A recent PDS grad, he’s in his late forties and learning Spanish, and is trying to get a handle on some of the other languages spoken by his diverse student body, including Khmer and Hmong.

Marc Kornblatt talks a mile a minute. It’s 7:45am and he is racing around his 5th-grade classroom at Lincoln Elementary preparing for the day’s activities. There isn’t even time for him to shake my hand; he’s too busy showing me around his classroom to point out the work of his students or showing me books that are inspiring his teaching. One, “Teaching with the Brain in Mind” has him very captivated, and he alternates between letting me skim the book at my own pace and telling me which aspects of the book are influencing the way he teaches. He is a person with an endless quest for knowledge. A recent PDS grad, he’s in his late forties and learning Spanish, and is trying to get a handle on some of the other languages spoken by his diverse student body, including Khmer and Hmong. In fact, the word for “welcome” is displayed outside the door to his classroom in Hebrew, English, Tagalog, Spanish, Kampuchean, Hmong, and Arabic, sending a clear message to those who enter that this classroom is one which celebrates diverse perspectives.

If the entrance is about the diversity of student experiences, the walls are decorated with narratives that detail the individuality of each child’s world. Kornblatt has collaborated with U-W professor of Education Simone Schweber on a project he hopes will inspire his students to think about their past, their culture, and to share their thoughts with others. A few weeks earlier, Schweber’s students wrote stories about a seminal event in their lives and came to Kornblatt’s classroom to share them. In a week, those same students will return and hear the stories the 5th graders have written. Today, those stories adorn the walls, bearing titles like
“My Grandpa’s True Story,” “Weddings can be Dangerous,” and
“My Move From Mexico.” They are featured prominently on a colorful bulletin board, alongside photographs of the students themselves with their university student partners. Kornblatt, who happens to be the author of several children’s books, knows the impact that telling stories can have.

The classroom appears to be decorated in the spirit of exploration. Closet doors are covered with very detailed drawings of leaves and flowers done by the students themselves, and a sign nearby reads, “Observing the world like scientists.” Two hyperactive guinea pigs rule the back of the room, commanding the attention of the students when they’re not occupied with their schoolwork. In addition to being a writer, Kornblatt has a diverse array of skills and experiences that he marshals every day in class. A former actor and in his own words, a “recovering” playwright, he displays a theatricality and charisma that enables him to balance his authoritative presence with genuine humor and fun. A musician, he will periodically grab his guitar and begin singing a song that he has taught his class, or one they request, and they will jump in and sing with him. At this particular moment, the song is “Stand By Me,” and while the students are singing, they are also focusing on Kornblatt and calming down. Kornblatt’s diversity of likes and interests are reflected in his roster of class responsibilities, which include a “song selector,” and a “joke master,” a job that can be held by more than one student at a time. On this day, two young men have this honor, and Kornblatt directs them to me for assistance in choosing which jokes to tell in front of the class. As we look through the book, the three of us analyze which jokes are funny and which jokes are potentially offensive. We all decide that the joke, “What do you get when you cross a vampire and a teacher? Lots of blood tests!” will offend the least people and might actually get a laugh. The two joke
masters then head to the front of the room, and tell the joke in a way I hadn’t expected: they read out the question, and then the rest of the class has to guess the punch line. This results in some hilarious answers, including, “chicken teacher” and “vampire teacher,” along with an interesting exercise in logicalthinking.

Following the stand-up comedy, Kornblatt’s students engage in a different type of stand-up: stand-up mathematics. Students with confidence in different mathematical concepts including grouping, mean, rounding, magnitude estimate, and partial products are asked to go to the blackboard and demonstrate math problems from the previous night’s homework. Kornblatt tells the class this is like a “smorgasbord,” (which he explains the meaning of) and after each student finishes copying their answer onto the blackboard, he asks them to explain their thought process. Once each student finishes, Kornblatt declares them to be an “expert” in that math concept, and after one student solves a particularly difficult problem, the class breaks into spontaneous applause. After the students are done with explaining their answers, Kornblatt proceeds to the board himself and “solves” a problem incorrectly, telling the class that his answer is right. When a few students challenge him, he responds, “But I’m the teacher, aren’t I always right? Prove me wrong.” And as a class they work through the problem correctly, learning math and how to respectfully challenge authority at the same time.

