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The Kenan Fellows Program will accept applications for fellowships December 1, 2011 through January 31, 2012. Classroom teachers selected as Kenan Fellows represent the most outstanding and committed educators across North Carolina. As Fellows, they engage in partnerships with distinguished scientists, university faculty and professional educators to develop innovative curricula for use in classrooms throughout our state.

K-12 public school teachers from all disciplines are encouraged to apply. School administrators, community leaders, parents of students and former Kenan Fellows may nominate candidates, although a nomination is not required in order to apply. Application and nomination links will become available December 1. For more information about the program, visit the Kenan Fellows Program website.

Public school teachers from all school districts in North Carolina are eligible to apply.

Kenan Fellows at the LEARN NC Fall Interactive Conference

You can also learn more about the Kenan Fellows Program by joining us for the LEARN NC 2011 Fall Interactive Conference. The conference will include a presentation by Matt Misuraca, Kenan Fellows Program Regional Coordinator and Kenan Fellow Ronda Bullock. Ms. Bullock will discuss how she’s grown as a professional as a result of her participation in the program.

For more details on this 3:00 session, see the conference agenda page.

What were Union and Confederate soldiers writing about 150 years ago? Thanks to a project of Wilson Library’s Special Collections at UNC, students and teachers have access to a remarkable subset of the historical record from the Civil War.

The library is observing the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War with a unique blog, Civil War Day by Day. The blog shares one primary source from the war each day, exactly 150 years after the source was created. Documents include letters, newspapers, diaries and more, and each post consists of the scanned source as well as a transcription.

The first post was published on April 12, and daily posts will continue for four years, paralleling the four years of the Civil War. Opportunities abound for curious students to interact with historical primary sources and to develop a sense of the time span over which the war unfolded.

If you have questions about Civil War Day by Day, please contact Wilson Library.

A Paideia Seminar can be one of the most effective and engaging ways to help students develop critical thinking skills. If you’re not sure exactly what a Paideia Seminar is or how to lead one, we hope you’ll join us for Dr. Terry Robert’s session at the LEARN NC 2011 Interactive Fall Conference.

The description of Dr. Roberts’s session, “Teaching Critical Thinking Via Seminar Dialogue,” follows:

One of the most important 21st-century survival skills is critical thinking, and yet we pay almost no attention to teaching thinking in our classrooms. Under the pressure of the new Common Core state standards, this is about to change as teachers will be asked to teach sophisticated reading, writing, speaking, listening — and thinking — skills across the curriculum. Join Terry Roberts as he discusses how to use the Paideia seminar to teach these skills regardless of subject area.

To register for the conference, visit the conference registration page.

Paideia teacher training manual

For more on the Paideia approach, you can also take a look at “The Paideia Seminar: Active Thinking Through Dialogue,” the National Paideia Center’s teacher training manual, which is published on the LEARN NC website. The manual includes an explanation of what Paideia is, how it works, and why it’s relevant; a thorough discussion of the Paideia Seminar; a step-by-step guide to planning a Seminar; lists of responsibilities for facilitators and participants; planning tools, including questions and rubrics; assessment tools; and sample texts and plans.

Bill McDiarmid, Dean of the UNC-Chapel Hill School of Education, has written an article about the school’s efforts to support educators working with Latino students and their families. You can find the article, “Gearing Up to Help Latino Students Succeed,” on the School of Education website.

On Monday, November 7, LEARN NC will host our annual fall conference. This year, for the first time, the conference will take place entirely online. You’ll be able to listen to the presenters, pose questions, and interact with other participants from any internet-connected computer. And, as always, the conference is entirely free!

We’ll be joined by an exciting line-up of presenters, who will discuss topics like how to reach struggling readers, teaching about North Carolina American Indians, modeling-based science instruction, and the state’s adoption of new curriculum standards and professional teaching standards. Presenters include classroom teachers, UNC faculty members, and leaders from DPI.

The conference will consist of eight sessions, from 11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. All sessions will be archived for future viewing. For more details and to register, please see the conference website. We look forward to seeing you there!

The North Carolina Civic Education Consortium, a program of the School of Government at UNC-Chapel Hill, works with schools, governments, and community organizations to prepare North Carolina’s young people to be active, responsible citizens. Each month the Consortium delivers an email newsletter with news and opportunities for civic engagement.

To celebrate National Hispanic Month which runs September 15 through October 15, the NC Civic Education Consortium is featuring three lesson plans written around Paul Cuadros’ book A Home on the Field. The lessons for grades 8-12 use excerpts from the book to teach about immigration in North Carolina.

The newsletter also includes civic education news and opportunities for educators. Read about the Guardian of Democracy: The Civic Mission of Schools report’s “call for action” and the six proven practices that should be used to teach civic education in the classroom. Also in the news, read about the Southern Poverty Law Center’s report on the importance of teaching students about America’s civil rights movement.

Professional development opportunities are being offered by the Consortium and its partners. Upcoming workshops and seminars include topics on the Freedom Riders, Islamic cultures, the future of Europe, and more.

There are also two contests for students in civics, the “Civic Impact Challenge” offered by iCivics.org and the “Being an American Essay Contest” from the Bill of Rights Institute. More information is included in the newsletter.

