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Dr. Burmeister's scholarship in, and passion for, the teaching of reading at all levels and for all children led her to establish the Burmeister Scholars award. She sees the award as a reinvestment in the future of literacy and reading education.

Dr. Lou Ella Burmeister attended the "Partners in Education Banquet" on Tuesday March 23, where she meet with and watched as the first group of Burmeister Scholars received their professional development grants from Ken Zeichner. Dr. Burmeister provided a generous gift to the Madison Professional Development School Partnership to fund supplementary instruction in reading and literacy education.

Dr. Lou Burmeister (in white) with Burmeister scholars Loree Schultz,
Maureen Ritter (seated), Laura Holt, Patti Lucas, Jane Behrens, and
Diane Esser (standing). Missing from picture are Rita Kehl, Pete Speigel,and Cindy Gleason.

Dr. Burmeister spent Monday morning touring Midvale elementary school and the four year old program at Wright Middle School. During these visits she talked with Midvale's IRT Mary Kay Johnson, who explained different aspects of the partnership. Maureen Ritter, a Burmeister Scholar, who currently has a student teacher and who worked with a student teacher last semester, joined Mary Kay and Dr. Burmeister. Maureen explained the features of Midvale's literacy program as well as some of her work beyond the classroom in the area of literacy.

After this introduction to the school and its program, Dr. Burmeister had a chance to see how it was working in the classrooms. Dr. Burmeister visited scholar Dianne Esser's classroom. Ben Bauch, a first grader in Dianne's class, explained the language workshop process and expectations to Dr. Burmeister, read her a chapter from "Frog and Toad," and shared some of his own writing.

After seeing literacy learning in action at Midvale, Mary Kay and Dr. Burmeister went to Wright Middle School, where the Midvale-Lincoln four year old program is housed. They visited with UW students Rebecca Brown and Abby Weinkauf, who are in their final PDS student teaching placement. Rebecca and Abby each worked with Midvale teachers receiving Burmeister awards. They were able to share with Dr. Burmeister how the partnership had prepared them to work with all children. Abby and Rebecca explained how they saw the literacy program working and what they had learned from working with expert teachers in this area.

Dr. Burmeister, a Milwaukee native and UW-Madison graduate was impressed with the literacy programs in the partnership schools in Madison. reading to their stuffed animals.

In 1966 Dr. Burmeister graduated from the UW-Madison C & I department with a Ph.D. in reading education. Her professional background in literacy includes five years of teaching reading at the high school level in the Milwaukee area. As a teacher she focused on the role of reading across curriculum areas and improving reading skills for all high school students. She established a program for teaching reading at the high school level.

Dr. Burmeister was on the faculty at UW-Milwaukee for nine years, and an assistant professor at the UW-Madison for two before moving to El Paso. While in Wisconsin, Dr. Burmeister was president of the Milwaukee area and the Wisconsin State Reading Associations. She was also elected to the board of directors of the International Reading Association. Dr. Burmeister coordinated the reading program at the University of Texas -El Paso for the remainder of her career.

Dr. Burmeister's scholarship in, and passion for, the teaching of reading at all levels and for all children led her to establish the Burmeister Scholars award. She sees the award as a reinvestment in the future of literacy and reading education.

The Barrio school project is coordinated by UW-Madison's Latin American and Iberian Studies Department.

Tito Medina was the "musician in residence" at Cherokee where he worked with small groups of students to prepare them for a showcase performance.

This spring the activities for the Barrio school project at Cherokee and Lincoln began to take shape. The Barrio school project is coordinated by UW-Madison's Latin American and Iberian Studies Department and involves six Madison schools, the Madison Children's Museum, and the Madison School District. The goal of the Barrio school project is to build curriculum initiatives in order to integrate Central American studies into classrooms. The project involves each of the schools in activities cantered on their selected focus and activities across all the schools and the university.


Cherokee student Mandy Bartz and a friend prepare for their
performance with Tito Medina and members of the band Sotavento.

