How to Teach, Lead, and Live Well: A Qualitative In-Depth Interview Study With Eight North Carolina Teacher-Leaders Who Flourish

The embattled profession of teaching is like a sad song on repeat (Goldstein, 2015). For beyond a decade, research has proliferated a deficit narrative of teaching as a “revolving door” (Ingersoll, 2001, p. 514) or “leaky bucket” (Sutcher, Darling-Hammond, & Carver-Thomas, 2016, p. 2), in which at least 50% of teachers quit within the first 5 years (Ingersoll, Merrill, & Stuckey, 2014). In fact, as teacher attrition increases, the teacher-shortage crisis ravages our hardest-to-serve schools (Sutcher et al., 2016). Today, the number of aspiring teachers has dropped to the lowest it has been in 45 years (Flannery, 2016). The curiosity driving my research was and is whether it is possible to disrupt this deficit narrative of teaching as America’s most embattled profession (Goldstein, 2015). To do so, my goals have been to learn how eight teacher-leaders describe and understand their own flourishing in their careers, if they do at all, and what are the encouragers of and obstacles to their flourishing. In other words, rather than turn up the volume on the narrative of teachers who fail, flee, and quit the profession, I wondered how, if at all, stories exist of teachers who live, teach, and lead well. For this study, I derived the term flourishing from Aristotle’s eudemonia or the art of living well and doing well for self and others (Aristotle, 2011, line 1095b). I then crafted the beginnings of a flourishing framework for what it might mean for teacher-leaders to live the good life. Through a cross-disciplinary and integrative literature review (Torraco, 2016), I learned that flourishing most frequently includes experiencing passion, purpose, and practical wisdom in work and life. In response, I sought to examine how, if at all, eight teachers who are also leaders—both formally and informally in their schools and beyond—experience their own flourishing. To clarify, I defined teacher-leaders as teachers who I believe grew into leaders (Drago-Severson, 2016) and are “galvanized by the desire to improve and thus ensure learning for all students” and “driven to experiment, take risks, collaborate, seek feedback, and question their own and others’ practices” (Fairman & Mackenzie, 2015, p. 64). Therefore, the eight teacher-leaders for this study fit Fairman and Mackenzie’s definition. They participated in two programs that I believe are strong holding environments (Drago-Severson, 2013): North Carolina Teaching Fellows, a preservice university program for aspiring teachers, and National Board for Professional Teacher Standards, an in-service development opportunity for experienced teachers with more than 4 years of experience. To be clear, “holding environments” can be relationships and contexts that create developmentally spaces for adults to grow and feel “honored for who they are” (Drago-Severson, 2012, p. 48; Kegan, 1982, p. 115; Winnicott, 1990). The Pillar Practices of teaming, mentorship, collegial inquiry, and inviting teachers to assume leadership are four holding environment (i.e., structures) in which adults can feel well held (supported) and adequately challenged—in order to increase internal capacities (Drago-Severson, 2004, p. 88). I chose to invite teachers who participated in two teacher-development programs (i.e., North Carolina Teaching Fellows and National Board Certification) specifically because these programs seem to provide holding environments. Researchers have shown teachers who participated in these two programs are among the best and brightest or irreplaceable teacher-leaders whom schools want to keep, or retain, in our classrooms (Henry, Bastian, & Smith, 2012; Jacob, Vidyarthi, & Carroll, 2012; Petty, Good, & Handler, 2016). In fact, all eight teacher-leaders who participated in this study stayed in the profession at least ten years despite the last decade of sociopolitical flux and rising complexity of public schools (Drago-Severson, 2016). To facilitate this dissertation study, I conducted three in-depth semi-structured interviews and document analysis with each of the eight teacher-leaders who work in Wake County Public School System of North Carolina (32 hours), the 15th largest district in the nation (Hui, 2016). I asked them how they describe and understand flourishing, if they do, throughout their career, with close attention to three distinct points in the trajectory of their career, that is, in the beginning years (1-3 years), during the National Board Certification Process (during or after 4 years of teaching), and within the last academic year, which was also an election year (2016-2017). I also asked how they describe and understand the encouragers of and obstacles to their own flourishing. For data analysis, I coded verbatim transcripts from these in-depth interviews with Dedoose in two analytic cycles (Maxwell, 2013; Miles, Huberman, & Saldaña, 2014; Seidman, 2013). In the first cycle, I completed open/descriptive and theoretical coding, and, in the second, I looked for categories and broader themes to display the data in narrative summaries and profiles for each participant (n = 8). Throughout, I attended to research bias, reactivity, and validity threats through analytic memos, member checks, discrepant data, and inter-coder reliability with my sponsor. Findings from this qualitative in-depth interview study and document analysis contributed to a framework of understanding flourishing for teacher-leaders. Overall, I learned that to flourish, or to teach, lead, and live well, for the eight teacher-leader participants in my study, the good life meant that they needed to prioritize the purpose of relating with students (n = 8), as I claimed in Chapter V; cultivate connections with colleagues who share common passions (n = 8), as I claimed in Chapter VI; and reflect with their practical wisdom on their priority to teach well in the midst of the push and pull of leadership entangled in flourishing (n = 8), as I claimed in Chapter VII. The implications and recommendations for policy, research, and practice from these claims and findings based on these eight teacher-leader participants are as follows: 1. to re-story excellence in teaching by creating teacher pipelines, development programs, and measurement tools (policy and research) that consider holistic frames of teacher excellence to include flourishing (i.e., do the teachers believe they are committed to teaching, leading, and living well?); 2. to re-center relationships in schools, especially for teachers, by intentionally crafting spaces such as holding environments where teachers, principals, and all educational leaders can grow their internal capacities to deepen relationships with students and colleagues; and 3. to re-frame the tides of teacher-leadership and consider the practical wisdom and time it takes for teachers to discern their own priories, their own balance, and their own flow (i.e., push and pull) of leadership based on their own understanding of their ability to teach and live well. In conclusion, I offer a beginning model and framework for teacher-leader flourishing in order for future research to explore how, if at all, teachers in different districts and states or of different demographics and levels might describe and understand their own good life

