It is an exciting time to be a member of the James Madison Memorial High School Community. Walk around the school and you will hear staff and students speaking of "neighborhoods" and "backyards." Peek into the four classrooms that have been converted into "neighborhood spaces" and you will see students seated in brightly colored chairs, working together around several tables, helping each other complete the day's assignments. Speak with Principal Dr. Pamela Nash, PDS Coordinator Barbara Smith, Neighborhoods Coordinator Kelly Pochop, or University Liaison Professor Peter Hewson, and you will sense immediately their excitement about Memorial High School's commitment to improving students' academic experiences by transforming the school's social climate.

A recipient of a Smaller Learning Communities Grant from the US Department of Education, Memorial is currently embarking on an ambitious project to change the ways in which students and staff interact with one another. Recognizing that students' academic achievement, school attendance, and extracurricular participation are all enhanced when students feel connected to the school and to each other, last year Memorial High School began soliciting recommendations from students and staff about how the school could make these connections possible. What resulted was the formation of the Neighborhoods Project and the establishment of partnerships with Edgewood College and the Madison Professional Development School network.

Through a series of initiatives including physical changes to the school, a restructuring of the school day, and the establishment of four school Neighborhoods (comprised of Blocks and Backyards) the Memorial High School Neighborhoods project is working to create a collegial school culture, build student leadership and ownership of the school's future, increase student participation, and close the achievement gap.

As a new member of the PDS partnership, Memorial has already begun to provide numerous development opportunities for its faculty as well as its student teachers. One such opportunity is the creation of a weekly student teaching seminar. Similar to the seminars attended by the Midvale-Lincoln and Cherokee-Thoreau cohorts, starting this semester, the 15 students who received practicum or student-teaching placements at Memorial will be meeting together on a regular basis to discuss matters of common concern. As a result of the seminar, coordinator Barb Smith anticipates that the students and staff will be more connected and informed. Additionally, she hopes that a stronger learning community and support system will be built for the student teachers as they work with and learn from each other. In order to facilitate communication between the school and the university, all of the students' university instructors, supervisors, as well as their cooperating teachers are also invited to attend.

Students working in a Memorial High School neighborhood

Faculty at the high school are also helping to generate and implement ideas for professional development. Currently, teachers are invited to attend forums held before school and during the lunch hour in which they can consider relevant issues such as staff development, cooperating teaching certification, school restructuring and general educative concerns. As a result of these conversations, teachers are also considering developing faculty book and discussion groups through which they might be able to interact more regularly with each other. Additionally, this semester the Memorial faculty can enroll in two professional development courses: one on conversational Spanish sponsored by the high school and taught by Memorial Spanish instructor Becky Garcia, the second on student teacher supervision provided by the University and led by Professor Ken Zeichner.

"The faculty has come on board and really wants to make this work," shares Smith. "Knowledge begins with teachers and percolates down to students." This is why Memorial High School has committed itself to the professional development process, and looks forward to its partnership with the PDS program.

Although it is a chilly October afternoon outside Thoreau Elementary School, the first grade classroom student teacher Bruce Kane shares with cooperating teacher Heather Kalscheur is warm with activity. Fourteen attentive bodies sit excitedly on the room's colored alphabet rug as Kane begins reading from Dem Bones, a book by Bob Barner based on an African-American spiritual. "The foot bone's connected to the ankle bone..." he reads.

"That's a song!" says one student as another student points to her foot.

"Can everyone find their ankle bone?" asks Kane as 14 hands identify their ankles. Together, Kane and his students read the book, stopping frequently to identify familiar words, helping each other define new ones, and predicting which bones will come next.

Bruce Kane reads to his class

"Now we're going to count dem bones," explains Kane as he closes the book and transitions the students into their next activity. After receiving directions, the students assume seats in groups of three or four around several tables spaced evenly in the center of the room. Once there, they discover a small collection of bone-shaped candies that they must count, sort, add, subtract, and graph. As the students dig into their tasks, Kane and Kalscher move from table to table assisting students and checking their work. "If you didn't have your fingers," says Kane, "how else could you add that?"

Bruce Kane is one of 20 student teachers currently teaching in Madison's PDS schools this semester. Prepared to work specifically in environments with diverse student populations, Kane, like the rest of the student-teachers in the PDS program, is exploring creative and culturally sensitive ways to meet his students' unique needs as well as challenge them academically. For Kane, that has meant looking carefully at his students' math and literacy skills and developing multiple ways to enhance them. From the students' math journals to the "What is Mathematical About Me?" bulletin board, evidence of Kane's efforts and his students' engagement are visible throughout the classroom.

