[there are] four “neighborhoods” — each with in-school community centers that have student-run councils, a budget, and foster study groups, intramural sports teams. Here, over the course of a year, smaller numbers of students gather and get to know and support each other.

Barb Smith (right) shares insights with students during the PDS seminar.

I'm at James Madison Memorial High School to do a story on the PDS seminar held here, but Barbara Smith, the PDS Coordinator for Memorial, has other plans. She starts with a tour – a reminder of the overwhelming size of the modern urban high school, where labyrinthine hallways make one feel trapped in an Escher print. It takes me back to my own high school days, when the word “lost” had many meanings, when I felt small and anonymous.

This exact feeling, among others, prompted Memorial High School to change its very nature. Smith points out the four “neighborhoods” — each with in-school community centers that have student-run councils, a budget, and foster study groups, intramural sports teams. Here, over the course of a year, smaller numbers of students gather and get to know and support each other. Floors are painted with bright colors unique to each neighborhood, visual breadcrumbs to lead students to their homes. Each neighborhood room is vividly decorated, well-stocked with computers, and packed with colorful chairs. This is not the high school that I remember.

The changes at Memorial were prompted by several factors. The
horrifying events at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999 focused attention on the dangerous levels of alienation that many students experienced in high school. Memorial’s assessment of its own student population showed that the school, although known for its academic achievement, still had startling achievement gaps. The staff noted that only 46 percent of the Hispanic/Latino students and 55 percent of the African-American students graduated. Principal Pam Nash and the Memorial staff saw a pressing need to bridge the multiple gaps among students, and to start building connections that would increase academic achievement and reduce the alienation that has defined the high school experiences of too many students.

In the summer of 2000, Nash and her team began writing a grant proposal aimed at changing all of that. As they reviewed ten years of research on high school restructuring, they considered not only Memorial’s size, but took into account other challenges, such as how the school day was structured. The research showed that smaller learning environments reduced the gap between lower- and higher-achieving students, even when factoring in socioeconomic status. Smaller learning communities also increased attendance, and enhanced extra-curricular participation by low-income students and students of color.

Armed with this information, the team created a model, the Neighborhood Network Community Center, in which students were assigned at random to one of 100 Backyard Groups. Comprised of approximately 20 multi-grade-level students and one teacher, each of these groups meets weekly to plan social activities or discuss relevant issues, such as harassment. Students stay with their Backyard Group throughout high school. The 20 Block Groups, each formed by five Backyard Groups, take on larger social activities and governance issues. Each of the four Neighborhoods consists of five Block Groups.

Nash turned to UW-Madison for technical support, provided by
professors B. Bradford Brown, Mary Louise Gomez, Kent Peterson, Allen Phelps, and Ken Zeichner. Zeichner helped to incorporate the PDS program into Memorial’s new initiative. Professional development became a key aspect of changing school’s learning environment, extending from the current teachers to the student teachers and practicum students.

According to Smith, this has changed Memorial’s culture. Smith, a long-time Memorial math teacher, had retired and then came back to serve as PDS Coordinator and to help manage the initiative. She says she’s been able to recruit outstanding cooperating teachers, noting, “This year is an example — I’ve recruited amazing, veteran teachers, including some department heads. Some of them would never have expected to be cooperating teachers.”

To further improve relationships between cooperating and student
teachers, Smith and Peter Hewson, a UW professor who has taken a lead role in the PDS program at Memorial, organized a seminar at Famous Footwear’s corporate offices in early April 2004. The summit came at a critical time; Memorial has 20 student teachers, the most in its history. Of those, 12 participated in this first-of-its kind meeting, along with 12 cooperating teachers.

Over the course of the day, the groups met separately and together. Hewson encouraged the cooperating teachers to think about their role, and where they’d like their student teachers to be at the end of the semester. Smith focused on the student teachers, asking them about what they expected from their cooperating teachers. When the groups were combined, Hewson was impressed by the strength of the student teachers’ voices. Both groups gave the seminar high marks.

When I finally attend the PDS seminar, the context is much different than expected. During today’s class, Smith focuses on gender equity, challenging student teachers to reflect on how gender might affect their classroom practice. For Smith, this issue is personal. Her students gasp when she tells them that her professor in a UW-Madison math class – a class of 130 in which she was one of just five female students – told her that women
didn’t belong there.

Even though gender discrimination isn’t as blatant today, Smith points out that we still need to interrogate our own biases and practices. She says,
“To become a reflective teacher, you have to have the opportunity to reflect with colleagues. That can’t occur unless there’s community, where it’s safe to reflect on your own practice.”

