Featured News
With the ages of birth to five being the most critical stage in the growth and development of young children, Helios Education Foundation is investing close to $1 million in three early childhood education (ECE) initiatives that will expose children to positive learning environments and provide high quality training for ECE teachers in Arizona and Florida.
The Foundation is awarding Childsplay and Paradise Valley Community College (both in Arizona) and the Early Learning Coalition of Polk County, Florida with funding for ECE teacher professional development programs that, over time, will help teachers better understand how children learn to read and develop vocabulary.
A new partnership between the University of Arizona College of Education and Helios Education Foundation will change the way early childhood teachers are prepared by including family and community members as educators of future teachers.
"Community and family will be the heart of the new curriculum," says Iliana Reyes, associate professor and codirector of the project. In the first year, with funding of $347,000, professors, teachers, and community members will begin a complete redesign of the current early childhood courses and language and literacy projects at the college.
Teach For America announced that Vince Roig, chairman of the board of Helios Education Foundation, has been named to its National Board of Directors.
"Vince and Helios Education Foundation have been such strong public champions and supporters of our work to expand educational opportunity in Phoenix and Miami," said Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach For America. "We are thrilled that he is deepening his engagement with Teach For America, and know that he will provide invaluable guidance and support for our efforts to grow our impact nationally."
The Helios Education Foundation has awarded a $49,926 grant to Improving Fifth Grade Students' Understanding of Rational Numbers, a project instituted by the University of Arizona College of Education.
Other Headlines
Tomorrow's leaders in science and medicine graduated from one of the nation's most advanced summer internship programs at the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen).
The 44 interns in the Helios Scholars Program at TGen wrapped up eight weeks of biomedical investigations with a daylong symposium filled with discussions and scientific poster presentations at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel.
Helios Education Foundation committed $115,000 to Teach Tec, a unique collaborative program that trains seventh-, eighth- and ninth-grade teachers on innovative ways to use technology to better teach and inspire students.
Educators in science, technology, engineering and mathematics are being invited to participate in "Teach-Tec," a certificate program that will show how technologies such as flip video cameras, Poll Everywhere, SurveyMonkey, Wordle and YouTube, can serve as high-impact tools to enhance the learning experience.
Helios Education Foundation is pleased to present you with our 2009 annual report, A Year in Review. This interactive, completely electronic, online experience is a showcase of the partnerships, investments and commitments our Foundation has made over the past year.
The video stories, photo essays and articles highlighted remind us of the thousands of students and families that have been touched by new opportunities in education. We are working with organizations, schools and institutions and others in Arizona and Florida to make a difference across the education continuum. Through many of these partnerships, we are able to help bring teachers the professional development opportunities they need, help students transition successfully through the often unsettling middle years and help promote a college-going culture in our communities.
