News

Ben Anderson, a high school calculus teacher participates in Teachers in Industry during the summer.

Bringing employee experience in tech companies into the high school classroom

Aug. 8, 2019

As Arizona students head back to class in August, so too will a group of about 50 middle and high school teachers who spent the summer working in industry as part of the University of Arizona College of Education Teachers in Industry program. The business-education partnership is in its 11th year of placing experienced teachers in Arizona industries each summer. 

Ben Anderson, a...

Congratulations Kathy Short!

Aug. 1, 2019

Professor and Worlds of Words Director Kathy Short was inducted into the Reading Hall of Fame. Congratulations!

Rebecca Ballenger works with her students to prepare books for their silent books exhibit

Enriching our professional environment

July 10, 2019

Forbes Magazine recognizes UA as one of the best employers in Arizona. Employees like Rebecca Ballenger have something to do with it. Ballenger, Associate Director for Worlds of Words, inspires creativity and deep thought in her approach with students and interns. She goes beyond that by building relevant experiences for local school groups visiting the world-renowned international literature collection, as well as hosting workshops for...

Globalizing the Common Core Reading List

June 19, 2019

The Common Core State Standards and their variations influence K-12 curriculum, particularly in the teaching of literacy, across the U.S. and internationally. Funded by the UA’s language resource center CERCLLKathy Short worked with the Common Core State Standards exemplar list to pair those recommendations with global fiction and nonfiction. Short also found...

Comp Hydro: Integrating Data Computation and Visualization to Build Model-based Water Literacy

June 19, 2019

High school science just got a little more meaningful. While learning about hydrologic systems, high school students will engage in using computer models to understand groundwater flow and use groundwater flow to understand computer modeling concepts.  Kristin L. Gunckel from UA collaborates with Colorado State University, University of Montana, and Cary Institute for Ecosystem Studies on this research...

Designing with community in mind

June 19, 2019

Associate Professor Jill Castek is the principal investigator on a new project supported by the National Science Foundation on how best to develop inclusive studio-based learning environments. Castek and Assistant Professor Blaine Smith will be collaborating across campus with Kevin Bonine, Jennifer Nichols, and Leslie Sult from UA Biosphere 2, and the UA Libraries,...

Indigenous Teacher Education Project

June 19, 2019

The Indigenous Teacher Education Project (ITEP) is a 4-year project in partnership with the Gila River Indian Community, Pascua Yaqui Tribe, Tohono O'odham Nation, and Tucson Unified School District to strengthen the learning experiences of indigenous students by addressing the need to increase the number of Indigenous teachers serving Indigenous students, schools, and communities. The project is led...

Disrupting bullying behaviors

June 19, 2019

In an effort to provide teachers with curricular resources for incorporating anti-bullying lessons into social studies content, William SmithJina Yoon, and Charlotte Iurino are working to disrupt bullying behaviors in middle and high school. The initial phase of research includes outreach to social studies teachers, which was funded by the Smith Endowment.

How Adolescents Analyze Literature in Digital Environments

June 19, 2019

In this study, Blaine Smith closely examines 10th-grade students as they collaboratively create multimodal projects connected to literature in multilingual ELA classes. Findings from this project will advance the field in understanding how students’ literacy-learning is revealed, and how it travels and transforms across different modalities in digital environments. The outcome will also aid English...

Reviving an Ancient Whistle Language

June 19, 2019

We often think shouting is the way to get our voice to carry, but evidence of whistle languages around the globe prove otherwise. Whistle languages were developed specifically for the efficiency of communication between people over distance. On the island of La Gomera, one of the smallest of the Canary Islands, ‘el silbo’ is one such ancient whistling language. A large community used ‘el silbo’ to get sometimes-urgent messages across the...