As we make our way through the challenges of dealing with the coronavirus, we are doing our best to keep things running smoothly, including continued teaching in whatever formats necessary. All university classes will be held online through the end of the spring semester and possibly longer. All Arizona schools are closed, so we are grappling with what to do to make sure requirements are met for student teaching, methods, and internships. Top on our agenda is to keep everyone safe. If you’d like more information, the college has a coronavirus response information page.

In other news, we are sad to report the passing of Professor Emeritus Kenneth Goodman. A longtime College of Education professor (alongside his wife, Professor Emerita Yetta Goodman), he was best known for developing the theory underlying the literacy philosophy of whole language. He served as president of these organizations: International Literacy Association, National Conference on Research in Language and Literacy, and Center for Expansion of Language and Thinking. We will post updates to the college’s Facebook page as soon as they become available. He will be deeply missed.

Building curiosity and self-direction for students

With the support of $650,000 from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, the college and the Tucson Unified School District will research the impact of what is known as "asset-based dialogic teaching" on student outcomes, such as curiosity and self-direction.

Asset-based dialogic teaching involves teachers posing critical problems for inquiry, reflecting upon students' responses, and engaging students in conversation.

The research effort, which will take place at Tucson Magnet, Cholla, and Pueblo High Schools, will be led by Associate Dean Francesca López, along with TUSD administrators Norma González and Lorenzo López.

"Asset-based dialogic teaching engages with students' prior knowledge and experiences through collaboration and engaging learning tasks that build curiosity and self-direction," said Francesca López.

 

The fascinating history behind Education North and our plans to give it new life

Not everything happens in our main building on East Second Street.

We also conduct college business and hold events in what used to be St. Paul’s Memorial Episcopal Church at 1501 E. Speedway. The building has an interesting backstory.

 

St. Paul's was designed by architect Anne Rysdale, the only registered female architect in Arizona from 1949 to the early 1960s. The building was completed and dedicated in December 1959, and included a combination chapel, parish house, student center, and lounge. Most of the communicants were University of Arizona students.

The façade of the chapel was hydro-blasted concrete, finished with white marble chips and golden beige quartz. Thirteen white Canterbury crosses in bas relief, which can still be seen on the side facing Speedway, were designed by concrete sculptor James Savage to decorate the front.

Rysdale, a graduate of the University of Arizona, was married to George “Rattlesnake” Jackson, a football player for the Wildcats. Dozens of ranch houses in El Encanto, Winterhaven, and Tucson Country Club Estates bear her signature, along with a slew of office buildings and shopping centers and even multiple McDonald's. During her architectural career in Arizona, Rysdale was frequently interviewed and wrote more than a hundred columns for the Arizona press on architecture, home building, and her career as a female architect.

Rysdale is also notable for pioneering the use of copper ore as a decorative building stone in Tucson.

The university started using the building in the 1990s. The college took over the building around 2008 and named it Education North.

Today, the Colleges of Education and Humanities are coming together to transform the Education North building into a state-of-the-art, collaborative learning space. Our vision is to provide greater access and innovative educational opportunities for students and the community, particularly life-long learners. Situated south of the Poetry Center, Education North is in the perfect location to grow our vibrant learning community.

Here two more pieces on Rysdale, the impressive female architect behind the original building.

Preserve Tucson

Real Tucson

Outstanding leadership in higher education

Two of our faculty members — Assistant Professors Kevin Henry and Demarcus Jenkins — have been honored with the JV Educational Leadership Award for providing outstanding leadership in higher education.

The secret nominations included educational and enthusiastic technique, contribution to student retention, and dedication to their discipline through scholarly advancements. They will be featured at the 18th Annual International Males of Color Empowerment and Retention Conference in October. 

WOW now an official university center and the only one in the U.S. to highlight global literacies

By now, most of you know about the college’s Worlds of Words, the largest international collection of adolescent and children’s books in the United States. Open to the public, WOW is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together.

WOW’s collection of 40,000 books and the special exhibitions hosted in the WOW studio regularly attracts classes, students, and faculty from many different departments across the university for tours, presentations, class sessions, and assignments. 

The collection space always is filled with students engaged in reading and discussing with each other in addition to the more formal visits from an entire class. WOW is a resource for educators globally through the website and the various journals, blogs, and other kinds of regular postings on the site. The need for this resource is clear as educators from more than 180 countries come to the site to engage with these resources.

