In addition to Penn State’s virtual spring 2020 commencement ceremony at 2 p.m. on May 9, individual campuses and colleges across the University will be offering special recognition and events to their graduates.

James Dillard, distinguished professor of communication arts and sciences at Penn State, describes strategies to help regulate emotions during the stress and uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic.

As part of Penn State’s 2020 spring commencement activities, Panini Pandya will represent international studies as its student marshal. Pandya, a Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar, will graduate with bachelor of arts degrees in international politics, Spanish and history, with a minor in geography.

As part of Penn State’s 2020 spring commencement activities, Andrew Bernstein will represent the Department of Political Science in the College of the Liberal Arts as the department’s student marshal. Bernstein, a Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar, will graduate with bachelor of arts degrees in political science and Spanish, with a minor in economics.

As part of Penn State’s 2020 spring commencement activities, August Pasquale will represent ROTC in the College of the Liberal Arts as its student marshal. Pasquale will graduate with a bachelor of arts degree in political science and a bachelor of science degree in finance.

Xiaoye You, Liberal Arts Professor of English and Asian Studies, will become director of the Center for Democratic Deliberation in the McCourtney Institute for Democracy, effective July 1.

As part of Penn State’s 2020 spring commencement activities, Lena Becker will represent the Department of Psychology as its student marshal. Becker, a Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar, will graduate with a bachelor of science degree in psychology and a bachelor of arts degree in Spanish.

As part of Penn State’s 2020 spring commencement activities, Leah DeLancey will represent sociology in the College of the Liberal Arts as the department’s student marshal. DeLancey will graduate with bachelor of arts degrees in sociology and political science.

As part of Penn State’s 2020 spring commencement activities, Clara Miller will represent the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the College of the Liberal Arts as its student marshal.

As part of Penn State’s 2020 spring commencement activities, Christopher Abraham will represent the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese as its student marshal. Abraham, a Paterno Fellow and Schreyer Scholar, will graduate with bachelor of arts degrees in Spanish and English.

This blog is a another great response-to-intervention resource; the last several posts have focused specifically on what researchers know about best practices for response to intervention at the secondary level. It was a good resource for me as I was writing my latest RTI article, published just thi

There are still lots of questions about how response-to-intervention is used, and whether it's being used correctly, considering that federal rules about identifying students with disabilities haven't changed.

A response-to-intervention process cannot delay the initial evaluation for special education services of a child suspected of having a disability, federal officials have reminded states.

A district in Michigan started a response-to-intervention process to deal with overidentification problems. But some are worried about overworked general education teachers.

Effective behavior-screening methods are key to response-to-intervention programs aimed at improving behavior problems, according to a new study.

Assessment for reading interventions in response-to-intervention models may be too narrow to identify students struggling in different aspects of reading.

Response to Intervention (RTI) has been proven to work with students. Why don't we use it with teachers?

Having all children reading on grade level by third grade must include students with disabilities such as dyslexia, say organization leaders.

Data from a soon-to-be published report on RTI implementation shows that some states don't have a framework for evaluating program effectiveness.

Quiz Yourself! What are the essential components of response to intervention (RTI) initiatives, how are schools struggling to implement RTI, and what factors are contributing to school improvement?

Education Week will be hosting a live web chat March 24 with three response-to-intervention experts.

There is a direct connection between the leader's actions and the students' success or failure.

With a lot of moving parts, schools often struggle to make response-to-intervention and positive-behavior-interventions-and-support systems effective in the long run, but an early focus on school teaming and data can improve their odds, according to a new study.

The funding will establish a center at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn. that will focus on instructional strategies in reading and math for students with persistent learning struggles.

Quiz Yourself: What are the essential components of response to intervention (RTI) initiatives, how have schools struggled to implement RTI, and what factors have contributed to school improvement?

Quiz Yourself: What are the essential components of response to intervention (RTI) initiatives, how have schools struggled to implement RTI, and what factors have contributed to school improvement?

OM Ecuador recently began a sport clinic and league. The outreach is designed to connect with children in the poor San Francisco district of Guayaquil, Ecuador.

OM Ecuador team members work with people living with HIV and AIDS in a children's hospital in Guayaquil.

Fourteen from three countries participated in the cross-cultural missions training programme hosted by OM Andean Region.

OM Ecuador experiences God’s awesome hand as they witness the transformation in people’s lives on Santay Island.

OM Ecuador team members and volunteers see God open doors and protect the team during a recent trip to the highlands of Ecuador.

Over a thousand people visited the medical clinic that OM Ecuador recently installed in the small town of Cadeate. Many also came to faith.

After many years of ministry and much prayer, men are coming to Christ on Santay Island in Ecuador.

Human trafficking grows like a cancer in Ecuador. Boris and Fernanda Salinas are destined to fight it.

God heals physical and spiritual lives during OM Ecuador’s 2014 Medical Brigade in the Saraguro Canton region of Ecuador.

Dr. Eddie and Jeanette Moore share testimonies and lessons in faith as newly appointed OM Ecuador interim country leaders.