Sunday Friends: The Working Alternative to Charity

Sunday Friends is a non-profit organization in San José, California, that provides multiple activities for families who are in need of financial support. Given the particular location of the program, most families are Latino and bilingual. Participants and program volunteers form a community at an elementary school on a couple of scheduled Sundays each month. When family members participate in activities designed to educate, improve skills, and to give back to the larger community, they earn tickets that they can redeem for items that they need and want from the Sunday Friends store. Activities include healthy cooking projects, “Thank You Letter” writing, English-as-a-Second-Language programs, crafts, and education in nutrition and financial literacy. The program’s central focus is to empower families to break out of poverty. A specific guiding principal is the developmental assets approach promoted by the Search Institute in Minneapolis (http://www.search-institute.org/). This approach encourages individuals and organizations to work together toward a common goal of supporting the healthy development of all children and youth. Healthy development is conceptualized as consisting of the development of external assets (i.e., support, empowerment, boundaries and expectations, constructive activities) and internal assets (i.e., commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity). The 2009 evaluation’s primary focus was on whether Sunday Friends was succeeding at fostering developmental assets for children. Other relevant indicators of success were perceptions of program effectiveness, regard for program activities, and nutrition and healthy eating habits. Data were gathered from family members (adults and minors) during program activities using written surveys administered by volunteers to the research team (most of whom were bilingual). The families were recruited in person by program staff onsite. The questionnaires were written in English and Spanish (with the choice made by respondents). Sunday Friends volunteers were recruited to the study via email by Sunday Friends staff. They completed questionnaires through an online survey platform. In all, 74 parents or guardians, 67 children or youth, and 45 volunteers participated in the data collection. Across the three sets of surveys (parents or guardians, children or youth, and volunteers), there are fairly consistent results. The families and volunteers in the Sunday Friends program believe that Sunday Friends is effectively engaging them and meeting its goals. Overall, children and youth report positive experiences at Sunday Friends. On every dimension of psychological well-being, connectedness with others, and self-efficacy, the answers provided by children and youth indicate that Sunday Friends is promoting developmental assets. In addition, parents and guardians report that Sunday Friends has positive influences on their lives. The majority of measures, whether questions about self-efficacy, the effect of Sunday Friends on their children, or improved nutrition for their family, indicate that Sunday Friends is meeting its goals. Finally, volunteers agree that the program makes an important contribution to the lives of both children and adults. They also feel that Sunday Friends enhances their awareness of the community and contributes to making their personal lives more meaningful. The survey results presented here should be interpreted with caution because all persons surveyed were continuing participants in the program, and the cross-sectional data could not detect changes over time. Despite this caution, each group’s data and triangulation across family and volunteer surveys reveal that milestones are accomplished at Sunday Friends. It is safe to conclude that Sunday Friends’ community-based approach to empowering parents and youths is achieving its goals

