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Poverty in local community the subject of Feb. 10 education forum
Craig Chamberlain,
Education Editor
217-333-2894; cdchambe@illinois.edu
Released
1/24/2007
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. —
Poverty and its influence on children, schools and the Champaign-Urbana
community – and finding new strategies to address it – will
be the topic of a two-part forum on Feb. 10 at the University of Illinois
at Urbana-Champaign.
The Saturday event will begin at 8:30 a.m. with a keynote talk, panel
discussion and community forum at the Levis Faculty Center, 919 W. Illinois
St., Urbana. The featured speaker will be Nancy
K. Cauthen, deputy director of the National Center for Children
in Poverty at Columbia University.
Joining Cauthen for the panel discussion will be Maneesha Date, a policy
analyst for Voices for Illinois Children; Jane Quinlan, from the Champaign-Ford
regional office of education; and representatives from the Champaign
and Urbana school districts.
From 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., there will be a seminar for educators,
policymakers, and human services, health care and child welfare professionals,
as well as interested community members. The focus of the seminar at
Levis will be a community workshop program called “Bridges Out
of Poverty,” developed in part from the ideas of Ruby Payne, the
founder and president of aha! Process Inc.
The goal in both sessions will be to not only discuss poverty-related
concerns, but also to seek new ways to work together and to more effectively
address the concerns, said Robert Henderson, a professor emeritus of
special education at Illinois and one of the organizers.
The morning session is free and open to the public, with a continental
breakfast available before the event, starting at 8. The seminar that
follows requires advance registration by Feb. 5 and a $25 fee to cover
lunch and materials used in the session.
The forum is the latest in a series initiated in the fall of 2005 to
promote discussion on education and other related topics, with a focus
on the local schools and community. The series is sponsored by the university’s College of Education and organized
by the university’s chapter of Phi
Delta Kappa, a professional association for educators.
Co-sponsors for the Feb. 10 forum include the Champaign and Urbana school
districts, the Illinois North Central Association Commission on Accreditation
and School Improvement, and Parkland College.
To register for the “Bridges Out of Poverty” seminar, call
the Illinois North Central Association at 217-333-1120 or e-mail smorriso@uillinois.edu.
Teachers and school personnel can earn CEU and CPDU credits by attending.
Additional information about the “Bridges” program can
be found on the aha! Process Inc. Web site.
