From the Office of Public Affairs | http://www.news.ku.edu
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KU lands grant to train more Kansas teachers working with ESOL students
LAWRENCE— The University of Kansas has secured funding to prepare more teachers with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) endorsement and to provide professional development for early childhood educators working across Kansas as well. The research team has already secured partnerships with the Shawnee Mission and Kansas City Turner school districts, and they will recruit additional partners across the state.
2023 Engaged Leaders Series will feature scientist, author Beronda Montgomery
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Libraries and The Commons will host the 2023 Engaged Leaders Series, a lecture program featuring Beronda Montgomery, scholar and author of “Lessons From Plants.” Montgomery will present a virtual talk titled “Leading by Nature: Lessons from Plants on Leading Well” at 9 a.m. Jan. 12, 2023.
‘Everybody’ opens at KU Theatre Dec. 2, promising audience participation, dark comedy
LAWRENCE — A play opening soon at the University of Kansas will shine a spotlight on that terrifying, illusive question: What would you do if Death called? University Theatre performances of “Everybody” will be Dec. 2-4 and Dec. 6-8 in the William Inge Memorial Theatre at Murphy Hall. Kansas cast and crew members include students from Kansas City, Larned, Lawrence, Maize, Overland Park, Perry, Topeka and Wichita.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
KU lands grant to train more Kansas teachers working with ESOL students
LAWRENCE— Students learning English face many challenges, even in ideal conditions. The COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated those, causing students to lose supports for various reasons. The University of Kansas has secured funding to prepare more teachers with English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) endorsement and to provide professional development for early childhood educators working across the state as well.
The U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition awarded a five-year, $2.29 million grant to researchers in KU’s Department of Curriculum & Teaching for Project PEACE, which will promote English language learners’ academic achievement and cultivate educational equity through support of future teachers and development of current educators.
Most teachers will work with English language learner students in their careers, yet many do not have TESOL endorsement. Project PEACE will help Kansas teachers learn skills and strategies to provide evidence-based supports and ways to engage students in curriculum.
“Teachers may not always have ESOL endorsement because it is not required. We want to help them get endorsed and be more effective English language learner educators,” said Kwangok Song, associate professor of curriculum & teaching and principal investigator of the project.
Song will collaborate with co-principal investigators Hyesun Cho, associate professor of TESOL; online professional development leader Barbara Bradley, professor of literacy education; and educational equity coordinators Lonna Summers Rocha, associate teaching professor of TESOL; and Karen Jorgensen, teaching professor of literacy education, all at KU. The research team has already secured partnerships with the Shawnee Mission and Kansas City Turner school districts, and they will recruit additional partners across the state.
Project PEACE will work with cohorts of preservice and in-service teachers who are undergraduate and graduate students, respectively, at KU throughout the project, helping all attain TESOL endorsements. It will also provide online professional development programs for early childhood educators. Both preservice teachers and in-service teachers will learn strategies to effectively engage English language learner students. A common problem in schools is students who are identified as English language learners may be interpreted as the students being unable to participate in curriculum, and thus they may not always receive equitable opportunities. The program will equip future and current teachers with effective strategies to invite students in classroom activities to participate and to share methods they have successfully used as well.
“English learners come from families that do not speak English in the home. Teachers may not be aware of the supports these students need in school,” Song said. “Communication in the classroom is not always effective in these situations. We hope to provide teachers with strategies teachers can use to enhance educational equity.”
The project will begin offering support for preservice and in-service teachers who pursue ESOL endorsement in summer 2023. In all, Project PEACE will be able to secure endorsement for 48 preservice teachers and 55 in-service teachers and offer professional development for about 100 early childhood educators from across Kansas by 2027. Throughout the project, the research team will gather quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate and refine the offerings. They will collect data on participants’ content knowledge and information on how teachers put the skills to work in their classrooms.
The timing of the project is vital, as the pandemic made clear some of the challenges English language learner students commonly face as well as the new challenges it created. Students from low-income immigrant families were especially negatively affected, as many lost in-school supports and often did not have internet access for online learning when schools were forced to close. By boosting skills of teachers across the state, TESOL teachers will be in a better position to help all students achieve their full academic potential, Song said.
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Contact: Alicia Marksberry, KU Libraries, [email protected], @kulibraries
2023 Engaged Leaders Series will feature scientist, author Beronda Montgomery
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas Libraries and The Commons will host the 2023 Engaged Leaders Series, a lecture program featuring Beronda Montgomery, scholar and author of “Lessons From Plants.”
Montgomery will present a virtual talk titled “Leading by Nature: Lessons from Plants on Leading Well” at 9 a.m. Jan. 12, 2023. A virtual discussion with Montgomery and KU community members will follow at 10 a.m. Feb. 7, 2023.
Montgomery is the vice president for academic affairs and the dean of Grinnell College. She is a scholar, writer and science communicator with research interests in plant biochemistry, equitable mentoring and progressive leadership. A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Plant Biologists, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the American Academy of Microbiology, she was named one of Cell’s 100 Inspiring Black Scientists in America and won the 2021 Cynthia Westcott Scientific Writing Award and the 2022 Adolph E. Gude, Jr. Award for outstanding service to the science of plant biology for her book.
“Lessons From Plants,” available online through KU Libraries, explores the transformative and dynamic lives of plants and how humans can learn from them. Montgomery dives into the botanic experience and shows how society can improve by better appreciating not just what plants give us but also how they achieve their own purposes. Her talk will focus on her perspectives on leadership and cultivating a vision of purpose.