Each of the student math experts is then given their own area of the classroom, and there they play tutor to their fellow students who are having difficulty learning the math concept the “expert” excels in. They work in small groups with Kornblatt first checking in, and then leading a small group of his own, emphasizing that the facts aren’t as important as knowing how to solve the problem. He is insistent that the students show their work, and to try different strategies. One student, who appears to be locked into one strategy in particular, is resistant to trying anything new. Knowing this student loves basketball, Kornblatt uses an analogy he thinks will reach him. He says, "Did you just get good at basketball by being naturally gifted? No. You did a lot of practice shots. I see you out on the playground practicing. And do you just try hitting the basket from one spot on the court? You’re practicing from all sides. Do you just want to learn to dribble with your right hand, or do you want to learn how to dribble with the left? I’m just trying to push you out of your comfort zone.”

Nancy Booth, Instructional Resource Teacher at Thoreau, brought the “Community Adventure” exercise to the Cherokee/Thoreau PDS program 5 years ago. Midvale and Lincoln had a similar program with students exploring the neighborhood by bus, but Booth and some of her colleagues decided it would best be done in cars. Students are given maps of the area surrounding Cherokee and Thoreau, and meet with different representatives from community organizations. When asked about the impetus behind the program, Booth said, “To begin to understand that kids come from different places and that there were different resources in the neighborhood—different parks, different stores, and not only two major neighborhoods, but lots of little neighborhoods. We got the high end and the low end and all the in-between. It’s important for people to see the scope of the area they cover. I didn’t want to reinforce stereotypes, but I wanted students to really think about it, to explore their own prejudices.



So this place looks different, but what does it really mean? Meeting with community organizations gives them more information and allows them glimpses of after school—the rest of these students’ lives—what children’s lives are outside of school.” Hilary Conklin, U-W supervisor for Cherokee, agrees. “It’s definitely an eye-opener for many of our students. Clearly, many of the students, even long-time Madison residents had stereotypes of some neighborhoods, and the community walk challenged and cracked those conceptions and got them to think differently. It helped them see the complexities of the different situations from which kids come.”

Concrete to green grass, passing from my world to yours, never belonging

— Sarah Chastain

I got interested in teaching when I began volunteering my time in the “Discover Art” program for the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade classes at Markesan Elementary in Markesan, Wisconsin, when my kids were in school. I loved that, and the teacher kept telling me, “You should teach.” I was also a school bus driver for 4 years, and I just figured, if I can turn my back on fifty of them, I could stand in front and face 25 of them. A year after I started the program my oldest son started at U-W Steven’s Point, and I thought we wouldn’t be able to afford to send both of us to school. But my father-in-law said, “I put my sons through school, I’ll put my daughter through school too.” He’s very proud, and always shows my report cards to his friends.

I was drawn to PDS when I found out it was housed at Cherokee and Thoreau. I was so excited, I thought I could learn a lot and apply all of my PDS training about embracing diversity. Cherokee was the most diverse setting I’d ever been in my life. I liked the idea of staying at those schools—I had had one semester of practicum at Cherokee before PDS, so a lot of the parents knew me. I know so many teachers from working there last year, too. You make a really meaningful connection, because you know you’re going to see these people again.

The community experience really cemented a lot of that for me. We went to the Allied Drive Community Center. We all had a map and we drove around the areas that feed into Cherokee.

It changes your perspective. It was phenomenal, the various social and economic backgrounds that were represented. When we talked about what some of the tours meant to us, many of us cried. Some of the kids have a sidewalk as their front lawn, and they have to walk past these great single-family homes with big lawns to go to school. It changes how you look at kids. Some of them are not comfortable here (at school). I wondered what would it be like to go home after school and then not leave my house when it’s dark because it’s just not safe. It’s not about sympathy. It’s about frustration. You get outside of yourself and your own experiences. You learn that not everyone has the same experiences as you, and you cannot make assumptions. We were talking about this in the car on our tour: we could not believe that we had gone from one extreme to the other in one block.

In my classroom, the kids were talking about something. One kid lived on Allied Drive, another kid was from Fitchburg. Before, I had no idea what that meant, or understood where kids were coming from. Then you understand what their particular responses are and that really means something.

Carolyn Michaelis, a PDS alum, is a 4th and 5th grade bilingual teacher in her second full year of teaching at Leopold Elementary. Her 17 students are all native Spanish speakers from Argentina, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay, and she has actively looked for ways to incorporate their cultural heritage into her classroom activities.

