Nigel Hayes, 9, of Frenchtown Elementary School in Trumbull, looks forward to Wednesdays.
That’s when he and 23 other fourth-graders identified as academically gifted in the district converge on Middlebrook School to spend the morning exploring issues not addressed in their assigned classrooms.
One recent day, they were investigating the relationship between red knot birds and horseshoe crabs and the interdependence between a bird that migrates from South America to the Arctic each year and the eggs of a Delaware Bay crab whose blood is used to test the purity of medicines. When asked …

This year’s graduating Neag School of Education’s Robert Noyce scholars of the Teacher Certification Program for College Graduates (TCPCG) come from particularly diverse backgrounds, yet have all found a common thread weaving together their current professional lives and future: a passion to teach in the STEM fields of either science or mathematics.
The student diversity in degrees and personal experiences vary, including previous positions ranging from a consumer food industry chemist to a transportation design engineer. TCPCG was ideal for each individual, in their own way, as a one-year accelerated M.A. …

Warren Harding High School has clear hallways, new academies and a new principal who stands at the front door each morning to greet students. Bassick High School has committees, 15 of them, that some would say are working at breakneck speed to reinvent the school’s culture and curriculum by the fall.
Both schools, buoyed by federal School Improvement Grants — $2.2 million at Harding and $2.1 million at Bassick — are racing to reverse rotten test scores, sorry attendance records and graduation rates that not too long ago pegged them both as “Drop …

Good morning and thank you Dr. Thomas DeFranco for that introduction, and a special thank you to my good friend Dr. Doug Casa, who is a professor here and the chief operating officer of the Korey Stringer Institute, to the faculty, family and friends and of course to the Class of 2011.

I am humbled to be here at the Korey Stringer Institute, which bears my husband’s name, and I know he would be embarrassed by all the attention, but he might give me a fist pump for the reason …

The Neag School of Education is hosting the ninth annual Northeast Media Literacy Conference, “Media Literacy in a Digital Media Age,” on Friday, March 25, in the Bishop Center from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. This year’s event will explore the connection between understanding digital media and the rapid spread of new technology. A key emphasis will be to help youth develop critical thinking skills in understanding and interpreting media, and to educate schools, communities and youth-oriented organizations about the impact of the digital media explosion.
A special feature of the …