“The Commons was created as a way to examine the relationships between natural and cultural systems, and this is exactly what Beronda is doing,” said Emily Ryan, director of The Commons. “We don’t have to only be learning from the Western canon of higher education, but rather there are so many sources of knowledge around us, and it’s a really powerful thing to be able to consider and see those in different ways.”
Co-presented by KU Libraries and The Commons, the Engaged Leaders Speaker Series brings the voices of leading engagement scholars to KU to lead intentional conversations that emphasize open, equitable, divergent and critical thinking to guide the future university. Both KU Libraries and The Commons are among places on campus that connect university activity with broader audiences and perspectives.
“There is so much engaged work being done on the KU campus that we don’t always know about,” said Sarah Goodwin Thiel, faculty & community engagement librarian at KU Libraries. “Bringing in other leaders who are focusing on engagement supports the efforts of our own campus scholars and brings a lot of new information to our people.”
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Contact: Lisa Coble-Krings, Department of Theatre & Dance, 785-864-5685, [email protected], @KUTheatre
‘Everybody’ opens at KU Theatre Dec. 2, promising audience participation, dark comedy
LAWRENCE — A play opening soon at the University of Kansas explores a topic that’s become ever more relevant in recent years: death. “Everybody,” a production of the University Theatre within the Department of Theatre & Dance, offers opportunity for community members to mourn, laugh at and reflect on the show’s absurdity and the tragedy of dying.
With quick, offbeat humor and contemporary dialogue, the play by Pulitzer Prize-nominated playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins shines a spotlight on that terrifying, illusive question: What would you do if Death called? “Everybody” is a contemporary, experimental adaptation of the classic morality play “Everyman.” The production is directed by KU doctoral candidate Timmia Hearn DeRoy.
Performances are at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8 and at 2:30 p.m. Dec. 4 in the William Inge Memorial Theatre at Murphy Hall. Tickets can be reserved at kutheatre.com, by calling 785-864-3982, or in person noon-5 p.m. Monday-Friday at the box office in Murphy Hall.
“This production is a love letter to our community. An opportunity to collectively generate space for healing in the midst of ongoing trauma. From COVID-19 to international security instability, from the challenges of climate change to deep-rooted inequities, fears and realities of Death lurk at every corner,” DeRoy said. “Laughter and reflection bring us closer to each other and allow us to grapple with our fears and find strength in each other. Thank you for joining us on our journey.”
Each night the audience will choose which member of the ensemble cast will face Death and who will play the people, things and morals which made up their life. Breaking the fourth wall and inviting audience participation, “Everybody” reflects on religious belief, confronting your existence, the imperfection of humanity and on why we form connections to people or possessions. What does it mean when a friend says, “I would die for you?”
DeRoy is a theatre and film developer and gender rights activist. She was a founding member of the Trinidad and Tobago PRIDE Arts Festival, former director of the School for the Arts at the Trinidad Theatre Workshop, the Caribbean’s oldest theatre company, and former marketing manager at the CaribbeanTales International Film Festival. She has directed and developed numerous productions in Trinidad and Tobago, including “An Echo in the Bone” by Dennis Scott (2012) and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by William Shakespeare. She has also worked in production and casting in film and television in both Trinidad and Tobago and Toronto, Canada. More recently DeRoy directed “10,000, A One-Woman New Play Development” by Victoria “Tori” Smith at the Lawrence Arts Center. DeRoy’s research focuses on how we tell stories and utilizes social justice, disability justice, anti-colonial and transnational feminist frameworks. She holds a bachelor’s degree in theater studies from Yale University. Learn more about the director at www.timmiahearn.com.
The creative team is rounded out by Taiane Lacerda, a second-year MFA student from Florianopolis, Brazil, as scenic designer; Rana Esfandiary, assistant professor of scenography, as costume designer; Quintin Castro, a senior in theatre design from Larned, as hair and makeup designer; Hazel Youngquist, a senior in theatre performance from Perry, as lighting designer; Brad Mathewson, a senior in English and theatre in culture & society from Topeka, as dramaturg; and Connor Maloney, a sophomore in theatre design from Wichita, as stage manager and assistant director.
The audience will vote who portrays the character of Everybody as selected from the pool of ensemble members playing Somebody. Ensemble members are ShonMichael Anderson, freshman in theatre and voice from Wichita; Zoe Arp, freshman in political science from Overland Park; Diego Rivera-Rodriguez, senior in theatre performance and film & media studies from Lawrence; Lauren K. Smith, a senior in theatre performance from Topeka; and Jayden Warf, a freshman in theatre from Winchester, Virginia. Additional cast members are Olly Mitchell, sophomore in theatre in culture & society from Maize, as usher/God/understanding; Sergio Alicea, a doctoral student from San Juan, Puerto Rico, as Death; Hannah Gassman, a junior in theatre and voice from Deerfield, Illinois, as Girl/Time; and Mickey James Pluta, a senior in theater performance and economics, as Love. Layla English, a first-year theatre performance major from Kansas City, serves as the understudy for all non-Somebody parts.
The University Theatre and University Dance Company are production wings of the University of Kansas’s Department of Theatre & Dance, offering five to six public productions throughout the academic year. The University Theatre and University Dance Company productions are funded in part by KU Student Senate fees, and the theatre’s season is supported by Truity Credit Union.
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