Outreach Partnerships

• 180 Days in Springfield
  Established in 1996, 180 Days in Springfield provides a Master’s level immersion pathway to teacher licensure in collaboration with urban schools in Springfield: Central High School, Chestnut Accelerated Middle School, John J. Duggan Middle School and The Renaissance School. Many 180 Days graduates have taught or are now teaching in the Springfield Public Schools.
  More than 200 new teachers prepared since 1996
  2010-2011 Enrollment - 25 Master’s students
  
  
• 180 Days in Springfield Legacy Projects
  Master’s students in the 180 Days pathway create service-learning projects as part of their coursework. Projects provide opportunities for middle and high school students to participate in programs ranging from school tutoring to sports clubs, school and community beautification projects and arts-related activities.
  
  
• Springfield Project Lead
  In 2002, the Springfield School System received a renewable grant of $1 million from the Wallace Reader’s Digest Foundation to develop and evaluate a leadership-training program supporting high student achievement. The School of Education was selected to partner with Project Lead to help the project achieve its goals of improving educational leadership and increasing the numbers of minority administrators within the district.
  School administrator licenses – more than 80 since 2002
  2010-2011 Enrollment – 13 Master’s/CAGS students
  
  
• Bridges to the Future
  Established in 2004, Bridges to the Future is an intensive year-long teacher licensure pathway, including a service learning component that leads to a Master ’s degree in Education. It is a partnership with the Orange, Greenfield, Turners Falls and Gill-Montague School Districts.
  More than 98 Teacher Licenses since 2004
  2010-2011 Enrollment – 13 Master’s students
  
  
• The Tutoring Enrichment Assistance Models for Schools (TEAMS) Project
  The Tutoring Enrichment Assistance Models for Schools (TEAMS) Project places undergraduate and graduate students from School of Education courses in tutoring situations in Springfield schools. The project aims to improve school performance among K-12 students and increase knowledge of teaching as a career among college tutors.
  Project participants have provided over 155,000 hours of tutoring to K-12 students since TEAMS began in 1984 in Springfield, Holyoke, Greenfield, Chicopee, and Amherst.
  
  
• ACCELA Alliance
  The Access through Critical Content and English Language Acquisition (ACCELA) Alliance in Springfield and Holyoke was originally funded in 2002 by grants totaling $3 million from the U.S. Department of Education and the Massachusetts Department of Education (Title VII, Title III, & Title II). ACCELA offers a Master’s Degree in Education with Licensure in ESL (English as a Second Language) and Reading for school educators, and offers courses for a Bachelor’s of General Studies degree for bilingual paraprofessionals. In addition, the ACCELA Fellowship Program provides graduate scholarships for bilingual pre-service and in-service teachers and the ACCELA Professional Development initiative created a forum for administrators to learn from local teacher research activities. Professor Jerri Willett received the Distinguished Academic Outreach Award from the University of Massachusetts President’s office in 2008 in recognition of her leadership in ACCELA.
  
  
• Science Education On-line
  The School of Education, in collaboration with the College of Natural Sciences, offers an on-line graduate degree program in science education for elementary and middle school teachers. Courses are designed to prepare elementary and middle school science teachers in science content and pedagogy. The program, originally funded by a $1.2 million National Science Foundation grant, has been approved by the Massachusetts Department of Education for Professional Licensure in five areas.
  Established in 2003
  2010-2011 Enrollment – 10 Master’s/CAGS Students
  
  
• 4MALITY
  In 2004, faculty and graduate students, in conjunction with the Center for Educational Software Development, developed an intelligent tutoring system designed to improve 4th grade mathematics MCAS test scores in Springfield, Greenfield, Northampton and Amherst schools.
  
  
• Holyoke-Springfield Diversity Pipeline
  A collaboration of School of Education faculty and underperforming urban schools, the Diversity Pipeline provides access to and instruction in information and communication technology (ICT) literacies, particularly critical multimodal media production (CMMP) for middle school students through an after school model that is planned to be housed in Holyoke’s new Green High Performance Computing Center (GHPCC). 2010
  
  
• PV STEMNET
  With the School of Education as a lead partner, the Pioneer Valley Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics PreK-16 Pipeline Network (PV STEMNET) collaborates with the Springfield School District, the Springfield Archdiocese Schools, and Springfield area colleges including Springfield College, Western New England College, and Springfield Technical Community College. PV STEMNET has sponsored an academic-year enrichment activity for middle school students (hosted at WNEC); a summer camp for middle school students (hosted at Springfield College); two content courses in mathematics for teachers of grades 4-8; and workshops on the use of digital photography for teachers. 2007
  
  
• Improving Teacher Quality
  Florence Sullivan, School of Education, and Bill Gerace, Scientific Research Reasoning Institute (SRRI), supported by a grant from the Massachusetts Board of Higher Education, worked with Springfield and Holyoke teachers to develop and implement a middle school physics unit using robotics. 2007
  
  
• Professional Development Program in Mathematics
  Funded by UMass Amherst Outreach, John Francisco and Kathy Davis implemented a pilot program with elementary and middle school mathematics teachers from Springfield schools to innovatively deliver an initial-licensure mathematics program. 2007
  
