The NIU College of Education remains in the country’s Top 10 among U.S. News & World Report’s annual rankings of online graduate programs. NIU ties for ninth with Pennsylvania State University-World Campus, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and the University of Virginia (Curry).
Read moreNew Educate Local program transports Special Ed majors to try literacy projects in alternative Chana Education Center
For years, Mary Gardner has required her LTCY 300 students to create theoretical “listening center” projects on paper. Gardner, an instructor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, expects these assignments to propose good nonfiction texts to read aloud to children. She
Read moreJerry L. Johns Literacy Clinic to open Little Free Library at Glidden Homestead
NIU’s Jerry L. Johns Literacy Clinic will open its 10th Little Free Library next semester in front of the historic Joseph F. Glidden Homestead and Historical Center. Kristine Wilke, the clinic’s new director, is excited to secure the 921 W. Lincoln Hwy.
Read morePortia Downey calls it a career
Portia Downey has asked the question countless times during her interviews of Educate U.S. applicants. Why do you want to teach? She knows what most will say. I always wanted to become a teacher. I love working with kids. It’s usually the
Read moreEd.D. student in Curriculum Leadership blazes own trail toward rewarding career
When Stacy M. Seaworth graduated from Rochelle Township High School in 1989, she expected to follow in the footsteps of those amazing educators who had meant so much to her. Five years later, she earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Illinois
Read moreEducate Global travelers leave China with perspective from another’s shoes
Educate Global 2.0 is history. China looms in the rearview mirror. A new semester of learning is underway in DeKalb. But the broadened perspectives Educate Global provided to NIU’s future teachers seem destined to persist in countless and unpredictable ways. Just ask
Read moreKoss named Senior Faculty Fellow
Melanie Koss is the NIU College of Education’s first Senior Faculty Fellow. Launched this spring, the program recognizes and rewards high-performing, tenured faculty and promotes research and/or scholarly activity in the college. Recipients of the Senior Faculty Fellow title receive either $3,500
Read moreSocial Justice Summer Camp 2.0 pushes educators to confront issues of diversity
Participants in last summer’s debut of NIU’s Social Justice Summer Camp gave James Cohen, Joseph Flynn and Michael Manderino a clear directive as they departed for home. Please, please do this again. And so they did, even if they had planned to
Read moreSTEM Read Institute sparks educators
Macy Gray’s journey as a teacher began at Mayatan Bilingual School, a non-profit in Honduras where she taught sixth-graders. When she returned to Illinois this summer to begin a new job this fall teaching sixth- and seventh-graders at Chicago’s Altus Academy, the
Read moreSally Blake excited for new role leading Curriculum and Instruction Department
Sally Blake’s plans for the NIU Department of Curriculum and Instruction are bold. “I want NIU to be the best teacher-training program in the country,” says Blake, who began work July 16 as chair of the department formerly known as the Literacy
Read moreSTEM Read Summer Institute to teach educators to transfer books ‘off the page’
Bringing books to life – transporting an author’s words and worlds from typewritten pages into physical spaces – marvelously rouses the passion for reading within young readers. Just imagine your excitement if you learned that Tad Lincoln had lost his famous father’s
Read moreCollege of Ed posts 99 percent passage on edTPA assessment for Spring 2018
Ashley Grazutis has been thinking about the edTPA since she arrived at NIU. “The first time I heard about the edTPA was freshman year at a Secondary Education Organization meeting,” says Grazutis, a senior from Palos Park, Ill. “All the rubrics. All
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