Holly Cremer Berkenstadt’s recent donation to the PDS program is
having an enormous impact on literacy in Madison’s public schools. Her financial support has helped make possible two of the programs covered in this semester’s issue of the newsletter, including Midvale’s “Math Night” and Cherokee’s Bilingual Literacy Nights, and supports the efforts of the Madison Area Literacy Council and Midvale/Lincoln Schools, also profiled in this issue. Her gift will be used to strengthen the relationships between PDS schools and their communities.

Berkenstadt has donated more than funding to worthy causes. She has served on the UW-Madison School of Education’s Board of Visitors and many non-profit boards, including the boards of the Madison Area Technical College Foundation, Salvation Army of Dane County, Madison Community Foundation, United Way of Dane County, and A Fund for Women. She also has served as chair of the W-2 Steering Committee for Dane County. A Madison resident, Berkenstadt serves as the CEO of The Wisconsin Cheeseman, Inc., a manufacturer of specialty cheeses and chocolate candies, as well as a direct marketer/wholesaler of these items and gourmet food gift packages. A graduate of Northwestern University, she and her husband, Jim, have two children, Becca and Brad.

Funding from Holly Cremer Berkenstadt will help provide a stipend for each of the 11 tutors, and be used to purchase tutoring materials, such as dictionaries, bilingual texts, and study/office supplies.

Holly Cremer Berkenstadt helped the children at Cherokee Heights Middle School read this spring in some pretty creative ways. Her donation this April helped fund the continuation of Bilingual Family Literacy Nights, a program that began at Cherokee last fall. The funds, along with those provided by the Evjue Foundation, supplied books for students, materials for the Cherokee school library, and guest speakers for the family literacy nights. In addition, these grants and contributions will sustain family-oriented programming during the 2004-2005 school year.

Thanks to the diligence of Laura Holt, Cherokee’s librarian, Sara Huse, a 6th grade bilingual educator, and Lucerne Rice, the school’s guidance counselor, the first year of the Bilingual Literacy Nights was a success. An average of 15-20 families attended each of the four programs.

Each program had a unique focus:
• October’s program focused on reading strategies parents can use with their children at home, based on the “Traits of a Reader” model. The approach, developed by the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory (NWREL), identifies six traits of an effective reader: decoding conventions, establishing
comprehension, realizing context, developing interpretations, integrating for synthesis, and critiquing for evaluation.

• At the December program, storyteller Graciela Laguna
entertained students, parents and teachers with her stories.

• The March program was designed as a birthday party for Dr. Seuss, to celebrate the centennial of the beloved author’s birth.

• At the final program, students presented a poetry slam of their favorite poems.

Students and staff are excited that these experiences will continue next year, thanks to donors like Berkenstadt.

reported by Sara Huse and Gail Stern

SHAPE History
Professor Marianne Bloch, of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, believes in the power of partnership. Bloch coordinates SHAPE (Students Helping in the Advancement of Public Education), a tutoring project and service-learning program that provides trained, university tutors to most of the PDS elementary, middle, and high schools. The UW students learn to be better teachers, and the local students get the extra help they need to increase their academic success.

When SHAPE started in 1997, it served only Midvale and Lincoln Elementary Schools. It now serves eight schools, from elementary through high school. SHAPE’s early goals were derived in part from a 17-point plan presented by the Civil Rights Defense Coalition, a UW student organization, to the Chancellor’s Office. One of the recommendations was to send UW-Madison students into Madison schools to help improve the achievement of students of color, with the ultimate goal of enlarging and diversifying the pool of eligible students admitted to UW-Madison or comparable institutions.

In 1997, the first 23 SHAPE participants enrolled in the one-credit course, C&I 375 “Tutoring in the Schools.” Since then, the course has trained approximately 450 students as tutors. The tutoring seminar helps both with methodological issues relating to the technical aspects of tutoring and with issues related to race, cultural and language diversity, and power.

During the 2003-04 academic year, 64 students were involved in the SHAPE program, each spending two to six hours per week in Madison schools, making it the longest-running service-learning course in the School of Education. All 64 students are taking the C&I 375 course for credit, receiving training in the seminar, and being supervised in the schools where they are assigned. In spring 2004, for the first time, 22 of the 64 are participating in SHAPE through the School of Education’s Education Fellows program. Funding for SHAPE has come from the Kellner Family and the Department of Curriculum and Instruction.

