In collaboration with Dr. Insoo Oh at Ewha Womans University in South Korea, Counselor Education faculty Dr. Kyoung Mi Choi facilitated a week-long international virtual exchange program from August 8 to August 12, 2021. It was a wonderful opportunity for seven Counselor Education graduate students, Victor Calvillo Chavez, Yesenia Torres, Jasmine Torres, Laura Sheldon, Jilian Gomez, Ligia Briseno, Elvia Hernandez, at San José State University to co-facilitate a small group discussion and to engage in cross-cultural conversation with 13 Korean college students at Ewha Womans University about a range of topics, including diversity in college life, learning styles and academic success, career exploration and decision-making process, friendship and romantic relationships, and self-care and mental health in COVID-19. Dr. Samuel Y. Kim (assistant professor at the University of Denver) and Julia Kim (graduate student in Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education), also joined as guest speakers and shared their cross-cultural expertise and experiences.
The SJSU Lurie College of Education is committed to taking action to advance racial justice and educational equity. As deans, we are in solidarity with our faculty, students, staff, alumni, and community partners whose work confronts structural racism, inequity, and oppression in our educational systems and society at large. At a time when there is tremendous pressure and scrutiny on educators, we want to make clear our responsibility and commitment to support our colleagues and community to speak truth, advance our collective understanding through research and teaching, and advocate for justice.
Education Deans and Leaders from campuses across the California State University system are similarly allied with educators who advance culturally sustaining, equity driven, and justice focused pedagogies and have issued a statement to voice their support. Learn more about our Lurie College Racial Justice Priorities and Strategic Plan Initiatives at sjsu.edu/education/community/strategic-plan.
Join Dean Heather Lattimer and Associate Dean Marcos Pizarro on Wednesday, September 1, from 3-4pm on Zoom for an informal discussion about your student priorities! The information to join the Zoom discussion was sent to Lurie College students via a Google Calendar email invitaiton.
We’ve got a Full House…of Board!! So excited to introduce you to our NSSLHA Board for the 2021-2022 school year. We are all looking forward to getting to know you and work with you all this year. Wishing everyone a strong start💙💛🤩
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Our SJSU National Student Speech Language Hearing Association (NSSLHA) enables students to have access to professional, educational, and clinical resources and participate in American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) and NSSLHA sponsored events. Connect with SJSU NSSLHA on Instagram (@sjsunsslhachapter), Twitter (@sjsunsslha), Facebook (@sjsuNSSLHA), or sjsunsslhachapter@gmail.com.
Welcome, Lurie College students! Whether you are returning to campus for the first time since the Spring 2020 semester or arriving on campus for the first time ever, we thought this Reorientation video series, hosted by our Lurie College Student Success Center Peer Mentors, Alina Torres and Maritza Ortiz-Urrutia, and Lurie College Advisor, Francesca Teixeira, would be helpful for you. Gather information about study spaces, transportation, safety, and more in the videos below.
Our new SJSU undergraduate Minor in Transformative Leadership is an interdisciplinary approach to leadership development through engagement with anti-racist pedagogies and practices. By building a foundation and framework for developing an intersectional lens throughout this program, students develop their leadership goals around becoming transformative agents of change in their communities through meaningful, culturally affirming, and sustaining practices!
Our Fall 2021 courses include EDLD 120 – The Right to Learn: Language, Dignity, and Education as well as EDLD 160 – 1st Generation College Students Pathways. Watch the video below to meet our Lurie College faculty who are teaching the courses – Dr. Veneice Guillory-Lacy, Dr. María Ledesma, and Dr. Luis Poza – and learn more about our Transformative Leadership Minor at sjsu.edu/edleadership/academics/undergraduate-minor or email us at transformativeleadership-group@sjsu.edu.
