News & Events

Qualitative research has the power to positively impact people’s lives. Join Dr. Stacy Penna, NVivo Community Director, as she talks to qualitative researchers, such as Jori Hall, MEP author of Focus Groups: Culturally Responsive Approaches for Qualitative Inquiry and Program Evaluation, to discover their innovative research methods, applied practices and passionate insights. Listen to Jori's interview in Episode Two: Empowerment Through Culturally Responsive Focus Groups.

This is a book you will want to read if you are a parent, a teacher, a teacher educator.

Opting Out: The Story of the Parents’ Grassroots Movement to Achieve Whole-Child Schools is an essential addition to your bookshelf.

It was written by Professor David Hursh of the University of Rochester and parents leaders of the New York Opt Out movement Jeanette Deutermann, Lisa Rudley, and Hursh’s graduate students, Zhe Chen and Sarah McGinnis.

Together they explain the origins and development of the one of the most significant parent-led reactions against high-stakes testing and in favor of education that is devoted to the full development of children as healthy and happy human beings. The media liked to present the Opt Out movement as a “union-led” action, but that was always a false narrative. It was created and led by parent activists who volunteered their time and energy to save their children from test centric classrooms and wanted a “whole-child” education that helped their children become eager and engaged learners.

David Hursh has written and lectured about the assault on public education and the dangers of high-stakes testing.

https://www.waikato.ac.nz/wmier/news-events/prof-david-hursh-on-the-takeover-of-public-education

University of Rochester Meliora Address (2013): High-stakes testing and the decline of teaching. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIQu2Hh_YkI

Keynote address: New York State as a cautionary tale (2014). New Zealand union of primary teachers and administrators. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hW4vZGsLiL4

The parent co-authors are leaders of the New York State Opt Out movement, primarily through their role in New York State Allies for Public Education, which has organized hundreds of thousands of parents to say no to excessive and pointless testing, whose only beneficiaries are the big testing corporations.

The parents of the Opt Out movement are a stellar example of the Resistance that is bringing an end to this current era of child abuse and test-driven miseducation.

I was happy to endorse the book and am pleased now to recommend it to you.

--Diane Ravitch (Click HERE to view her blog)

Special Book Club Event

The Last Ten Days by Michigan alumna Martha Risberg Brosio with Shelley Burbank

Co-sponsored by University of Michigan Club of Milwaukee and Boswell Book Company

Please join us at 7:00PM on Monday, October 28th at the Boswell Book Company, 2559 N Downer Ave., Milwaukee WI 53211 for a talk, Q&A, and book signing with the author. The book will be on sale at the event and will be available for purchase at Boswell beginning Monday, September 23. No RSVP is needed for this event, which is open to the public. Please contact book club coordinator Eric Durant at eric.durant@gmail.com with any questions.

From the publisher: “The Last Ten Days: Academia, Dementia, and the Choice to Die is a heartrending memoir of love, scholarship, dignity, courage, and the choices one is forced to make when given the devastating diagnosis of a terminal illness.

“Spanning sixty years, this extraordinary book recounts the love story of Martha Risberg Brosio and her husband, Richard Brosio, Ph.D., a brilliant scholar and college professor whose communication skills dazzled all with whom he came in contact. Teenage sweethearts who went their separate ways after high school, Martha and Richard reconnected twenty-six years later over a friendly dinner that sparked into passionate love. They married in 1983, enjoying a vibrant life together. Then tragedy struck. In late 2013, Richard was diagnosed with Primary Progressive Aphasia, a type of dementia similar to Alzheimer’s that affects the frontal and temporal lobes of the brain. The disease impacted Richard’s ability to communicate. There was no cure. Determined to have a dignified death at the time and in the manner of his own choosing, Richard hastened his death two years after his diagnosis by voluntarily stopping eating and drinking, seeking only palliative and hospice care until the end.

Reminiscent of Still Alice, The Notebook, Tuesdays with Morrie, and When Breath Becomes Air, The Last Ten Days grabs the heartstrings and gives a mighty tug.

The following have been recognized in 2019 for their excellence by The Society of Professors of Education (an organization which has provided a forum for addressing the issues facing the discipline and vocation of education since 1902). Two of these titles were previously awarded the 2018 AESA Critic's Choice Book Award.

Winners, 2019 SPE Outstanding Book Awards

Blair, Eleanor J. (Ed.). (2018). By the Light of the Silvery Moon: Teacher Moonlighting and the Dark Side of Teachers’ Work.

Hinchey, Patricia H., & Konkol, Pamela J. (2018). Getting to Where We Meant to Be: Working Toward the Educational World We Imagine/d. 

Recipients, 2019 SPE Outstanding Book Honorable Mentions

Dei, George J.S., & Jaimungal, Cristina. (2018). Indigeneity and Decolonial Resistance: Alternatives to Colonial Thinking and Practice.

SooHoo, Suzanne; Huerta, Patricia; Huerta-Meza, Patty; Bolin, Timothy; & Stockbridge, Kevin (2018). Let’s Chat: Cultivating Community University Dialogue.