Summer 2021 Newsletter
Dear Educator,

As we close this difficult academic year and begin summer, we invite you to continue learning with us. This newsletter includes information about our free upcoming workshops, relevant research on teaching, a summer reading recommendation, and a report about an exciting program promoting student learning in science.


Sincerely,

Director, UCI Teacher Academy
Director, UCI History Project

Faculty Advisor, UCI Teacher Academy
Professor, UCI School of Education
UCI Teacher Academy Faculty Advisor Beth van Es shares her research on noticing and how we can use this practice to advance student learning. She writes, "Efforts to improve learning opportunities for students in K-12 contexts suggests that developing awareness of student thinking and patterns of student participation can lead to improvements in student learning and create a much more positive and equitable learning environment for both students and teachers."
The Young Engineers & Scientists (YES) is an innovative program that introduces elementary school children from underrepresented groups to the wonders of science and engineering. Kindergartners and first graders engaged in design learning by building models, collaborating with peers and parents, and refining their ideas. UCI Science Project staff detail the impact the YES Program had on its participants.
To view previous articles on teaching from the UCI Teacher Academy,
please visit the Teacher Academy's "Classroom" webpage.
Educators are invited to join the UCI Teacher Academy at our free, online workshops. Below are just a few of our upcoming offerings. To learn more about all of our upcoming workshops, please visit our website.


The UCI WRITE Center invites teachers to its summer webinar series (Re)imagining the Post-Pandemic Literacy Classroom: The First 100 Days. The series kicks off with a talk on digital literacy with Ernest Morrell. He asks, What if we asked every kid in America next fall to tell us what they learned during the pandemic, how they grew, how they are different, and what they wanted to do next? Join us June 23 for a webinar dedicated to digital literacy in the culturally responsive classroom. To learn more and to register for this session and the series click here.

The School of Humanities New Swan Shakespeare Center invites teachers to attend their Educators Day, Romeo and Juliet and Social Justice, July 14. Learn from a master teacher, from actors, and from each other at this interactive remote event. Click here to register.

Special Education teachers, aides, and coordinators are invited to attend our Digital Inclusion in SPED: Teaching with Technology for Special Education Teachers workshop. Educators will be introduced to tech tools to differentiate instruction, a framework for evaluating technology of student use, and methods for advocating how to best address special education digital inclusion at schools. Register now for this July 28th workshop.

Return to school ready to Build an Antiracist Classroom Community by joining fellow educators Stacy Yung and Virginia Nguyen as they share the ways in which they build and foster their antiracist classroom communities. Together participants will explore, guide, and reflect on resources and strategies for creating a classroom in which students feel welcomed and find a place of belonging. Meetings start in August. To learn more and register, click here.
What We Are Reading Right Now
Kris Houston, CalTeach Coordinator and Irvine Math Project Co-Director recommends this book, a collection of 15 educator's experiences with ungrading. Ungrading centers the transformations that have occurred in educators' teaching and their students' learning resulting from a shift of focus on perceptions of what it means to learn and not just "complete assignments" for points. How many of your students rush through assignments, submit them, then you spend hours providing feedback and the only thing they look at is the score? This book is a good starting point to thinking about how to get out of this cycle. Students use teacher feedback as well as metacognition about their own learning to re-envision what it means to learn, rather than being sorted and judged, often subjectively.
The UCI Teacher Academy is made possible by a generous
founding gift from the SchoolsFirst Credit Union
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