We are seeking Lurie College students who are members of the LGBTQIA+ community and want to lead trainings and shape the future of inclusive education within our college! Apply now to become a member of our new En-queer-tros initiative and get paid to use your knowledge, skills, and experience to make Lurie College more queer affirming. Apply at tinyurl.com/enqueertros or email Child and Adolescent Development faculty Robert Marx at robert.marx@sjsu.edu for more information.
For Immediate Release From the San José State University (SJSU) Center for Collaborative Research Excellence in Education (CCREE)
SAN JOSÉ STATE UNIVERSITY – CENTER FOR COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH EXCELLENCE IN EDUCATION (CCREE) has awarded a 3-year Doctoral Fellowship to Sofia Fojas through partnership funding provided by the SJSU Ed.D. Leadership Program and the Connie L. Lurie College of Education.
Dr. Brent Duckor, Director of SJSU’s CCREE says the goal of the multi-year fellowship is to engage in applied research that addresses and advances equitable outcomes for students in foster care and students experiencing homelessness in the K-12 population. He notes that this fellowship will provide advanced training in quantitative and qualitative research methods and opportunities for engagement in education policy with a focus on moving research into spheres of professional training and practice. We are extremely pleased and honored to have Ms. Sofia Fojas with us, said Duckor.
“I look forward to serving as a doctoral fellow at San José State University and studying policy for students experiencing homelessness and youth receiving foster care services. I am ready to step into the next phase of my life. I chose to pursue my doctoral studies in the Ed.D. Leadership program here among many other programs because here I see an opportunity for serving as a catalyst for large-scale change at the policy level for the most disenfranchised students in our education system” says Ms. Fojas.
Sofia Fojas was born in Hawaii to immigrant parents and moved with her family in the 1970’s to San Jose, California where she graduated from high school and returned to Hawaii to earn a degree in anthropology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Ms. Fojas has served as a music educator for twenty-seven years, a public school music teacher (grades 2-12) and an administrator for the arts in two school districts in Northern California.
Sofia is currently serving as the Arts Coordinator for Santa Clara County of Education. She is the regional Arts lead at the state level in California, and also serves as a board member of a national arts education organization.
Sofia is a professional violinist and performs with San Francisco Bay Area local and regional ensembles. Sofia has performed with Los Cenzontles and recorded with them on an album of the Chieftains. She has played in backup orchestras behind Natalie Cole, Dionne Warwick, Andy Williams, Smokey Robinson, and Johnny Mathis. Passionate about the role of art and music in transforming lives, Sofia Fojas brings a powerful lens to the study of policy change that puts the whole curriculum back into focus, say her doctoral advisors, Dr. Brent Duckor and Dr. Lorri Capizzi. After a long fascination with STEAM education, “Her vision of La cultura cura – culturally specific arts can be the foundation of authentic interventions for students experiencing homelessness and youth in foster care, each of whom need our support and connection now more than ever,” says Dr. Capizzi.
As Sofia notes, “The success of any effective academic intervention is rooted in connecting with the heart, not only the head. The arts can make that emotional connection that I believe is critical to effectively addressing and bridging the opportunity gap for our most vulnerable youth. I have combined my love for and commitment to culturally responsive arts education my whole life. This fellowship will help me bring to life even deeper arts education work aimed at diversity, equity, inclusion, and most importantly, access for our most underserved students across the state.”
SJSU faculty interact with a small child in the Lurie College’s Child Development Laboratory Preschool in Feb. 2020. Photo by Bob Bain.
This story was originally published by Julia Halprin Jackson on the SJSU Newsroom blog.
Whether you’re a K-12 educator, caregiver or parent, this fall promises more than the usual back-to-school excitement and anxiety. Nearly 18 months into the COVID-19 pandemic, caregivers and educators must, once again, evaluate how to safely interact with learners while feeling the pressure to make up for lost time.
As the spouse of a high school teacher and mother to a kindergartner and a 1-year-old, I’m all too familiar with these concerns. While I’ll feel better once my kids can access a vaccine, I am still eager to usher them both into classrooms of some kind next week. Like many of my peers, I have way more questions than answers.
