Partnership News:
Special Program Announcements
February 2017
In This Issue
Partnership Update
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Greetings of 2017! I am pleased to announce two exciting summer 2017 opportunities for teachers. Teaching Native American Histories, July 16-28, 2017, and Doors to the World: East Asia, July 9-14, 2017. You'll find details in the Partnership Update below.

In these final weeks of winter, I wish you strength, joy, and enthusiasm for the young people you work with.  They are indeed the future, but they are also central to our present and what we make of it.
 
All the best,
Marla Solomon
Partnership Update
 Update
Summer opportunities! 
We invite preK-Grade 3 teachers, librarians, and literacy coaches nationwide to apply for an extraordinary summer institute to:
  • Study diversity and representation in global children's literature about and/or from China, Japan, and Korea
  • Consider the histories and cultures of these nations to contextualize selected children's books
  • Engage in dialogue with children's book authors and illustrators, and children's literature, culture, and pedagogy specialists
  • Design multimodal mini-units offering opportunities for children to engage with the themes, words, and images of the books in classroom inquiry
Apply at:   http://fivecolleges.edu/partnership/doors-to-the-world . For more information, contact: doors2world@gmail.com.
Application deadline is April 3, 2017. This institute is co-sponsored by the Five College Center for East Asian Studies and co-sponsored by a generous grant from the Freeman Foundation in supported

Teaching Native American Histories,  July 16-28, 2017 
We invite K-12 teachers nationwide to apply for this two-week opportunity taking place in the Wampanoag homelands of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard. Led by Alice Nash of the UMass History Department and Linda Coombs of the Aquinnah Cultural Center, the institute will explore five themes for teaching Native American histories and cultures. This is an NEH Summer Institute for K-12 Teachers supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Program and application information is available at: teachnativehistories.umass.edu/neh-programs/2017. Application deadline is March 1, 2017. 

The Partnership welcomes your participation in or ideas for our work.   
 
Other news
Diversifying and strengthening the teacher workforce: The Partnership was invited to the final round of the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts' Innovation Fund competition for a planning grant to support the Diverse Teacher Workforce Coalition: Building Pathways for Black and Latino Paraprofessionals to Become Licensed Teachers. We will know soon about the results of the competition. If funded, this grant will allow us to create grow-your-own teacher workforce development strategies with multiple pathways to help increase the diversity and retention of the teacher workforce in western Massachusetts.

The Western Massachusetts Mathematics Partnership held a Fall Institute October 29, 2016, and is a sponsoring Spring 2017 Professional Learning Community (PLC) hosted by Amherst College, starting February 9.

Doors to the World received a grant from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts (CFWM) to form a teacher corps to development additional curricular materials for the Doors to the World website, which provides resources for early grades teacher to select and utilize global children's picture books in their classrooms. Thank you, CFWM!

New program ideas? Questions? Don't hesitate to contact the Partnership office.