Also at Thoreau, Emily Goff is busy teaching problem-solving strategies, Spanish, and poetry to her 4th grade class. Just recently, Goff invited her students outside to collect leaves and brainstorm descriptive words to use in their poems. For Goff, making connections between the students' lived experiences and their writing has been an important part of the writing process.

In Language Arts, where Goff is leading a book club on the novel Hatchet she and her students are working to identify self-to-text connections between the novel and other genres of writing such as song lyrics and newspaper articles. Attentive to the interdisciplinary relationships between the Native American History her students are studying in social studies and their language arts curricula, Goff is also busy planning a trip to the Wisconsin State Historical Society Museum to see the exhibit on Wisconsin Native Americans. She and her students are looking forward to the trip—including a stop at the Memorial Union for Babcock ice cream.

Jennifer Ambrose and her students brainstorm

Over at Midvale Elementary School, Jennifer Ambrose and her kindergarten class are reading Mrs. Wishy-Washy together, identifying words they've learned on their word wall. "How many ands did we read?" Ambrose asks them as they return to the beginning of the book and begin counting.

"One, two, three...four," the students say as they identify the familiar word.

"Great. Now we're going to write our own stories," Ambrose explains, and with the students' assistance, begins to compose several short sentences using the sounds and letters of the students' own names as prompts. Together they work to match consonant sounds and letters, put spaces between their words, and include punctuation. Back at their tables, the students follow Ambrose's model and begin writing their own stories, occasionally stopping to refer to the alphabet clue card tucked snugly into one of the pockets of their individual journals.

Just down the hall, student teacher Ryan Vernosh describes a neighborhood unit he implemented earlier in the year as a way of building classroom community. At their tables, the students were asked to design, draw, and paint a house on a piece of butcher paper. This painting was attached to the table and the students became "residents" of the house they had created together. "It was one of the first times that the groups had to work cooperatively and problem solve together in order to accomplish a common goal," shares Vernosh.

Ryan Vernosh and several of his students hear a story

Additionally, after studying about mail carriers and the purpose of letters, Vernosh established a classroom mail system with a post office, a mailbox, and rotating mail carriers who delivered students' letters to each other's "houses." "Throughout the unit," says Vernosh, "we studied other aspects of neighborhoods and communities. The subjects of study were generated by the class via a giant web of things they observed in their own community."

Community was also important to student teacher Theresa Sanders who explored what it means to be Hispanic with her first graders, several of whom were born in Mexico. After mapping out numerous Spanish-speaking countries, Sanders and her students studied the Mexican flag, discussing its colors, symbols and meanings. Together, as they learned how to say their numbers and colors in both English and Spanish, Sanders' students wrote about the flag as well as created color and number books.

Because she wanted to incorporate her students' diverse backgrounds into their classroom experiences, Sanders and her students also looked more closely at Mexico, its geography, clothing, food, and dance. "My intention," shares Sanders, "was to present information about another culture in a fun and exciting way that was also meaningful to the kids."

As a result of the events of Sept. 11, Laurie Schroepfer and her 3rd grade students at Lincoln Elementary School have begun to learn and talk more about Afghanistan. "They had a lot of information to share," says Laurie, "and a lot of questions during these discussions."

Laurie has also been working in her reading units to incorporate writing, reading, speech, art and some science, and has had success motivating students and having them write creatively using "I Wonder" books. Currently, Laurie and her students are beginning a unit on "fast plants," which is completely hands-on. "They students are enjoying it so far," she reports.

Finally, Steve Liu and his 6th grade students at Cherokee Middle School are completing an expansive examination of the Wetlands. "All of the activities are adapted to the needs of the students," he explains, and then describes a trip he and his students, along with cooperating teacher Deb Stamler, recently took to Cherokee Marsh. Throughout the unit, Liu's students are encouraged to develop a deeper understanding of the environment and, more specifically, to explore the wetland's value as it filters water, prevents flooding, and preserves history in its soil. Working closely with Stamler, Liu says that he has received a lot of personal and professional support, and teaching the wetland unit has provided him with a "good experience seeing how materials are put together."

Although the student teachers are sad to be leaving their students, cooperating teachers, and PDS sites at the end of this semester, they look forward to teaching in new and diverse places, and continuing to put the lessons they've learned into practice.