“I feel like I’ve gotten to know my students’ families better—I’ve been to a couple of my students’ homes, and been invited to a family’s house for dinner. The students see that I have a connection to their parents, which makes them more accountable at school. It also creates these opportunities to have positive interactions with students outside of class.”

Getting to know her students’ families has had an enormous impact on Michaelis’ classroom. She recalls the time she visited a student who had just returned from the hospital following an illness. While at the student’s home, the family shared a number of traditions with her, and she learned about the student’s grandfather, a baker. The student’s father even shared fresh baked bread made from his father’s recipe with Michaelis, who saw in it a powerful way to connect with her student. Sadly, the student’s grandfather passed away in Argentina this fall. A few weeks later, Michaelis brought in bags of cinnamon to inspire students to write about the
memories evoked by the smell. With Michaelis’ encouragement, the student began writing about her grandfather’s bakery, and discovered a real love for composition. Michaelis says that according to the student’s mother, she will “write on anything, even napkins” and wanted to have school until 6pm so that they could read and write all afternoon. On the day I visit, the classroom atmosphere is lively and frenetic. The students shift from Spanish to English when asking me questions: Am I married? Why am I such an old student? Why do I have a camera? What does a journalist do? They are respectful and interested in everything.Taking advantage of their investigatory spirit, Michaelis leads them in a writing exercise designed not only improve their composition skills, but to foster powerful connections to other students at Leopold: Buddy journals.The inspiration for this activity came from an article Michaelis read that highlighted one teacher’s approach of creating journals that her class would write and then share with another class that would then write back. Michaelis’ class now has writing buddies in fellow Leopold teacher Patty Czech’s 5th grade class. Unlike typical journals, these are more like letters to pen pals, asking questions of the students in the other class to which Michaelis’ students want answers.

Michaelis is candid about her concerns and what she hopes the new approach will accomplish, saying, “First we felt a little isolated from the other English-only classes, and I also worried that I wasn’t getting in enough English composition. Writing to a buddy motivates them and gives them an authentic reason to communicate. They will have the same buddy for three weeks, and then they’ll switch. They write a lot of questions about favorite things, colors, sports, and games they like to play, and pets. They also write about where they’re from—it’s important for them to get that part of their identity in. There’s a lot of national pride.”The journal-writing exercise begins with the students generating lists of English phrases that they would like to know so that they can write their entries effectively. When the students don’t know how to say the phrases in English, they brainstorm the phrases in Spanish, and Michaelis translates them, writing each one on large sheets of white paper tacked to the wall. This process not only helps them with their spelling, but also works as a creative generator for writing ideas for the entire class. The phrases include, "I like to eat French fries," "How are you?" "I would like to teach you a little Spanish,” “What sports do you like? We like to play soccer and tetherball” “What is your favorite book?" and remarkably, “We like to do our homework." They then get into small groups to begin writing.

Michaelis explains what happens next. "We turn the journals over to the other class either on Monday or Friday, and the students’ respective buddies read them and write answers to their questions. The "Buddy Class" is challenged by Czech to craft responses that include vocabulary they think my class will be able to understand." Later in the week, Michaelis’ class will join their buddies, and read what the other has written, along with reading other books aloud to one another. The project has created friendships and sparked Michaelis’ class to expand their English vocabularies to enrich their conversations with their buddies. As a result, not only are their journal buddies in Czech's class expanding their Spanish vocabularies, but their knowledge of cultures, peoples and places way beyond Madison, Wisconsin.

— Gail Stern

The PDS Partnership is proud to acknowledge the accomplishments of this semester’s student teachers as well as the mentoring and leadership of the supporting cooperating teachers, instructional resource teachers, and teaching assistants with whom they work. Currently student teaching at Midvale under the supervision of Mary Klehr are Erin Smith in a Kindergarten classroom with cooperating teacher Catherine Gronemus, and Sara Urbanek in a Kindergarten classroom with cooperating teacher Abby Weinkauf. At Thoreau, under the supervision of Nancy Booth, are Sara Tangen in a 4th grade classroom with cooperating teacher Marta Sells, and Tony Manzo in a 4th/5th grade classroom with cooperating teacher Jane Kiefer.At Cherokee, under the supervision of Hilary Conklin, are Carey Callies in a 6th grade class with cooperating teacher Deb Stamler, and Angie Van Gemert in an 8th grade class with cooperating teacher Jane Behrens.At the Memorial-Jefferson PDS site, 8 student teachers are working toward their secondary supervision under the guidance of PDS Coordinator Barbara Smith. At Memorial, Lindsey Geiger, Dan Koch, and David Marsicek are teaching Social Studies with cooperating teachers Nancy Piraino, Debora Gil R. Casado, and Robin Staley and Daniel Raabe, respectively. ,Jonathan Kell and Daisy Matthews are teaching Math with cooperating teachers Stacey Hartsfield and Joseph King. At Jefferson, Charles Boland is teaching Science with cooperating teacher Marylu Baker, Jodi Green is teaching English with cooperating teacher Marcia Ouchakof, and Greg Rowe is teaching Social Studies with cooperating teacher Nancy Howard.

