URI Feinstein College of Education

06/02/2026

Thank you, Rhode Island Environmental Education Association - RIEEA, for highlighting our GEMS-Net program! Since 1995, GEMS-Net has provided ongoing curriculum-based professional learning for science educators through workshops, coaching, and mentoring, as well as district-wide administrator support and strategic planning.

As a certified OpenSciEd Professional Learning Provider, GEMS-Net supports 15 Rhode Island partner school districts in implementing the OpenSciEd curriculum.

Join us on Thursday, June 18, at noon for a virtual Lunch & Learn to discuss the adoption of OpenSciEd. More information and registration available at https://www.rieea.org/member-spotlight-gemsnet/

06/01/2026

This spring, students in Professor Steve Przymus’s EDC 330 course, Introduction to Multilingual Learner Education, not only collaborated with their classmates on a linguistic mapping project of Rhode Island, they also reached across the border to learn with and from students at la Universidad de Sonora (UNISON) in Hermosillo, Sonora, México.

"I liked having the opportunity to hear and learn from students in a different country,” one student said. “It is just a very cool experience."

The class utilized a Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) approach, which aims to support the development or expansion of innovative models of collaboration utilizing virtual/hybrid environments to increase diversity, equity, inclusion, and access to international and/or intercultural opportunities in the classroom.

The COIL project Przymus designed was centered around documenting the multilingual linguistic landscapes of both Rhode Island and Sonora in northern Mexico. Students used the Lingscape geo mapping software to geotag, label, and annotate multilingual signs in their local surroundings.

The 28 URI students and 50 UNISON students (from two undergraduate sociolinguistic courses) uploaded introduction videos, commented on each others' videos, took pictures of language use in their local contexts, and collaborated to create multilingual cartographies that represent the incredible linguistic diversity of each locale.

Images: Digital and analog maps of Rhode Island and Sonora showing language use in each place.

06/01/2026

Do you love kids and being part of their educational, socio-emotional, and developmental growth? The B.S. in Early Childhood Education (ECE) at URI might be for you!

Learn a holistic approach to supporting a child’s learning and development and gain high quality field experience through the on-campus child development center, three field experiences, and a student teaching semester. Our ECE program is fully accredited and leads to an initial teaching certificate for the pre-school and primary grades (Pre-K to 3) in Rhode Island.

We also offer an Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) certificate. This accelerated online program allows you to earn your Pre-K to 3 undergraduate certificate while you work!

Follow along this week to learn more about our programs and share in the learning adventures a group of our students is currently having in Italy as they explore the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education!

05/30/2026

Join us on June 18 for a Lunch and Learn!

05/29/2026

If you're a teacher with your eye on school leadership, one of the most practical questions you can ask about any graduate program is: Does this count toward certification?

For the M.A. in Educational Leadership and Policy at URI, the answer is yes.

The program is field-embedded and aligned to Rhode Island administrator certification, meaning the work you do in the program counts directly toward your next credential. Your coursework and your career goals aren't on separate tracks. They're one and the same.

Fall 2026 applications are open; the deadline is August 15. A fee waiver is available; reach out to learn more.

🔗 Questions? Join us on Wednesday, June 17, at 4 pm via Zoom (bit.ly/URIEDLZOOM).

🔗 Visit our website at https://web.uri.edu/education/academics/ma-elp/

05/28/2026

🎓 Congratulations to all our graduates!

05/28/2026

The Rhode Island Environmental Education Association recently featured our environmental education degree program, highlighting the 100-hour practicums that three URI students completed this year.

Cristina Sage completed her practicum at the Mystic Aquarium; David LeClaire worked with the Audubon Society of Rhode Island; and Julia Souza served as an assistant teacher at The Compass School.

Kudos to these students for their innovative approaches to education and to the educators at these organizations who mentored them!

🔗 Read the complete story at https://www.rieea.org/future-educators/

Photos
1 - Environmental education students with Professor Sara Sweetman at URI's W. Alton Jones Campus.
2 - Cristina Sage presents to a group of students at the Mystic Aquarium.
3 - David LeClaire engages visitors at the Audubon Society.
4 - Julia Souza interacts with a student at The Compass School.

05/27/2026

🎓 More from commencement! Way to go, graduates!

05/27/2026

✏ Theory in Practice: Virginia Killian Lund, assistant professor of elementary language arts, recently published a co-authored article about roleplaying in teacher education.

The article, "Crafting speculative roleplaying games for teacher education: Questioning power and centering empathy in schools," appeared in the Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy in January.

"We aimed to support preservice and in-service teachers’ reflection on how the power structures of schooling frame some children as troublemakers," Lund says. The authors aimed to "consider what those troublemakers might teach us about dysfunctional structures of schooling."

The process of roleplaying can "give teachers a low-stakes space to practice seeing classroom situations from multiple perspectives and imagine responses grounded in empathy, dignity, and justice," Lund says.

🔗 Visit our website to learn more and access the full article: https://web.uri.edu/education/theory-in-practice/

05/26/2026

Nice coverage in the Providence Journal of Professor Steve Pryzmus's research mapping Rhode Island's linguistic diversity.

"It's our goal to travel every inch of the state," said Steve Przymus, a member of URI's new Translanguaging Lab.