When the parents talked about their children, you could hear the love and pride.

For Wright Middle School principal Nancy Evans, the February meeting of Parents On a Mission (POM) was a dream come true: “Parents talking to one another across language and race … A white parent talking about organizing a Black History Month celebration, and then a black parent talking about planning for the Celebración Latina. When the parents talked about their children, you could hear the love and pride.”

This POM meeting, where Spanish-speaking parents had access to instantaneous translation, followed the inauguration of Comunidad Conexión, a project created by Wright’s PDS coordinator Ann Niedermeier as well as Rebecca Zambrano and Michelle Martinez, the migrant teacher and recruiter, respectively, for the district’s Migrant Education Program (MEP).

Supported by a grant from the PDS Holly Berkenstadt Fund, Comunidad Conexión brings together Spanish-speaking parents before each monthly POM meeting to help strengthen school-community ties and develop parents’ advocacy and leadership skills. Martinez explains that the grant enables families to participate more fully in their children’s education by providing childcare and transportation, as well as authentic Mexican food, for each meeting.

Martinez is delighted by the number of parents participating in Comunidad Conexión – 25 parents, representing 70 percent of Wright’s Spanish-speaking families, attended the first meeting. In the MEP newsletter, she reported, “We far surpassed our goal of reaching 5-10 families for the first meeting thanks to the tenacity and personal phone calls made by the Comunidad Conexión bilingual parent liaison, Silvia Gomez.”

In addition to recruiting parents, Gomez facilitated Comunidad Conexión meetings in Spanish. Meetings addressed such topics as the importance of parental involvement in school, using the MEP’s non-profit service directory, and local political activities to oppose current federal immigrant legislation. She also encouraged parents to participate in the monthly POM meetings, which resulted in eight parents attending the February POM meeting.

At the April meeting, 10 parents, Gomez, and Martinez began planning Wright’s May 18th Celebración Latina y Afro-Caribeña, to include a multicultural potluck, student performances, and live music. “We are encouraging the parents attending the Comunidad Conexión meetings to assume a leadership role for this important event,” says Martinez. They are doing so by contributing their favorite dishes and selecting a guest speaker from Madison’s Latino community.

Comunidad Conexión will continue through the 2006-07 school year.

Migrant Education Program Offers Additional Programs
The MEP also offers six-week evening computer classes at Wright. A bilingual resource specialist helps with instruction, and these courses are open to all Wright and migrant parents.

Additionally, the MEP provides childcare for Lincoln Elementary School’s “English in Schools,” a weekly English as a Second Language (ESL) course for parents, taught by the Madison Area Literacy Council. The school makes space available for the class, which has been offered for five semesters.   

This spring, a grant from the PDS Holly Berkenstadt Fund enabled the MEP to hire a third lead teacher to work with the children whose parents are enrolled in the class. Having three teachers, all college students, allows the MEP “to develop educational ESL activities for the children, help them with their homework, and forge meaningful relationships,” says Michelle Martinez.

Building Community-School Ties through Teacher Education: A Community Panel Comes to the Lincoln-Midvale PDS Seminar
“Your university experience as PDS students should include opportunities to develop better respect for, understandings of, and interactions with all cultures,” instructional resource teacher Julie Melton tells pre-service teachers in the Lincoln-Midvale PDS seminar. With this in mind, Melton and Mary Klehr, the students’ supervisor, organized a four-member community panel from Madison’s South Side on April 21at Lincoln:

• Stan Woodard, an African-American coordinator for Family Voices, a program seeking to empower South Side family members to participate in the community and improve their living conditions. 
• Yolanda Springfield-Woodard, an African-American attorney who advocates for parents and juveniles in the juvenile court system and has served on the Dane County Minority Affairs and Equal Opportunity Commissions.
• Yeng Her, a Hmong bilingual resource specialist at Franklin, Lincoln, and Randall Elementary Schools.
• Nydia Rojas, a Puerto Rican bilingual resource specialist at Lincoln and local poet.

Rojas opened the program by reading a poem (see an excerpt below). Panelists also described their personal histories. Her spoke of coming to the United States in 1981 after years of strife and violence in Laos. He recalled spending five years in the jungle after the Vietnam War, “fighting the communists to avoid capture, torture, and death.”