 

Now designated as a University of Arizona center, the increased profile provides the recognition necessary to:

Professor Kathy Short, the director and brainchild of WOW, said, “Worlds of Words is the only center in the U.S. that highlights global literatures and literacies as a means of building bridges across cultures for children and adolescents. Our goal is to continue to develop projects and resources that play an increasingly significant role in global education initiatives, both in the university and in the broader national and global context.” 

Speaking of, the Arizona Daily Wildcat recently wrote this article on how dual-language picturebooks preserve and diversify culture.

Boosting the college-going rate

Our successful mentoring program, Project Student Outreach Access & Resiliency (SOAR), targets students attending under-resourced middle schools in the Tucson area. The program enrolls approximately 100 students from across campus each semester to serve as mentors for hundreds of middle-school students.

It’s a win-win situation as we serve at-risk middle schoolers while also impacting undergraduates enrolled in service-learning experiences.

Expect More Arizona featured Project SOAR on its website. 

People 

Dean's Office



Dean and Professor Bruce Johnson served on the Committee on Understanding the Changing Structure of the K-12 Teacher Workforce for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The committee released a new report, finding that teachers face new expectations and more demands from policymakers, parents, students, and schools, including addressing changes in curriculum standards, the emergence of more explicit teaching goals, and shifts in what it means to support all students in their development. 

Arizona teachers are significantly less diverse than their students. Associate Dean and Professor Francesca López was quoted in several outlets (just a sampling below) about why it is important to have a diverse teaching pool.

Ed Week

Arizona Public Media

KGUN9

Disability & Psychoeducational Studies

Professor Sheri Bauman was a guest on this podcast about digital aggression and spoke about her new book, Political Cyberbullying: Perpetrators and Targets of a New Digital Aggression. 

Educational Policy Studies & Practice

Are public university enrollment priorities biased against poor communities and communities of color? Assistant Professor Karina Salazar and UCLA Assistant Professor Ozan Jaquette (formerly with our college) investigated that bias, as seen in this opinion piece written by Jaquette in the Los Angeles Times.

Associate Professor Sunggye Hong was selected as a 2020-2021 Fulbright Scholar. He will conduct a collaborative research project in South Korea that explores the education and employment of people with visual impairments.

Psychologist and adjunct faculty member Paula McCall is the brainchild behind Prepared Parenting, an annual event in Chandler, Arizona, aimed at helping parents and children overcome anxiety and depression. Many of our second-year school psychology graduate students presented break-out sessions at the event. Additional school psychology faculty supported students by supervising the preparation of break-out sessions. 

McCall also managed to coordinate multiple vendors and sponsors so the event could be offered free of charge to the community. 

Phoenix’s ABC affiliate covered the Prepared Parenting event.

Educational Psychology

Professor Emeritus Thomas L. Good and two-time College of Education graduate Alyson L. Lavigne ’07 ’10, now an assistant professor of instructional leadership at Utah State University, are the authors of the book, Looking in Classrooms, which uses educational, psychological, and social science theories and classroom-based research to teach about the complexities and demands of classroom instruction. The 11th edition of the book is about to be published. Good and Lavigne also wrote this research brief for the American Psychological Association, and the Washington Post wrote an analysis on the research.

Teaching, Learning & Sociocultural Studies

Jenniffer Estrada ’17 — a third-grade teacher at A.J. Mitchell Elementary School in Nogales — was honored with the Nogales Unified School Superintendent Fernando Parra’s Outstanding Educator Award. Parra presented the award to Estrada (right).

The Women of Influence Awards 2020 awarded La Cima Middle School Principal Julie Valenzuela ’88 — who grew up wanting to be a secretary — with the Administrative Champion Award. 

You can help remove obstacles to education

You may have heard of the Pell Pledge Grant and the Arizona Teachers Academy which fund tuition for eligible students, but these students still need financial support to meet the full cost of attending the university. Many of our students struggle to meet daily living needs such as housing and food. 

With your help, students can receive much needed support to remove barriers to their education. This is especially true for our student teachers who work full time in the classroom while taking a full load of classes, making it nearly impossible to work a part-time job.

As we prepare the future generation that will impact their communities and inspire many, we appreciate your support to make dreams come true. Please contact me if you would like to learn more about supporting our scholarship program. Thank you for your consideration to invest in our students!