices of teachers reflect…

Louisiana state schools Superintendent Cecil J. Picard is working to rebuild the New Orleans school system while battling Lou Gehrig's disease. Cecil J. Picard walks confidently and purposefully to his seat, using a cane to support his weakening right leg. The widow's peak and his graying hair are signs that he's lived 68 years, and the cane…

Natural disasters come in all shapes and sizes and affect all areas of the earth, and studying natural disasters may make children more aware of their physical environment and their place in it. This column provides a list of websites on different types of natural disasters, including earthquakes, landslides, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods,…

Across New Orleans' still-emerging patchwork of regular public schools and charter schools, the emotional, social, and academic damage that the August 2005 hurricane inflicted on the city's children plays out daily, in disruptions to instruction, in schoolyard fights, and in classrooms half-empty because of chronic absenteeism. Over a three-month…

Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton declared natural disasters somewhere in the United States on average of about one per week between 1998 and 2005. Despite this frequency, most citizens are unprepared when a natural disaster occurs in their city or neighborhood. In particular, teachers and students can become paralyzed by the overwhelming…

Long before Katrina, the South functioned in the social imaginary to contain racism and poverty, and the Mason-Dixon acts then in the national imagination as a buffer to safeguard the nation from the taint of such undemocratic realities. More and more, in many countries of America, a system known as "neoliberalism" prevails; based on a…