Carmita from the city of Pedernales and Rosita from the community of La Estancia acknowledge God's work through the OM teams sent to their people affected by the earthquake.

Candy Arteaga, serving with OM Ecuador, brings the love and hope of Jesus to children in a local hospital.

Jean Pierre's prayer was answered during a Christmas celebration with OM in La Estancia/Simón Bolívar which was impacted by the 2016 earthquake.

A story of God's grace and the life changing transformation of Juan and his family in Santay Island, Ecuador.

Manta, Ecuador :: Logos Hope's volunteers visit an area affected by the 2016 earthquake and share hope with children there.

Guayaquil, Ecuador :: Logos Hope's crewmembers visit children living with HIV, to tell them about their value in God's eyes and the power of prayer.

The Catholic Church remembers St. Damien of Molokai on May 10. The Belgian priest sacrificed his life and health to become a spiritual father to the victims of leprosy quarantined on a Hawaiian island.Joseph de Veuser, who later took the name Damien in religious life, was born into a farming family in the Belgian town of Tremlo in 1840. During his youth he felt a calling to become a Catholic missionary, an urge that prompted him to join the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary.Damien's final vows to the congregation involved a dramatic ceremony in which his superiors draped him in the cloth that would be used to cover his coffin after death. The custom was meant to symbolize the young man's solemn commitment, and his identification with Christ's own death. For Damien, the event would become more significant, as he would go on to lay down his life for the lepers of Molokai.His superiors originally intended to send Damien's brother, a member of the same congregation, to Hawaii. But he became sick, and Damien arranged to take his place. Damien arrived in Honolulu in 1864, less than a century after Europeans had begun to establish a presence in Hawaii. He was ordained a priest the same year.During his ninth year of the priesthood, Father Damien responded to his bishop's call for priests to serve on the leper colony of Molokai. A lack of previous exposure to leprosy, which had no treatment at the time, made the Hawaiian natives especially susceptible to the infection. Molokai became a quarantine center for the victims, who became disfigured and debilitated as the disease progressed.The island had become a wasteland in human terms, despite its natural beauty. The leprosy victims of Molokai faced hopeless conditions and extreme deprivation, sometimes lacking not only basic palliative care but even the means of survival.Inwardly, Fr. Damien was terrified by the prospect of contracting leprosy himself. However, he knew that he would have to set aside this fear in order to convey God's love to the lepers in the most authentic way. Other missionaries had kept the lepers at arms' length, but Fr. Damien chose to immerse himself in their common life and leave the outcome to God.The inhabitants of Molokai saw the difference in the new priest's approach, and embraced his efforts to improve their living conditions. A strong man, accustomed to physical labor, he performed the Church's traditional works of mercy – such as feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, and giving proper burial to the dead – in the face of suffering that others could hardly even bear to see.Fr. Damien's work helped to raise the lepers up from their physical sufferings, while also making them aware of their worth as beloved children of God. Although he could not take away the constant presence of death in the leper colony, he could change its meaning and inspire hope. The death-sentence of leprosy could, and often did, become a painful yet redemptive path toward eternal life.The priest's devotion to his people, and his activism on their behalf, sometimes alienated him from officials of the Hawaiian kingdom and from his religious superiors in Europe. His mission was not only fateful, but also lonely. He drew strength from Eucharistic adoration and the celebration of the Mass, but longed for another priest to arrive so that he could receive the sacrament of confession regularly.In December of 1884, Fr. Damien discovered that he had lost all feeling in his feet. It was an early, but unmistakable sign that he had contracted leprosy. The priest knew that his time was short. He undertook to finish whatever accomplishments he could, on behalf of his fellow colony residents, before the diseased robbed him of his eyesight, speech and mobility.Fr. Damien suffered humiliations and personal trials during his final years. An American Protestant minister accused him of scandalous behavior, based on the contemporary belief that leprosy was a sexually transmitted disease. He ran into disagreements with his religious superiors, and felt psychologically tormented by the notion that his work had been a failure.In the end, priests of his congregation arrived to administer the last sacraments to the dying priest. During the Spring of 1889, Fr. Damien told his friends that he believed it was God's will for him to spend the upcoming Easter not on Molokai, but in heaven. He died of leprosy during Holy Week, on April 15, 1889.St. Damien of Molokai was beatified in 1995. Pope Benedict XVI canonized him in 2009.

Since 1 June 2011, OM Belgium has been without a bookkeeper. Since 1991, Andrew Bridges (UK) has served the OM Belgium as bookkeeper, but due to his son's education and Andrew's poor health, they have decided to return home.

OM Belgium and OM Arts creatively connect with the local community through drawings, song, poetry and flowers.

A new church in Tienen begins as a result of an OM outreach done in partnership with a church in Leuven.

Two OM team members experienced the bombings in Belgium firsthand as Red Cross volunteers.

Milena found mission opportunities on OM Germany’s website, which led her to share the love of God in Belgium.

OM field leader Martin believes Belgium has a strategic part to play, with OM, in helping grow a church planting movement in Europe.