This summer, she offered a webinar on considering community and trauma as part of Lurie College’s K-12 Teaching Academy. She was kind enough to answer my questions — and yes, lower my blood pressure — about preparing for school in a COVID world.
How can schools, educators and parents prepare students for returning to a classroom environment?
Lara Ervin-Kassab (LEK): Everyone has experienced some level of trauma during the pandemic, and we need to acknowledge that in others and in ourselves.
First, this is an opportunity for us to step back and ask, what is really worthwhile in education? What is the actual purpose of this whole process? What do we really want it to do?
Then, we can reprioritize and open up dialogues around how we make schools a place where everyone feels supported coming out of this traumatic experience. How can we make schools a place where everyone’s humanity is acknowledged and engaged and their interests are being heard?
How have districts addressed some of these concerns?
LEK: Several of our local districts and parent-teacher associations have started these conversations about what we want schools to look and feel like. At least one district has moved toward offering an in-house online school for parents and students who may have concerns about going back to face-to-face. That, again, is an opportunity to look at making sure our educational system is thinking about everyone’s needs and how those can best be supported.
How has COVID-19 affected how teachers design and implement curriculum?
LEK: I teach a course in classroom management for pre-K and K-12 teachers. I’ve also been researching how teachers should continue to use technology.
I think there has been resistance to changing some of the ways we teach in order to better utilize technology, and COVID either reinforced resistance to the tech or helped teachers overcome their fears. A lot of us used tools we never used before, and the ways we used those tools caused us to reflect on how we’ll continue to use them moving forward.
For instance, I feel strongly that all student voices need to be heard. In a face-to-face classroom, you have students who may never speak, who may not raise their hands or who may feel really uncomfortable engaging that way. Since teaching online, a lot of the students who usually don’t want to raise their hands or speak out loud were very engaged through the virtual chat feature.
So, going forward, how can I still provide my students with that ability to be a part of the conversation through chat once we’re back in a face-to-face environment?
Many of my teaching colleagues have provided their students with options to do videos or podcasts in lieu of more traditional assignments. This semester will be a test case for what sticks and what doesn’t, not only in K-12, but in education writ large and even in the corporate world.
As COVID protocols continue to shift and the Delta variant poses a threat this fall, how can teachers manage their own stress, mental health and well-being as well as that of their students?
LEK: I recommend teachers and parents look into the Center for Reaching and Teaching the Whole Child, which was founded by Emerita Professor of Elementary Education Nancy Markowitz. It is grounded in the idea of helping the whole person learn. It’s very integrated with social emotional learning — helping our students learn to engage socially to understand and regulate their own emotions.
This is especially important after more than a year of being isolated from other people. With every class I teach, whether in person or online, I start with a short mindfulness activity that helps reinforce how to breathe and sit in the present.
The center has a great teacher competency anchor framework that reminds teachers to do the work alongside their students. So, for teachers and parents alike, if you take a few minutes to practice mindfulness with your kids, remember to practice it yourself. These activities are very helpful when you or your kids are feeling overwhelmed.
What main message do you have about returning to school, whatever it looks like, in 2021?
LEK: Be patient. Be kind to yourself and to all the people around you.
Take this uncertainty and find ways to embrace your creativity. This year is an opportunity for us to acknowledge the discomfort, and with that, we can either push back and close down, or we can say, “This is uncomfortable. What do I need to do to make it better? How creative can I be right now? How can I think of how these possibilities could recognize our diversity?”
What’s one tip you’d give every parent and teacher?
LEK: When you’re not sure about something, ask the children and listen to their answers. Because even children as young as 2 or 3 years old have a really good sense of what they need. They may not have the vocabulary for it, and they may not be able to distinguish between what they want and what they need, but if you have a conversation with them, you can begin to understand what they need.
