The Minneapolis Star Tribune (11/26, Johns) reports that the St. Paul School District has “set out to find high-quality people working in other professions to improve the quality of the district’s teaching ranks and fill teaching positions where they’ve often had to rely on teachers without full licenses.” This fall, “more than 630 people applied for the St. Paul Teaching Fellows Program,” which is funded by “a grant from the U.S. Department of Education.” Forty-one applicants were selected to fill positions in “hard-to-fill subject areas such as special education and science.” According to the Star Tribune, “Of the 41 teachers in the Teaching Fellows program, 26 percent hold advanced degrees and 20 percent are people of color.” Over the summer, “The district gave them a five-week crash course…on teaching in urban settings.” In addition, “the teachers are also taking graduate education courses at Hamline University, so they’ll have a full license after two years.”

In the Classroom

Software Allows Students To Play Games As They Learn.

The St. Louis (MO) Post-Dispatch (11/26, Craig) reports that “Study X, a software program that allows students to play games as they learn, was recently installed on all student laptops at John F.