Bloch says it’s important to choose the right teachers for the course. These doctoral and master’s students must be able to respond to many types of educational challenges. They are responsible for the weekly seminars, and supervise the tutors in the schools, providing ongoing training on math, literacy, and diversity skills. This year’s teaching assistants are Sabiha Bilgi, I-Fang Lee, Julianne Scheel, and Karin Wolf. Mike Gibson, profiled elsewhere in this issue, also provided support as a work-study student.

Bloch also works to develop strong partnerships with the schools that include principals, learning coordinators, VISTA volunteers, and teachers. She believes that these relationships have enabled SHAPE to flourish.

The overall goal of the SHAPE Tutoring program is to create long-term relationships between UW-Madison and students of color in Madison’s public schools, and assist these students in developing and sustaining the high levels of academic achievement, which ultimately will allow them to succeed at the university.

Bloch takes pride in the impact of SHAPE in the Madison community, and enjoys the feedback from Madison-area teachers. “Teachers can count on them (tutors),” she says, “which is why schools have continued to want SHAPE tutors as part of their program. They grow to know the schools; some tutors have been tutoring at Midvale-Lincoln, Cherokee and J.C. Wright Middle Schools, and West High Schools for more than three semesters. Not only does that provide a continuity of experience for the students they tutor, but provides the tutors themselves with considerable mentoring opportunities. It makes many of them want to have their student teaching experiences at PDS schools.”

Current SHAPE sites include:
Franklin Elementary
Lincoln Elementary
Midvale Elementary
Cherokee Middle School
Wright Middle School
Memorial High School (Spring, 2004)
East High School
West High School

reported by Gail Stern

Mike Gibson epitomizes the goals of the SHAPE program. Originally from South Minneapolis, he learned about SHAPE from his advisor before he started classes at UW-Madison. During a meeting to choose classes for his freshman year, he mentioned that he’d coached T-ball, floor hockey and baseball since age 15 through the YWCA. In response, his advisor asked: Would you like to go to elementary schools and tutor kids? To Mike, who was leaning towards education as a major, this sounded like a great way to get experience, so he signed up.

The SHAPE seminar wasn’t exactly what he’d expected. “I thought we’d immediately start tutoring. But first we analyzed our own school experience, everything from coaching, tutoring, to traditional classroom environments. Then we analyzed the demographics of our previous schools, and began questioning what makes a good or bad teacher. It was interesting, because I don’t think most people think about that. I think when most freshmen get here they’re still students, just going through the system; they’re not thinking about their past educational experiences.”

“My perception was that I, like other students, wanted to reproduce what our favorite teachers did, without analyzing how they did it, or how the bad ones didn’t. When we started tutoring, we saw the other side of the school system. We had never seen the kids who were failing, the kids who were struggling in the system. We’d all had it pretty easy – good schools, we’d gotten into a good university.”

“It took a year for me to understand it. We began talking about the
concept of ‘white privilege’ in the seminar. It actually gave us a language to talk about what we were seeing in the schools. That’s one of the goals of the SHAPE program. You take these white, privileged kids and partner them with mostly non-white kids with great potential who are facing real challenges in the school system. You’re always going to confront the issue of privilege.”

Most SHAPE tutors tutor elementary school children. Mike was among the first to tutor in a middle school. “ I wanted to catch some of the kids from the elementary schools that had been tutored through SHAPE. Then another student and I wanted to go to the high school, to follow our middle school kids.”

Bloch endorsed the idea, and SHAPE expanded its reach to West High School and then East. Mike followed his student from Cherokee to East High, and then continued tutoring her when she transferred to Memorial.

Mike has been moved by his SHAPE experience. “I really understand the perspective of students who are failing. I think twice before I dismiss them, before I say there’s nothing we can do for them. I know they’re struggling and trying to succeed, even if I don’t see an immediate product.”

“I’m still trying to define what makes a good teacher. Some of my fellow student teachers are struggling to take the concepts they learned in their coursework and apply them to the real-life experiences of being a teacher, to get concrete results in real-life situations. I think that’s the emphasis of SHAPE. We’d go out and tutor for a few days, and come back and learn a different concept. It’s been ingrained in me that I have to try a new
concept, to continue to negotiate those concepts and the concrete
realities of teaching.”

“It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done. I think it’s very easy, especially as a new teacher, to lose that faith, to become demoralized, to revert to what is ‘tested and proven’ for some kids. And I think that’s dangerous, because if you do that, you fail to address the issues of those students the system has failed. So I have to keep looking for new ways. SHAPE helped me, not only enabling me to search for new answers, but giving me a reason to — I know these kids, and I care about them.”