Several visiting performers came to Cherokee and Lincoln this spring for performances and workshops. At Cherokee these included: Guatemalan singer/song writer, Tito Medina, Cuban jazz percussionist, Francisco Mora and the band Sotavento.
The musicians gave performances at the school, and held a workshop for students. Tito Medina was the "musician in residence" at Cherokee where he worked with small groups of students to prepare them for a showcase performance. Each of the six Barrio schools presented programs they had prepared for this multicultural extravaganza at UW-Madison's Mills Hall on February 27.

Two Spanish courses were offered through the PDS partnership this spring. Kathleen Schnieder, a Midvale ESL teacher facilitated a 10 week conversational Spanish course for 15 teachers and 2 UW education students. Marianna DeGraff, a bilingual resource specialist at Cherokee is continuing the conversational Spanish class she began in the fall with 6 participants.

Through these two courses teachers and education students are improving their understanding of Spanish and ability to speak with Spanish speaking students and their families.

The Madison PDS partnership has been awarded a grant of just under $45,000 from the UW-System's PK-16 Initiative for the development of instructional technologies for teachers. The grant coordinating group will consist of Cookie Miller and Jeff Maas from Lincoln, and Jo Ann Carr and Ken Zeichner from the UW. The grant will be used to develop video and web technologies in 5 Midvale-Lincoln classrooms.

This technology will allow for real time and taped viewing of teaching and learning in elementary classrooms at the university for use in pre-service methods classes, discussions of teaching, and professional development.

Lincoln teacher Pete Speigel facilitated a PDS course that focused on the literacy needs of upper elementary students. Early in the course, the 17 participants established the particular needs of upper elementary students in literacy, then looked at strategies for meeting these literacy needs. Opportunities for teachers who were using or had tried to integrate some of the strategies into their teaching were shared and analyzed.

The final session was used to bring all the information together. Different classroom models used by teachers in the course and at Lincoln in general were discussed in order to maintain a close tie between theories, strategies and practices for teaching.

Literacy is a high priority at PDS schools.

UW- Madison Students at PDS Sites
This semester 35 students of education were placed at PDS sites. 16 students of education worked at the Thoreau-Cherokee site and 19 at the Lincoln-Midvale site. As well as education students, 39 UW students were placed as SHAPE tutors in three PDS sites; 13 at Midvale, 13 at Lincoln and 13 at Cherokee.

The UW education students below completed their final teaching placements in the Madison PDS schools this spring.

From the Thoreau-Cherokee Site are: Brian Driscoll, Emily Movall and Karen Vieth.

From the Midvale-Lincoln Site are:
Sarah Anderson, Hong Chang, Abby Weinkauf, Rebecca Brown, Julia Peterson, Besty Roble, Jessica Martin, Kate Wegmann, Michelle Stockli and Heidi Gerke.

Miami in May
UNITE, the Urban Network to Improve Teacher Education, a sub group of the Holmes Partnership, will hold its next National meeting this May in Miami, Florida. Representing the Madison partnership will be Jennie Allen, Mary Kay Johnson, and Rita Kehl from Midvale; Mary Ramberg from the school district; and Associate Dean Jack Kean from the University. The Midvale group is planning to use time before the conference to visit local schools and make direct contacts with other teachers involved in school-university partnerships from other areas of the United States.

Developing Teaching Portfolios
The students of education and their supervisors have been very involved in the development of teaching portfolios. This year the students have based their portfolio construction around UW-Madison's teacher education standards. Madison PDS sites play an important role, both locally and as part of the Holmes Partnership, in the development of portfolio assessment linked to teacher education standards. The input and support from cooperating teachers, IRTs and school based supervisors, and the PDS site staff to the education students while they work with their portfolios effect not only the learning process of the particular student but also the process of teacher education reform. The development and refinement of pre-service teaching portfolios and standards based assessment; what constitutes effective support for these processes; and the learning results for education students and pupils is being studied by the PDS planning group so the knowledge gained can be shared.