On Nov. 2-4, a team from the Madison School District and the University of Wisconsin-Madison traveled to St. Louis, Missouri to participate in the first of three meetings of UNITE, the Urban Network to Improve Teacher Education. Representing Madison's Professional Development Partnership were Linda Allen, principal of Thoreau Elementary School, Nancy Booth, Thoreau's Instructional Resource Teacher, Paula Ferrara-Parrish, a representative of Madison Teacher's Inc. and a teacher at Elvehjem Elementary School, Mary Klehr, University Supervisor at Midvale Elementary School and Ken Zeichner, UW Professor of Education.

The Madison PDS team had the opportunity to share ideas, experiences, and concerns with other urban educators from across the country. Along with team members from 31 urban partnerships, Madison's delegates served on several task forces designed to improve urban teacher education theory and practice. Both Linda Allen and Mary Klehr attended meetings on Equity and Social Justice in P-16 and Teacher Education Curriculum. Nancy Booth explored issues related to Urban Teacher Induction. Paula Ferrara-Parrish participated in discussions on Urban Teacher Education Policy, and Ken Zeichner, along with New York teacher Sandra Gumbs, headed the task force on Urban Teacher Preservice Preparation.

The second convening of the UNITE task forces, which the Madison PDS team will also attend, is scheduled for January 25-27 in San Antonio, Texas as a part of the Holmes Partnership National meeting.

On Friday, September 21, University of Wisconsin-Madison Law Professor and school board menber Ruth Robarts attended the Midvale-Lincoln PDS seminar to discuss diversity and equity issues. Robarts, a past principal of Shabazz High School in Madison, explained that while Madison schools do well academically, scoring impressively on national standardized tests and producing a disproportionately high number of National Merit Scholars every year, there is a "hollowness to their success." According to Robarts, whereas just over 80% of the district's white students go on to graduate from high school, the percentages decrease significantly for its Latino and African-American student populations (66% and 54% respectively).

In order to address these concerns, Robarts informed the PDS students that in 1998 the school board set three goals for the Madison schools. These goals, recommended by a community steering committee, are intended to improve all students' reading, math, and attendance by making them a priority. Specifically, the board has stated that all students must be able to read at or beyond their grade level by the time they graduate from third grade, all students must complete high school algebra and geometry courses by the end of ninth and tenth grades and all students must achieve a 94% attendance rate each year at every grade level regardless of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic or linguistic subgroup.

Because of their work as members of the Madison teaching community, Robarts reminded the PDS cohort to recognize and respect the racial, ethnic, linguistic, and socio-economic diversity of Madison's student population. She challenged the PDS students to investigate the relationship between students' early literacy successes and their on-going engagement with school. She also shared strategies for improving students' reading skills that are currently being provided by Madison teachers as well as supported by the school district such as Reading Recovery, the Summer Reading Academy, and tutoring.

Finally, Robarts commended the PDS students on their commitment to becoming good teachers for all children in urban settings. She encouraged them to keep concerns about equity and diversity in the forefront of their teaching by continuing to think carefully about the expectations they have for all of their students. According to Robarts, expectations need to be raised, and new ways of challenging and engaging students must be developed if all of Madison's diverse learners are to be successful.

The PDS program is pleased to welcome new principals to three of Madison's Professional Development Schools: Linda Allen at Thoreau Elementary School, Beth Lehman at Lincoln Elementary School, and Karen Seno at Cherokee Middle School.

Linda Allen began her career in Madison in 1983 teaching kindergarten at Shorewood Hills and Lowell Elementary. From 1984 to 1995, she taught kindergarten and 2nd grade at Shorewood, until she was asked to be the interim principal at Lincoln Elementary School in the fall of 1995. Before assuming her current position at Thoreau, Allen additionally spent six years as the principal at Van Hise Elementary School.

A teacher in the Madison schools since 1993, Karen Seno has been serving as the interim principal at Cherokee Middle School for the past year. Prior to assuming that role, she taught language arts at Madison Middle School 2000, in a Broadway-Simpson alternative program for high school students, and was the learning coordinator at Wright Middle School. Seno was also recently named one of ten members of the Rennebohm Scholars Academy, a group of innovative, creative Madison School District staff members who will be exploring district-wide issues over the next three years.

Formerly an elementary principal in Wheeling, Illinois, Beth Lehman taught elementary school in the northwest suburbs of Chicago and participated in summer internships at Cabrini Green in Chicago's inner city. Most recently, she served on the executive committee of Northwest Suburban RAPP, an organization made up of several representative bodies of the community that came together against gangs, drugs, and violence to promote healthy and safe environments for youth. Although new to the Madison and Lincoln communities, Lehman is excited by the diversity of Lincoln's staff, students, and families. She looks forward to working in partnership with the University to provide rich and engaging educational experiences for all of Lincoln's learners.