Watch Ervin-Kassab’s 2021 K-12 Teaching Academy webinar, “Considering Community and Trauma,”for more resources for teachers, caregivers and parents.
Congratulations to Child and Adolescent Development and Educational Leadership student Vinson Vũ, whose program proposal “Resilient Superstars: How We Can Support the Futures of Trans+ Young Adults” has been accepted for the 2021 NASPA Western Regional Conference!
Shoutout to Communicative Disorders and Sciences faculty Nidhi Mahendra, who recently co-published “Advancing Justice, Equity in the Pipeline to the Professions: Reconfiguring graduate training program admissions is key to foundational change” on the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) Leader newsmagazine! Read the op-ed at bit.ly/3yEggvJ
Congratulations to our Child and Adolescent Development department, which was highlighted in a recent Reading Partners newsletter! Read the full feature below.
Each year, Reading Partners collaborates with San José State University’s (SJSU) childhood and adolescent development (ChAD) program to provide opportunities for their undergraduate students, who are on-track to becoming educators, to work with local K-4th grade students in the Silicon Valley community. SJSU’s ChAD students learn the concepts around becoming effective instructors and educators in their coursework, and through the partnership with Reading Partners, their undergraduates are able to implement and refine the skills they learn through tutoring our students.
SJSU ChAD students have shown continued resiliency in how they deliver tutoring sessions to our students, whether it is online via our virtual platform or in person at our reading centers. We are constantly amazed by how thoughtful and committed ChAD students are; as a result, we want to commend and recognize our SJSU partners for serving as tutors and role models for many K-4th grade students throughout our community.
The REP4 Alliance is a powerful network of regional and national education, industry and technology leaders, led by the six founding higher education partners, including the Lurie College. This alliance brings together diverse learners to develop new ideas for higher education programming using liberatory design principles.
At the summit, a total of 25 local students, including rising 11th and 12th graders, recent high school graduates, community college students and SJSU undergraduates collaborated and designed creative proposals, or “prototypes,” to address existing challenges in the higher education system.
“A prototype is a pitch that students prepare to showcase the needs and solutions that create institutional change,” said Rebeca Burciaga, professor of educational leadership and Chicana and Chicano Studies as well as the faculty executive director of SJSU’s Institute of Emancipatory Education (IEE).
“SJSU student mentors are leading what we call ‘dream teams’ to dream up these ideas. We hope to find ways to incorporate their solutions and perhaps work with campus leaders to make those immediate changes.”
San José State President Mary Papazian kicked off the weeklong event with a message for the Spartan community.
“We believe that initiatives such as emancipatory education and REP4 support the development of equitable and inclusive educational systems that nurture the creativity and brilliance of all learners so that our diverse, democratic society can truly thrive,” she said.
“Collectively, the themes of this work are well-aligned with SJSU’s interests in advancing and transforming our educational systems, which many of us believe are in urgent need of radical change.”
Read the full story on by Julia Halprin Jackson on the SJSU Newsroom blog.
Hello, my name is Desirae McNeil. I am a graduate student ambassador for the Lurie college here at San Jose State University. As a student ambassador, I have an opportunity to hear and support graduate students in the college. It was on my heart to start a community with other Black-identifying grad students together. If you identify as a Black graduate student and are interested in creating a space to meet once or twice a month to support one another, please complete this intake form.
In collaboration with Dr. Insoo Oh at Ewha Womans University in South Korea, Counselor Education faculty Kyoung Mi Choi invites SJSU undergraduate students to join our upcoming Cultural Diversity ZoomPal project, which will take place from Monday, August 9 – Friday, August 13. This will be a wonderful opportunity for Korean American students at San Jose State University to engage in cross-cultural conversation with Korean college students at Ewha Womans University, Seoul, South Korea, about a range of topics:
Monday, August 9, 7-8pm | Diversity in college life
Tuesday, August 10, 7-8pm | Learning styles and academic success
Wednesday, August 11, 7-8pm | Career exploration and decision making process
Thursday, August 12, 7-8pm | Friendship and romantic relationships
Friday, August 13, 7-8pm | Self-care and mental health
To express your interest in this opportunity, complete this Google form.