The speakers also discussed what they wanted university students to know about their communities. “Never forget,” urged Woodard, “no matter what homes you came from, who influenced you, or what opportunities you’ve had, African-American parents want the same thing that any parent wants in America. They want their kids to do well in school, become law-abiding citizens, and grow up to be successful, contributing members of society.” 

Springfield-Woodard added that teachers, like all people, must learn not to project their own experiences onto others: “When I ask people I don’t know to tell me what I like, based on my appearance, they usually get it wrong. For example, most people do not assume that I have a deep Irish ancestry.”

Rojas emphasized that the discomfort accompanying new cross-cultural experiences should not prevent teachers from seeking them out. She also stressed that many Spanish-speaking newcomers, or recent immigrants, feel disconnected from the school. Therefore, a little one-on-one time with their teachers often makes these students feel appreciated and gives teachers insight into problems that students may be facing at home.

Her added that teachers need to be aware of the additional responsibilities that some Hmong students face at home. In particular, Hmong parents frequently rely on older children to take care of younger siblings after school, limiting the time these students can spend on homework. “I am not advocating that teachers let these students off the hook,” said Her. “Teachers need to have high expectations for their students and hold them accountable. However, they also need to be aware of family expectations that differ from those of the school.”

During the question-and-answer period, one PDS student asked about Woodard’s statement, “You’ve got to turn on the switch so students want to learn.” Woodard explained that reaching all children may require more than traditional educational approaches: “Loving who you are as a person is the first step to developing a love of learning…Some kids, who lack an understanding of themselves, need encouragement to accept themselves if they are going to want to participate in the classroom. Once a student’s light is on, for the most part it starts to grow.”

The program concluded with remarks from Kenneth Zeichner, associate dean of the UW-Madison School of Education and the PDS program coordinator.

Zeichner emphasized that PDS students are sent into the community primarily to position themselves as learners who inquire into the community’s sources of knowledge, social networks, and ways of interacting with and seeing the world. “Ideally, teachers learn how to translate this community knowledge into their classrooms as culturally responsive teaching practices that build on the resources students bring to school,” he said.

The panel seminar struck an optimistic note on strengthening community-school ties, while highlighting areas where schools and educators need to do more work. Woodard summarized this sentiment in his description of the teaching profession: “One word—passion. If you don’t have it for this job, you need to check yourself. It is not just a job. You are not going to be paid enough or thanked enough. But you touch the minds of little people whose future rests upon folks like you. Therefore you have a lot of power that you can utilize. While underappreciated, your passion can keep you strong and focused. Hats off to those who choose this profession.”

Barb Smith, instructional resource teacher at Memorial High School, is retiring this spring after a 42-year career in education. In May, she received the Carroll and Robert Heideman Distinguished Secondary Education Award.

Smith came to Memorial in 1966 as a mathematics teacher. She retired in 2000 but returned in 2001 to help implement Memorial’s small learning community grant, which included the PDS initiative. Smith has played a central role in the PDS program, and, after she retires her current position this spring, will be greatly missed by those who have had the opportunity to work with her.

I met with Smith to discuss her experiences at Memorial as an educator and PDS coordinator. Here are some highlights from our conversation:

Connie North: What experiences have significantly influenced your career as an educator?

Barb Smith: When I began my career, it was very unusual to be a female mathematics teacher. This experience both showed me what it’s like to be in a minority and strengthened my commitment to helping girls and women be successful in mathematics.

Actually, looking back at my travels in that particular part of my work—equity—it has been very challenging, because my parents were prejudiced. I’ve really turned full circle in my perspective, as there was a lot of resistance from family members who didn’t have opportunities to build good relationships with people different from themselves. Over time, I’ve learned that equity issues sometimes have more to do with being tolerant of different ways of learning and acting than with racism or other forms of oppression. I don’t think I could be an effective educator of student teachers if I did not understand how their high school experiences differ from mine and those of Memorial students.

North: You mentioned that you facilitate your student teacher seminars differently than those at many other secondary schools. What is unique about your involvement in the teacher-education process?