Mike Gibson is currently student teaching at Memorial, and will spend his second and final student-teaching experience in a bilingual class at Sennett Middle School, beginning this fall.

reported by Gail Stern

Editor’s Note: For the first time, the Education Fellows program became involved this semester in the SHAPE Tutoring Program. While most students have participated in SHAPE because of their interest in becoming teachers, a significant number of tutors have come from other majors on campus since the program’s inception seven years ago.

On the first beautiful afternoon of the spring semester, the students in the SHAPE seminar are tightly coiled springs. One of teaching assistants, Karin Wolf, instinctively thwarts a potential insurrection by giving the class the option of meeting in small groups outside before the formal discussion begins. After voting in the affirmative, the students bound outdoors into the sunshine.

It’s a fitting expression of Wolf’s teaching philosophy as it relates to SHAPE – balancing students’ educational and experiential needs. “Each group is different,” she says. “This group doesn’t need a lot. They’re very self-directed.”

They’re also young. All of the 22 students in this Education Fellows program are freshmen and, by their own admissions in class, have lived relatively sheltered lives. Today’s assignment helps Wolf’s students critically address this, by having them write and share “cultural autobiographies,” two-four page descriptions of their cultural background compared with the cultural backgrounds of the students whom they tutor.

Today, students in their small-group discussions are responding to specific questions, including, “What events or experiences do you identify that have helped shape your cultural identity? How are you different from your tutees in your outlooks, beliefs, values, norms, and communication style? How does your cultural identity affect your communication with your tutee/s?” They then must summarize the insights of the group’s members and present them to the class, incorporating what they’ve learned from course readings and guest speakers.

Wolf has been part of the SHAPE program for four semesters, and believes one of its strengths is a focus on enabling students to think critically about issues of power and privilege. The St. Louis native noted that her parents, both of German heritage, made this last issue a large part of her upbringing. Her mother emigrated to the United States in 1950s from Austria, where she and her family had been living in a refugee camp. Wolf recalls that her mother, a high school German teacher, always taught her students about the Holocaust and took students to Dachau during class trips to Germany. Wolf remembers that criticizing “group think” and other related issues of power were constant, guiding principles passed down by her parents and grandmother, making many of her discussions with her SHAPE students anything but academic.

Wolf calls attention to the large pieces of butcher block paper tacked to the classroom walls. Each sheet of paper shows a graphic depiction of last week’s class discussion about diversity, which included a debriefing of a recent performance by MultiCo, a theatrical troupe comprised of West High School students. MultiCo, which typically performs for elementary and middle school students, came to a SHAPE seminar in order to put diversity-related issues in a different light. Cast members use a great sense of humor to enhance their approach to some serious issues, including sexism, racism, and homophobia. Their energized performance sparked great dialogue two weeks later about the positive ways in which the tutors could address issues of race and culture with their current learners and future students.

After the students return, energized by the fresh air and the conversation, each group shares stories in front of the larger class, and themes emerge. Diversity is new to most of the students, who have attended high schools with largely homogeneous populations. In a couple of instances, a student reveals that he or she was the sole representative of a religious or ethnic group.

Some group members questioned whether they really had a culture, and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what a “typical” culture was. Was it suburban? Was it about freedom and resources? Was it about leisure time, or money, or family? Was it about having the freedom of religion, or to know emphatically that you could speak out against your government and not be condemned? While they hadn’t experienced diversity during their own school years, they agreed that their tutees were teaching them about it every day.

Liz Conn, who tutors six hours a week, said, “The SHAPE experience gives you the skills. There is a lot of value in breaking it down.” She added, “I speak three languages, but I learned English first, so it was easier. But it makes me understand just how hard it can be for my tutees who have to keep switching back and forth without that support at home.”

Matthew Braun said, “I enjoy the stimulating discussion. We get into some really good conversations, throwing out suggestions, ideas. We get into arguments sometimes, over personal points of view, over race, ethnicity, teaching style, or how to handle a specific situation. It’s not heated, but it is passionate.”

He enjoyed the SHAPE experience of going to class, tutoring the kids, and then “bringing it back to the class, laying it out on the table, picking apart what I did well and what I didn’t, learning from your own and others’
experiences, and having a skilled instructor show us what was positive about those experiences, and how to do better.”

reported by Gail Stern

On this late April evening, Midvale Elementary’s gym buzzes with activity. Parents have brought their children to “Math Night,” a convergence of skills and entertainment, as well as an event to bring students, teachers, and community together.