“As a future community college counselor, I am keenly determined to decrease these unequal, recurring rates by closing the achievement gap among first-generation, low-income college students from diverse backgrounds so that they can attain their educational goals.”
Congratulations to Counselor Education student Huy Le, who was selected by the SJSU College of Graduate Studies to receive the Bertha Kalm scholarship for the 2021-2022 academic year! Learn more about Huy on the College of Graduate Studies’ blog.
Shoutout to Department of Educational Leadership faculty María Ledesma, who was quoted in the recent New York Times article! The story – “Critical Race Theory: A Brief History – How a complicated and expansive academic theory developed during the 1980s has become a hot-button political issue 40 years later” – is available at nyti.ms/3iRJocl
The newly-established Rapid Education Prototyping (REP4) Alliance is a powerful network of regional and national education, industry, and technology leaders, led by the six founding higher education partners, including the SJSU Lurie College of Education. This alliance will create opportunities to bring together diverse learners to codesign new ideas for education using liberatory design principles.
In Summer 2021, we launched this network with a free Learner Design Summit, which is a leadership development opportunity designed to bring together rising 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students, recent high school graduates, community college students, and SJSU undergraduate students to collaborate and design creative proposals to address existing challenges in the higher education system.
Watch the video above to learn more about the proposals from our student design leaders, who met one another for the first time, came up with and refined their proposals, and presented them to the SJSU President and senior administration within 4 days.
0:00 – Welcome from SJSU Lurie College of Education Dean Heather Lattimer
3:07 – Intro from Department of Educational Leadership faculty Veneice Guillory-Lacy
5:20 – “CC: The Dream (Creating and Continuing the Dream)” by College 2.0
11:28 – “Creating Connections” by Creative Connections
18:33 – “How Integrating Community and Technology Can Help Students” by Three Trees
Our innovative SAGE in Teacher Education programs create opportunities for SJSU undergraduate students to enroll in Credential and Masters programs while simultaneously completing their final three semesters of their undergraduate degrees. These programs offer SAGE scholars a combined pathway of theory, practice, and K-12 subject matter. The programs integrate these three legs of teaching early and often, and give scholars ample time to assimilate the linkages prior to when they are required to demonstrate understanding and skills through student teaching.
Benefits of Enrolling in a SAGE Program
Reduced economic barriers to entering into a graduate program
No application fee for graduate program
Fewer total units in combined SAGE program than completing each program separately
Shorter timeline to earning credential and master’s degree
Enhanced professional development
SAGE Programs Accepting Applications in Fall 2021 for a Spring 2022 Start
The grant supports education research projects aimed at understanding and improving racial inequality in education. Kulkarni and her team will receive $75,000 to pursue their project, “Playing Together: Using Learning Labs to Reduce Exclusionary Disciplinary Practices for Young Children of Color with Disabilities.”
Nearly six years ago, Kulkarni and her colleagues noticed a dearth of literature on the subject of exclusionary discipline — such as expulsion and suspension — for young children of color with disabilities, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.
“The idea came from a combination of our own experiences as special ed teachers, but also the experiences that we had working with other early childhood special ed teachers in toddler classrooms and centers,” Kulkarni said.
She and her colleagues understand firsthand that early learning experiences can have long-lasting effects on student outcomes. Disabled students in minority groups have significant disadvantages, and Kulkarni wants to reframe how teachers support and educate them.
“The project is really thinking about how to reduce or exterminate these ideas of exclusionary and harsh discipline for young kids of color with disabilities,” Kulkarni explained. “There’s been a recent uptick in the news of kids of color with disabilities, particularly Black children, who are getting suspended or expelled from preschool and kindergarten classrooms for things that are considered minor.”
