For Shelley Wong, an associate professor of multilingual and multicultural education at George Mason University, music is an important tool in the teaching of languages. “It’s a way to lose your inhibitions,” she said. Music, or songs, to be more precise, are central to the proposal Wong used to win a Fulbright Fellowship, which will allow her to travel to the West Bank in Palestine, where she will teach grammar to students majoring in English and instructors at Birzeit University in Ramallah and also engage them in discussions about justice, peace and reconciliation. Read more...

Problem-based learning is useful in identifying high-ability middle school students from underserved populations who historically are left out of honors, advanced and gifted programs. That is the conclusion being drawn by Project ExCEL, a five-year study led by Anne Horak, an assistant professor in George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development. Read more...

Dennis Nolasco’s parents immigrated to the United States from El Salvador. His father reached the 4th grade before dropping out to work on the family farm. His mother had never seen a school until she came to the U.S. Years later, Nolasco used his family’s experience as inspiration to get his license to teach English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL). Read more...

Leading scholars and education policy practitioners from George Mason University’s College of Education and Human Development (CEHD) and the Schar School of Policy and Government will help students understand how education policy is debated, created, and implemented in a new master's level program this fall. The graduate-level emphasis area, Education Policy, is offered in the Master of Public Policy (MPP) degree program and is spearheaded by CEHD associate professor Spiros Protopsaltis, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Department of Education and senior Senate aide, and former Virginia Secretary of Education Anne Holton, now a visiting professor at CEHD and the Schar School. Read more...