Rapamycin weekly maintenance dosing and the potential efficacy of combination sorafenib plus rapamycin but not atorvastatin or doxycycline in tuberous sclerosis preclinical models

BACKGROUND: Tuberous sclerosis complex (TSC) is an autosomal dominant tumor suppressor syndrome, characterized by hamartomatous growths in the brain, skin, kidneys, lungs, and heart, which lead to significant morbidity. TSC is caused by mutations in the TSC1 or TSC2 genes, whose products, hamartin and tuberin, form a tumor suppressor complex that regulates the PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway. Early clinical trials show that TSC-related kidney tumors (angiomyolipomas) regress when treated with the mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitor, rapamycin (also known as sirolimus). Although side effects are tolerable, responses are incomplete, and tumor regrowth is common when rapamycin is stopped. Strategies for future clinical trials may include the investigation of longer treatment duration and combination therapy of other effective drug classes. RESULTS: Here, we examine the efficacy of a prolonged maintenance dose of rapamycin in Tsc2+/- mice with TSC-related kidney tumors. Cohorts were treated with rapamycin alone or in combination with interferon-gamma (IFN-g). The schedule of rapamycin included one month of daily doses before and after five months of weekly doses. We observed a 94.5% reduction in kidney tumor burden in Tsc2+/- mice treated (part one) daily with rapamycin (8 mg/kg) at 6 months ≤ age \u3c 7 months, (part 2) weekly with rapamycin (16 mg/kg) at 7 months ≤ age \u3c 12 months, and (part 3) daily with rapamycin (8 mg/kg) at 12 months ≤ age \u3c 13 months; but we did not observe any improvement with combination IFN-g plus rapamycin in this study. We also used a Tsc2-/- subcutaneous tumor model to evaluate other classes of drugs including sorafenib, atorvastatin, and doxycycline. These drugs were tested as single agents and in combination with rapamycin. Our results demonstrate that the combination of rapamycin and sorafenib increased survival and may decrease tumor volume as compared to rapamycin treatment alone while sorafenib as a single agent was no different than control. Atorvastatin and doxycycline, either as single agents or in combination with rapamycin, did not improve outcomes as compared with controls. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that prolonged treatment with low doses of mTOR inhibitors may result in more complete and durable TSC-related tumor responses, and it would be reasonable to evaluate this strategy in a clinical trial. Targeting the Raf/Mek/Erk and/or VEGF pathways in combination with inhibiting the mTOR pathway may be another useful strategy for the treatment of TSC-related tumors

Ancient Latin American objects in the archive: selections from the George and Louise Patten collection of Salem Hyde cultural artifacts at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

https://scholar.utc.edu/exhibition-records/1004/thumbnail.jp

Multicenter Phase 2 Trial of Sirolimus for Tuberous Sclerosis: Kidney Angiomyolipomas and Other Tumors Regress and VEGF- D Levels Decrease

Tuberous sclerosis (TSC) related tumors are characterized by constitutively activated mTOR signaling due to mutations in TSC1 or TSC2.We completed a phase 2 multicenter trial to evaluate the efficacy and tolerability of the mTOR inhibitor, sirolimus, for the treatment of kidney angiomyolipomas.36 adults with TSC or TSC/LAM were enrolled and started on daily sirolimus. The overall response rate was 44.4% (95% confidence intervals [CI] 28 to 61); 16/36 had a partial response. The remainder had stable disease (47.2%, 17/36), or were unevaluable (8.3%, 3/36). The mean decrease in kidney tumor size (sum of the longest diameters [sum LD]) was 29.9% (95% CI, 22 to 37; n = 28 at week 52). Drug related grade 1-2 toxicities that occurred with a frequency of >20% included: stomatitis, hypertriglyceridemia, hypercholesterolemia, bone marrow suppression (anemia, mild neutropenia, leucopenia), proteinuria, and joint pain. There were three drug related grade 3 events: lymphopenia, headache, weight gain. Kidney angiomyolipomas regrew when sirolimus was discontinued but responses tended to persist if treatment was continued after week 52. We observed regression of brain tumors (SEGAs) in 7/11 cases (26% mean decrease in diameter), regression of liver angiomyolipomas in 4/5 cases (32.1% mean decrease in longest diameter), subjective improvement in facial angiofibromas in 57%, and stable lung function in women with TSC/LAM (n = 15). A correlative biomarker study showed that serum VEGF-D levels are elevated at baseline, decrease with sirolimus treatment, and correlate with kidney angiomyolipoma size (Spearman correlation coefficient 0.54, p = 0.001, at baseline).Sirolimus treatment for 52 weeks induced regression of kidney angiomyolipomas, SEGAs, and liver angiomyolipomas. Serum VEGF-D may be a useful biomarker for monitoring kidney angiomyolipoma size. Future studies are needed to determine benefits and risks of longer duration treatment in adults and children with TSC.Clinicaltrials.gov NCT00126672