Her work seeks to understand why these harsh consequences for seemingly minor infractions are occurring. She plans to orchestrate a multi-disciplinary effort to work with parents, teachers, administrators and other stakeholders to address the issue.
This proposal was Kulkarni’s second go-round for a grant award. This time, she had the University Grant Academy’s (UGA) assistance, a San José State University resource led by the Office of Research designed to assist faculty in writing grant proposals and obtaining extramurally funded grants.
“The nice part about the UGA is that it’s really structured, and it gives you lots of resources,” said Kulkarni. “You get course release as faculty for a semester to dedicate time on developing and sending your project for funding. We spent the entire semester working on several different grant components, getting feedback throughout the process from mentors, and convening with peers to see what everyone else was working on to potentially find some elements or efforts to collaborate.”
Kulkarni attributes much of her success to her colleagues and her mentor Laurie Drabble, Associate Dean of Faculty Success and Research and UGA facilitator.
“Laurie gave me tons of guidance and feedback,” Kulkarni said. “She also encouraged me to reach out to other mentors to get additional feedback, and that really helped get our grant some of the much needed details that it was missing early on.”
“Saili worked really hard to take full advantage of the UGA for her first submission — funding on the second round is not surprising and well-deserved,” shared Drabble.
With leaders like Kulkarni spearheading research to attain racial equity in education, disabled children of color may have a greater chance of getting access to the support they need – instead of being kicked out of school where they are even more disadvantaged. She hopes her work can make a public impact that will provide children that have a lack of opportunities, get closer to their full potential, and ensure that all children have the chance to flourish.
“The UGA and SJSU Research Development are here precisely because extramural funding is very hard to get, it really is the norm that it takes two to three submissions and careful editing and revising each time before a proposal is funded,” noted Julia Gaudinski, Director of Research Development.
“I am thrilled to see that Dr. Kulkarni leveraged her work from the UGA and turned it into a successful re-submission.”
Congratulations to Child and Adolescent Development students Kaiya Johnson (track and field) and Mia Schafer (volleyball), who recently received Academic All-Mountain West Honors along with 135 other SJSU student-athletes. View the full list of honorees on the SJSU Spartans website.
Kaiya Johnson (left) is a sprinter and Child & Adolescent Development student. Photo: @SanJoseStTFXC Twitter
Mia Schafer is a volleyball player and Child & Adolescent Development student. Photo: The Spear SJSU
EdD Leadership Program student, SJSU faculty member, and licensed therapist Leslye Tinson was asked to share her insights on ABC7 News around a recent Federal Avaiation Administration campaign in which children teach adults how to conduct themselves on flights. Watch the news story below.
The newly-established Rapid Education Prototyping (REP4) Alliance is a powerful network of regional and national education, industry, and technology leaders, led by the six founding higher education partners, including the SJSU Lurie College of Education / Institute for Emancipatory Education. This alliance will create opportunities to bring together diverse learners to codesign new ideas for education using liberatory design principles.
In Summer 2021, we will launch this network with a free Learner Design Summit, which is a leadership development opportunity designed to bring together rising 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students, recent high school graduates, community college students, and SJSU undergraduate students to collaborate and design creative proposals to address existing challenges in the higher education system.
Learn more and apply to participate in the summit – which will take place Monday, July 19 – Thursday, July 22, 9am-1pm – at sjsu.edu/education/community/iee/rep4.
Abby Almerido | Coordinator, Workforce Development and Organizational Culture | Santa Clara County Office of Education | Twitter: @abbyinprogress
Description
Culture eats strategies for breakfast! Hold an SEL-compass toward stronger working relationships and collaboration by weaving in opportunities for your learners to learn and share about who they are. Leave with a toolkit of activities to try Monday and a deeper understanding of the power of seeing and being seen by others.