In addition to the student teachers, 13 students are fulfilling their practicum requirements at Lincoln and Midvale in Early-Middle Childhood Science/Social Studies, Early-Middle Childhood Math, and Early-Middle Childhood Literacy; at Cherokee and Thoreau, 13 students are fulfilling their practicum requirements in Science and Social Studies, and at Memorial and Jefferson, 12 students are fulfilling their practicum requirements in Science, Math, and Social Studies.

One of the agencies students visit as part the PDS Community Adventure is Joining Forces for Families (JFF), a Dane County organization that brings together the resources of the Dane County Human Services Department in partnership with neighborhood organizations and residents. During our interview, Jesse Sprague, Senior Social Worker at JFF’s Badger/Magnolia site said the greatest challenge JFF faces is responding to the ever-increasing problem of homelessness in Dane County. “What drives us here is homelessness. Teachers run into this issue frequently. 80% of what I do has to do with that. Two people here (at Badger/Magnolia site) do nothing but deal with issues arising from it. A parent will tell a teacher, “I lost my job,” and the teacher passes that on to the school social worker who brings the case to us. We easily respond to 50 situations a month. It’s getting worse by leaps and bounds —more people are coming to Dane County and there’s just not enough work for them. They often can’t live with relatives, so they turn to JFF. Overall, I think we’ve been very successful. They keep turning to us. We find apartments, work with landlords, and try to find money. We have a school here that’s almost entirely made up of homeless kids. Parents are staying at the Salvation Army, so kids will start at one school and then are transitioned to another school once we find their parents permanent housing. There’s a kid right now sleeping in a car tonight. Teachers are very aware of the kids’ living situation. They see what a kid is wearing, that he’s always hungry. The numbers have just grown immensely. One family achieves a modicum of success and relatives come up to join them but the jobs aren’t there to support them.Our relationship with our district is very good, and the administration has been a big supporter of our collaborative approach. Every month, school social workers meet with their JFF office; we discuss what’s going on in the neighborhood. Without us, the school social workers would not be able to get the help they need. We’ve helped a lot of families together.”

For more information about other JFF services, please contact either Ron Chance, Community Programs Manager, Dane County Department of Human Services, at 608-242-6325 or Bob Lee, Community Programs Manager, Dane County Department of Human Services, at 608-242-6474.

Two additional schools (Wright and West) have joined the Professional Development School Partnership beginning this fall. Heather Lott will serve as the PDS coordinator for West and Ann Niedermeier is the PDS coordinator for Wright. Both schools have recently received grants to fund school reform initiatives and the PDS is one component of the overall school reforms.

Wright middle school received a 3-year Comprehensive School Reform grant at the end of the 02-03 school year. The school has identified four goals for their reform: student achievement, staff capacity building, student capacity building, and family and community involvement. West high school received a Small Learning Communities grant from the U.S. Department of Education. West will be restructuring its 2,000 students into four smaller learning communities in order to improve academic performance for all students and increase opportunities for engagement and relationships. West hopes to retain the benefits of a comprehensive high school for more mature upperclassmen while providing the structure, support and accountability of a smaller school for younger students.

PDS activities in West and Wright this spring will include an in-school seminar for UW-Madison student teachers and staff study groups. In addition to the secondary education student teachers from UW-Madison that have been placed at the two schools, secondary education practicum students have also been placed at both schools. Ken Zeichner will serve as the UW faculty liaison to Wright and West for the rest of this academic year.

Links
This newsletter is for and about the Madison Professional Development School Partnership. It documents new and continuing developments of this program but does not cover the full range of the program or the experiences of individuals. Your comments, suggestions, and article submissions for this publication would be appreciated.

Send your feedback and/or submissions to: gsterncon@aol.com

or mail to:
Ken Zeichner
574B Teacher Education Building,
225 N. Mills St.
Madison, WI 53706-1795