SNAPSHOT USA 2019 : a coordinated national camera trap survey of the United States

This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.With the accelerating pace of global change, it is imperative that we obtain rapid inventories of the status and distribution of wildlife for ecological inferences and conservation planning. To address this challenge, we launched the SNAPSHOT USA project, a collaborative survey of terrestrial wildlife populations using camera traps across the United States. For our first annual survey, we compiled data across all 50 states during a 14-week period (17 August - 24 November of 2019). We sampled wildlife at 1509 camera trap sites from 110 camera trap arrays covering 12 different ecoregions across four development zones. This effort resulted in 166,036 unique detections of 83 species of mammals and 17 species of birds. All images were processed through the Smithsonian's eMammal camera trap data repository and included an expert review phase to ensure taxonomic accuracy of data, resulting in each picture being reviewed at least twice. The results represent a timely and standardized camera trap survey of the USA. All of the 2019 survey data are made available herein. We are currently repeating surveys in fall 2020, opening up the opportunity to other institutions and cooperators to expand coverage of all the urban-wild gradients and ecophysiographic regions of the country. Future data will be available as the database is updated at eMammal.si.edu/snapshot-usa, as well as future data paper submissions. These data will be useful for local and macroecological research including the examination of community assembly, effects of environmental and anthropogenic landscape variables, effects of fragmentation and extinction debt dynamics, as well as species-specific population dynamics and conservation action plans. There are no copyright restrictions; please cite this paper when using the data for publication.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Targeting cells with single vectors using multiple-feature Boolean logic

Precisely defining the roles of specific cell types is an intriguing frontier in the study of intact biological systems and has stimulated the rapid development of genetically encoded tools for observation and control. However, targeting these tools with adequate specificity remains challenging: most cell types are best defined by the intersection of two or more features such as active promoter elements, location and connectivity. Here we have combined engineered introns with specific recombinases to achieve expression of genetically encoded tools that is conditional upon multiple cell-type features, using Boolean logical operations all governed by a single versatile vector. We used this approach to target intersectionally specified populations of inhibitory interneurons in mammalian hippocampus and neurons of the ventral tegmental area defined by both genetic and wiring properties. This flexible and modular approach may expand the application of genetically encoded interventional and observational tools for intact-systems biology

Untitled [Dancer and two actresses in farm field]

Chelsey_Lee__MICA__Student_March_29__2014_at_0632PMThese images were created as part of the Hughes Remix project, a collaborative endeavor developed by UMBC's Albin O. Kuhn Library Special Collections and the Department of Visual Art to foster creative engagement with archival holdings in conjunction with the 2014 Society for Photographic Education annual conference. UMBC's Special Collections offered a selection of images from the Hughes Company Glass Negatives (http://contentdm.ad.umbc.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/hughes) collection for SPE members and conference attendees to remix, reinvent, reinterpret, and reimagine the images in this collection of Baltimore street scenes, promotional and advertising photographs, businesses, churches, schools, monuments, factories, machinery, and portraits. Images that were created were displayed during the conference as well as on a Tumblr site and are now archived in the Special Collections. Full details of the project can be found at: http://hughes-remix.tumblr.com/overview.The original Hughes Company Glass Negatives collection can be found at: http://contentdm.ad.umbc.edu/cdm/landingpage/collection/hughe

Examining the effects of dating violence prevention programs: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Dating violence is a prevalent issue among adolescents and refers to any physical, psychological, or sexual violence perpetrated by a partner in a close relationship (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2019a). Prevention programs aim to increase awareness of dating violence and promote healthy relationships. This meta-analysis examines the efficacy of programs targeting adolescents at increasing knowledge about dating violence, changing attitudes towards dating violence behaviours, increasing bystander behaviours, and reducing incidents of adolescent dating violence perpetration and victimization. A systematic search yielded 37 studies contributing 71 independent effect sizes. Studies were pooled by outcome measure and results suggest that prevention programs have a significant, positive impact on measures of knowledge, attitudes, and violence perpetration, but did not significantly impact experiences of victimization or bystander behaviours. In addition, nine moderators were used to examine the impacts of program, participant, and study characteristics. Implications and recommendations for future research are discussed