Midvale has hosted other math nights, but this evening’s event marked the first collaborative effort between Midvale, Lincoln and UW-Madison – the brainchild of Laura Grandau, Ph.D. candidate in curriculum and instruction and coordinator of the Math Methods class taught at Midvale. Grandau, who had taught math and science in Chicago for several years, said, “I was always involved with organizing and judging at science fairs, and thought that a math fair would be as much fun, if not more fun, than those. One of the first big math fairs I organized was actually run by my then-5th graders in 1999. They researched and created math booths and activities for the rest of the student body and their families.”

Midvale’s Math Night also has booths – designed by 15 of Grandau’s 22 Math Methods students as a means of integrating what they had learned into a hands-on activity to engage both children and their parents.

Concepts Come Alive
Grandau’s students chose core concepts in elementary mathematics and researched how they related to student thinking and conceptual development, common misconceptions, and teaching and assessment strategies. They then developed tasks that addressed what they learned, and used that to create engaging and informative activity booths for Math Night.

“Working with teachers and students at Midvale and Lincoln all semester, it seemed an exciting idea to offer our energies back to them in the form of this event,” Grandau said. “This event provided a place to share what we’ve been investigating as well as an opportunity to keep learning about mathematics; this time as it works in another space, with families.”

Her methods students took their assignment to heart, creating booths that covered a wide range of everyday elementary math concepts
including “Show Me the Money,” which simulated shopping in order to teach about building and decomposing numbers; “Measuring the Capitol,” which featured Madison’s Capitol Dome to explore linear measure and geometry; “Classify the Shapes,” which dealt with early geometry; and, “Learning About Equality,” which focused on relational thinking and the meaning of the equals sign.

Parental Approval
More than 120 parents and students visited the booths, and by their facial expressions, the time and care put into each activity paid off. Reetu Kumar brought her 5-year-old son Reetish to help enhance his math skills and to have fun. “He is very good at math,” she said, “and he can already count to a hundred, and can do addition and subtraction.” Reetish was busy testing his skills at the “Less, More and Equal” booth, which focused on comparing numbers and learning about equality.

Nine-year-old Emily likes doing math. Her father, Bob Stangel enjoys nurturing that interest: “You have to be involved if you’re going to take your kid’s education seriously.” Was Math Night what Emily expected? Her fathered laughed and replied, “No. She thought she was going to have to do homework. She really liked that she could play games.”

Lisa Tennant said that her 8-year-old daughter Maria “enjoys the problem-solving and the word problems.” She complimented the booths and the students who created them. “It says a lot about the level of challenge for the kids, to make it fun, to make it matter.

Camille Pissang brought her 5-year-old daughter, Kingsley Reine, to the fair because “it was her first year in the school system, and I wanted her exposed to new things. It’s wonderful that the school provides extra-curricular opportunities for her to learn.” Asked about her daughter’s math interests, Pissang said, “She’s very competitive. She’s already figuring out how to add.” Kingsley Reine added her own comments about the fair: “I liked the baseball and the dice, because they were fun, and I learned that four plus four is eight.”

Grandau welcomed the feedback, which validates her approach to
teaching. “I believe learning to teach mathematics must include teaching students and talking about one’s teaching,” she said. “This semester we worked with focus teachers and focus students at Midvale and Lincoln, teaching and later reflecting on what was observed and learned. Working with parents and family members at the math fair was a great culmination of this work!”

Partnering Up
To put Math Night together, Grandau and Lincoln math teacher Julie Melton worked long hours, planning the activities, recruiting volunteers, and creating a data center. Grandau’s students prepared take-home math games and Midvale Instructional Resource Teacher Mary Kay Johnson helped spread the word about the event. Lincoln teacher Becky Rosenberg also helped out, saying, “I’m here because I want to support this event. It’s important for us to see each other (Lincoln and Midvale) as a pair. I like seeing parents that I might not otherwise meet for a few more years. It builds community.”

Math’s Curse?
As the successful evening drew to a close, Grandau sorted through the evaluations. Next to her is a brightly decorated chair, covered with images of numbers and vivid illustrations and polished to a bright sheen. Large, bold letters across the chair’s back read “MATH’S CURSE.” Grandau explained that a friend made the chair, and she brought it to Math Night because she thought it would be a good place to sit while reading stories about math to students. Programs like Math Night will to lift math curses everywhere.

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