  
• Energy Thinking - Energy Action: Teaching about climate change and renewable energy
  School of Education faculty and teacher interns are partnering with science educators from the award-winning Hitchcock Center for the Environment, elementary and middle-school teachers, and 700 students at three high-priority schools of the Springfield Urban Schools Consortium to foster a perspective essential to sustainable living: that human needs and achievements are both supported and limited by the natural world. The project introduces participating students to basic ecological principles and systems thinking, helping them achieve an understanding of the natural world’s processes and the ability to think in terms of patterns, relationships and contexts. 2010
  
  
• Closing the Achievement Gap in Springfield Public Schools
  Supported by a Public Service Endowment Grant, research on innovative teaching strategies with English language learners and culturally diverse students in four urban middle schools is being conducted by School of Education faculty to assist Springfield Public Schools in developing a basis for initiatives that have the potential to reduce the achievement gaps in their classrooms, and that will inform the national debate about effective strategies to close the gap. 2011
  
  
• Teachers as Researchers: Investigating Language Diversity in Amherst Regional Public Schools
  School of Education faculty, supported by a Public Service Endowment Grant, provide classroom research strategies to teachers in the Amherst Public Schools to help them develop knowledge of the linguistic and cultural backgrounds of English Language Learners and to address the specific strengths and needs of their diverse students. 2011
  
  
• Teaching Teachers about Robotics
  The School of Education will collaborate with Tufts University, Springfield College, the Hampden County Regional Employment Board, Hasbro Summer Learning Initiative, a district science specialist, and Springfield’s Van Sickle Middle School principal and science teachers, who have been trained in LEGO robotics, in a federally-funded, summer robotics program designed to expand innovative learning that addresses both the academic and developmental needs of students. Approximately 145 students who participated during the school year in Springfield's 21st Century Community Learning Centers Afterschool Program will be served by the pilot program.

Research Fellowships Program 2011

These are pilot projects supported by the School of Education.

• Professional Development Program in Science and Mathematics
  Supported by a NSF Noyce Planning Grant, Kathy Davis, Sandra Madden and Barbara Madeloni are developing a proposed program to encourage talented science and math professionals to pursue teaching careers and develop long-lasting commitments to effective teaching in high needs, culturally diverse secondary schools in Springfield and Holyoke.
  
  
• Learning History through Design Project
  Flavio S. Azevedo is working with Northampton High School students to develop a novel and efficient method for teaching history to increase the students’ understanding of historical narratives.
  
  
• Improving Teacher Understanding
  John Francisco is working with Springfield teachers to study: how secondary mathematics teachers engage in mathematical reasoning and justification; how secondary mathematics teachers make sense of students’ reasoning and justification skills; and how secondary mathematics teachers can promote students’ mathematical reasoning and justification.
  
  
• Are African American Vernacular English (AAVE) Speakers Multilingual?
  Denise Ives is working in Springfield exploring how urban teachers make sense of the languages and practices, linguistic rights and responsibilities, and learning needs and competencies of ELL/Bi/Multilingual and AAVE students, especially in relation to the learning and teaching of writing.
  
  
• Developing Middle School Students’ Interest in IT Careers
  Florence Sullivan, Claire Hamilton and Richard Lapan are developing an after-school program in Holyoke using information and communications technology that will inspire middle school students to pursue careers in information technology.
  
  
• ELLs’ Academic Literacies, Teacher Professional Development, and Genre-Based Pedagogy
  Meg Gebhard is working in Springfield public schools studying the effectiveness of genre-based pedagogy in teacher education.
  
  
• Social Network Analysis (SNA) for School Improvement
  Rebecca Woodland is working in the Amherst Regional School District utilizing social network analysis (SNA) technology to empirically examine teacher collaboration and its effects on instructional improvement.
  
  
• Student Bridges to College: Increasing Educational Equity through a Holyoke-Springfield Diversity Pipeline
  K.C. Nat Turner is working with students in the Holyoke and Springfield area studying the role of community service learning in enhancing community, school, and university partnerships and designing a way to expand pathways to higher education for residents from the Holyoke-Springfield area.
  
  
• The Impact of the Massachusetts Comprehensive School Counseling Program on College Readiness, Access and Success
  Richard Lapan is working with public schools across Massachusetts examining the level of implementation of the Massachusetts School Counselor Association’s (MASCA) Model for Comprehensive School Counseling Program, and the role of school counselors and the MASCA model in promoting post-secondary transitions.
  
  
• Developing Middle School Students’ Interest in Information Technology Careers through an Arts-Based, Computer Science Curriculum
  Florence R. Sullivan, Claire E. Hamilton, and Richard Lapan are developing a scalable, arts and digital media-based information and communications technology after-school program for middle school students in Holyoke.
  
  
• Measuring the Impact of Implementation of a Brief Social-Emotional Learning Program on Teacher Behavior
  Sara Whitcomb’s work in Massachusetts public schools will extensively measure implementation of a brief, social-emotional learning curriculum called “Strong Start” (Merrell, Parisi & Whitcomb, 2007) with the primary objective being to measure the extent to which teachers integrate skills taught within the curriculum over the course of the school day.
  
  
• What does the Massachusetts Growth Model Measure: A Survey of Massachusetts Public School Principals
  Lisa Keller and Kathryn McDermott are conducting a study to examine the extent to which Massachusetts school principals understand what the Massachusetts Growth Model does and does not tell them. Is the training material provided to schools across Massachusetts by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education sufficient or is further training and support required to properly read and understand student growth reports?