To read the newsletter, visit the Consortium’s website. To receive the newsletter via email, contact Anita Buie.

Interns from the UNC-BEST program have developed a series of eight online modules to teach STEM topics. The modules, which use engaging graphics and interactive features, are designed to provide self-study opportunities and curriculum support to high-school science teachers and advanced high-school students.

Topics covered include:

• Proteins of the deep sea
• Using transgenics to explore plant immunity
• Using toads to understand animal behavior
• Studying proteins involved in cell division
• Fruit fly research and genetics
• Disease ecology
• Cancer research for drug development
• The power of Google

About UNC-BEST

The UNC Baccalaureate Education in Science and Teaching (UNC-BEST) Program is a collaboration between the School of Education and the College of Arts and Sciences. This innovative program offers undergraduate science and mathematics majors enrolled in the Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Geology and Mathematics departments the opportunity to complete requirements for a Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree and obtain licensure as a secondary science or mathematics teacher in North Carolina.

Pre-service teachers are provided with an array of opportunities to develop their pedagogical content knowledge during university coursework and field experiences. One aspect of the UNC-BEST program is the Summer Research Internship, funded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). These internships provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to develop a more accurate understanding of the nature of science as they use their instructional expertise to create online curricula resources. The UNC-BEST interns work alongside a graduate student or postdoctoral fellow who serve as their research mentor.

The research mentor helps the UNC-BEST intern learn the science and technology behind the various research methodologies the lab utilizes to pursue answers to their research questions. The UNC-BEST intern is involved in all the steps of the research process including setting up experiments and collecting, recording and interpreting data over the course of the internship.

We’ve just launched a new blog, The Well: Carolina Research for Your Classroom. The Well shares recent education research paired with practical tips you can use in your classroom tomorrow.

Our first posts include:

• “Don’t Be Afraid to Play,” a look at how video games can promote higher-order thinking, increase the positivity of a learning environment, and decrease achievement gaps.
• “Struggling in Silence,” which provides insights on how to understand and teach struggling adolescent readers.

We’ll add new posts each week, so stop back and see what’s new!

On Saturday, November 12, 2011 from 9:00am until 4:00pm, a free workshop will be held on the UNC-Chapel Hill campus in room 039 of the Graham Memorial Building. Participants in the workshop will look at Iraq that exists beyond war, and see the tradition, the culture, and the history that defines its people today.

From the first civilizations of Mesopotamia and the rise of majestic Islamic empires to today’s vibrant youth culture, the land that lies between the Tigris and Euphrates will spark your curiosity and redefine your conception of Iraq. The pioneers of modern mathematics, the forerunners of the Renaissance, and the modern symbol of cultural diversity–this is Iraq beyond conflict.

Presenters of the workshop are:

• novelist SinanAntoon, author of I’jaam: An Iraqi Rhapsody
• singer and oudist Saadoun Al-Bayati
• visual artist Lukman Ahmad

K-12 teachers will have the opportunity to earn 1.0 CEU for participation and completion of pre- and post-workshop activities. Resources will include online teaching materials on the art, music, literature, and history of Iraq.

Registration for the workshop is required. Please contact Regina Higgins at regina_higgins@unc.edu.

Sponsored by the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, Duke-UNC Consortium for Middle East Studies, the UNC Department of History, and the UNC Honors Program.

The Latina/os and Education Project of the UNC Latina/o Studies Program & the UNC Latina/o Cultures Speakers present:

“Desarrollando Nepantler@s: Rethinking the Knowledge Needed to Teach Mathematics”
Rochelle Gutiérrez
6 pm Monday Oct. 3, 2011
University Room, Hyde Hall
Institute for the Arts & Humanities
UNC-Chapel Hill
For directions visit the Institute for Arts and Humanities website.

About the lecture:

As American researchers and policy makers race to close the “achievement gap,” greater emphasis on mathematical knowledge for teaching has taken hold. School districts, concerned that their teachers do not know their mathematics in deep or flexible enough ways, are investing in professional development of teachers. These approaches, however fail to recognize that the achievement gap is a social construction, that equity in mathematics means much more than mere access to a rigorous curriculum, and that teaching is a negotiated practice (with students, parents, and others). Gutiérrez argues that a model of knowledge needed for teaching mathematics and addressing equity involves political knowledge. An important component to developing this political knowledge is being able to recognize multiple realities (Nepantla), developing conocimiento with students, becoming comfortable with uncertainty, and seeing tension as a means to birth new knowledge.

Rochelle Gutiérrez is Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She has served as a member of the RAND National Mathematics Study Panel, the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Increasing Urban High School Students’ Engagement and Motivation to Learn, and the board of directors of Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science (SACNAS).

She was awarded a Fulbright fellowship to study secondary mathematics teachers in Zacatecas, México, and is currently serving as editor for a special issue on identity/power for the Journal for Research in Mathematics Education. She is PI on an NSF grant that seeks to understand what it takes to develop high school mathematics teachers who engage their students in rigorous mathematics and are committed to social justice. Before and throughout graduate school, she taught middle and high school mathematics to adolescents in East San José, California.

The lecture is sponsored by the UNC Program in Latina/o Studies, the Institute for the Arts & Humanities, the Carolina Latina/o Collaborative, and the UNC School of Education.