Jennifer Owen helps nonverbal students find their voices. The speech pathologist for Wichita Public Schools specializes in augmentative and alternative communications, helping students with trouble speaking, reading or communicating their thoughts to do just that. She does her work with tools, often expensive ones, like tablets that help students with word and image icons. She’s […]
Education
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Posted inEducation
First-year teachers are Kansas’ future — if schools can keep them
For all the challenges she faced in getting to her first day as a teacher, Kora Snavely could feel any nerves or anxiety melt away when her 20 students filtered into her classroom for the first day of second grade at Meadowlark Elementary in Andover. Snavely, who graduated college in May, wanted to lead her […]
Posted inEducation
Where the money comes from to teach Kansas students
How do you budget for a classroom when you don’t know how many students will even be in it? That’s a challenge Kansas school districts face as they attempt to estimate how many students will return to their school buildings this fall. The Wichita Public Schools’ budget uses more of a high-range guess at how […]
Posted inEducation
How the science of reading could revolutionize literacy for Wichita’s struggling students
Andi Giesen remembers sitting in first grade with a book in front of her and crying because she didn’t know how to read it. “Now, my teacher was probably saying, ‘Andi, you can do this,’ but what I remember is that I was crying about it,” said Giesen, now an assistant superintendent at Wichita Public […]
Posted inEducation
College campuses in Kansas and Missouri are reopening, but many professors and staff can’t get a COVID-19 vaccine
The deaths of professors from COVID-19 highlight the delicate balance schools face in protecting staff while offering the fullest possible education to students.
Posted inEducation
Kansas and Missouri colleges are scrambling to navigate higher ed in a COVID-19 world
With an increase in COVID-19 cases in Kansas and Missouri and less than two months before the semester begins, college administrators in and around Kansas City are still scrambling to figure out exactly what school will look like this fall in a coronavirus world — and if students are going to show up.