Peer coaching involves two or more professionals collaborating to reflect on and refine current skills and practices (Yee, 2016). The peer coaching model described in this article focused on grades K-2, a critical time for the development of students' reading skills. In the 2022-23 school year, a small pilot study was conducted of a program based…

Faculty from two universities in Florida and Ohio designed, developed, and implemented programs to work with youth from their respective service regions to support college and career readiness initiatives. Both programs were directed by university faculty and utilized university resources to support K-12 students' career development skills. In…

Developed by the National Writing Project (NWP), the College, Career, and Community Writers Program (C3WP) seeks to improve students' argument writing by building teachers' understanding of and skill in teaching source-based argument writing. The program features intensive professional development, skill-based instructional resources, and…

Employing concepts of place and space, we consider the implementation of Early College initiatives in two small school districts in Ohio, situated in very different regions of the state. One is a rural district near the foothills of Appalachia, and the other is a small town district on the shores of Lake Erie. The paper examines data collected…

Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids (SPARK) is a school readiness program for children ages three to five that assists families with preparing their children for kindergarten in the areas of reading, language, and social skills. Program completion is determined by the presentation and facilitation of a minimum of eight lessons taught…

Developed in 2003 by the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton with a grant from the Kellogg Foundation, "Supporting Partnerships to Assure Ready Kids" ("SPARK Ohio") is a family-centered kindergarten readiness program that works with families, schools, and the community. From its initial sites in Stark County, "SPARK…

Telecommunication technologies (computers with Internet/e-mail capabilities, desktop videoconferencing units, and fiber-based video links) provided by the Learning Community Link did indeed expand typical school boundaries and did increase communication possibilities for teachers and students. Using the power of computers to communicate, analyze…

In the 1990s, the nation's educational focus turned to troubled schools in the nation's poorest cities. Under the leadership of Luther Williams, then Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Urban Systemic Initiative was created to improve the teaching and learning of science and mathematics. Recognizing that high-needs…

The mission of the Appalachian Rural Systemic Initiative (ARSI) was to build a long-term capacity that would improve the educational structures of the rural communities it served. The major strategy ARSI used to create improvement communities across Appalachia was to identify, embrace and educate individual teachers, who became ARSI Teacher…