Once again, it has been a very busy month here at Mount Aloysius College. I have just returned from two great conferences. The PaTTAN Assistive Technology Expo in State College was very informative and it was awesome to see children with special needs interfacing with new assistive technology devices that have been developed in the last year. The Pennsylvania Council of Teachers of Math conference was a huge success and the students and I both received some great information at the conference workshops and presentations. Lisa Segada, Director of the Ann Harris Smith Little People’s Place Child Development Center, accompanied us on the trip. It was wonderful to have her with us and she also brought back ideas from the conference to her splendid child development center on campus. The Little People’s Place is located in the Cosgrave Student Center and provides wonderful child care in an educational early learning environment to children of faculty, students, and members of the local community. My daughter attended The Little People’s Place and absolutely loved Lisa, her assistant teachers, the playground, and the curriculum.

A few short weeks ago, it was also a pleasure to celebrate Mount Aloysius College Pink Out Day to show support for Breast Cancer Awareness. The campus was covered in pink balloons and streamers and many faculty, staff, and students were wearing pink ribbons.

I am additionally pleased to talk about my two sections of Multicultural Issues in Education and Society. It has been an absolute pleasure teaching the students in this course. Both groups of students are really fun to work with and I have been super impressed with the ideas they have come up with for their service learning projects. The students are working in small groups and will be presenting their projects at the Service Learning Exposition in the spring. For this course, I have my students complete a Social Action Group Project. In a group of four, the students investigate a social issue related to child advocacy, equity or social justice. The objective of the assignment is to: (a) explore the resources available for promoting child advocacy, equity or social justice for the following groups: children from low-income families, homeless, disabled, welfare recipients, language minority children, etc.; (b) identify strengths as well as areas in need of improvement for promoting equity for the disadvantaged group; and (c) outline steps that might be taken to improve services or promote equity for that group under study. Service hours with the group under investigation are required and all of the students have embraced the opportunity. I am looking forward to their formal presentations next week. This was an assignment originally created by my dissertation chair, Dr. Beatrice Fennimore and I have adapted it to meet the service learning plan at Mount Aloysius College. This course is jam packed with research, presentations, readings, and discussions related to multicultural groups in society. We have discussed strategies for teaching in a diverse classroom related to topics such as: race, ethnicity, social class, education, economics, family status, religion, English language learners, gender, sexual orientation, multiple intelligences, military, physical or mental ability, appearance, politics, lifestyle, personality, geography, age/adult learners, and occupation. This past week we additionally discussed multicultural issues related to “The First Thanksgiving”. Have a safe and happy holiday with your family.