Smith: Our objective is to make these students teachers come out of here having had some practice being reflective learners: to really have to think about their experience, who they are, and how these things relate to the kids that they teach in the classroom. Having the courage to self-evaluate, I think, is critical. So I try to push them to explore their classroom experiences, which requires that I organize the student-teacher seminars around their needs. I’ve found that engaging in this inquiry process is usually more rewarding for the students than receiving additional information. 

But when you start out the semester with these students, you have to build community first. And you can’t really begin talking about classroom management, for example, the first time they walk through the door. In other words, you have to establish trust for students to talk about tough issues they’re facing in the classroom.

North: How would you describe your role as a coordinator for the PDS program?

Smith: I am not involved in the formal assessment of student teachers, which, I think, is both positive and crucial. As a coordinator, I can be a facilitator for everybody in every part of the PDS partnership. I can be a listener to the cooperating teachers; a mediator between the cooperating teacher and the student teacher; and a liaison between the university and the entire school staff.

As a PDS coordinator, one of the first things I did was establish my credibility with the university community by becoming an active part of it. More specifically, I invited the UW faculty program directors of each core academic subject area to visit Memorial and asked them what they thought a professional development school should be.

North: What sort of advice would you give to future participants in the PDS program at Memorial and in general?

Smith: I would focus on forming cross-disciplinary, collaborative groups of teachers that talk about the same issues we’re addressing in student-teacher seminars. These are not topics that only beginning teachers should be discussing.

These conversations among regular classroom teachers could be very informal—getting together and sharing lunch once a week or every other week. Professional development doesn’t happen by going to a conference. It results from regular discussions within the confines of where you work every day, because every school has a unique culture.

One of the requirements for somebody in my position is to spend time getting to know all the people in the building. This takes time, but you have to talk to people and find out what it’s like on the street. You can’t sit in the office and read research and expect to be an effective coordinator.

The other thing I would like to see from UW is more university people crossing over the bridge to K-12 schools, like Peter Hewson has done at Memorial. Because the culture in high schools is rapidly changing, increased collaboration between the two sites would improve the university’s teacher education programs.

In addition to defining the hippest words, the sixth graders determined the words’ parts of speech and developed example sentences or notes on the words’ usage.

Bringing Lessons from Southeast Asia to Madison: Duy Nguyen
To the sounds of a hip version of “Good Morning to You,” kindergarteners in Duy Nguyen’s classroom at Madison’s Lapham Elementary School flock to the large rug at the room’s edge and sit. When specific instruments take the lead, Nguyen and his students pretend to play them with glee and gusto. The day is off and running.

Nguyen graduated from the PDS program in 2003 after student teaching at Midvale Elementary School. He began his teaching career in a first-grade classroom at Lapham and returned there in the fall 2005 after a year of teaching second grade at Thoreau Elementary School. He misses the ethnic and racial diversity of Thoreau’s student body, but his kindergarten class has several students of color, and he enjoys the challenges of teaching a new grade level.

Last summer, Nguyen traveled with 17 other educators and administrators to Southeast Asia on a Fulbright Fellowship. The group’s mission included learning about Hmong culture in preparation for the arrival of refugees to Wisconsin. While in Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, the educators toured various preK-16 educational settings. Nguyen, a Vietnamese-American whose family immigrated to the United States when he was five, calls this voyage life-changing. “I got to see firsthand all these issues about race and equity,” he says. “I learned that we have to know our own identities before we try to teach about someone else’s.”

Nguyen has made presentations about his journey to Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction staff and students at Edgerton High School. He thinks his largely white audiences benefit from “seeing someone different with a different perspective.”

In fact, these presentations tie in with his teaching philosophy more generally: “More than teaching for diversity, we need to acknowledge people of color. What tends to happen when we try to treat everyone the same—to become ‘color bind’—is that we store and strengthen our misconceptions and stereotypes and never get past our limited knowledge of each other. 

Ideally, we should see people as people, but have you spoken to a kindergartner lately? How harshly honest and curious they are! ‘Mr. Nguyen, why are you so short? Why is your skin different? Why does your name sound funny?’ These questions are teachable moments for me. I want to acknowledge my students’ cultures directly so that they may build a strong sense of identity. I am trying to teach them that being different is typical.”

Tackling Teaching in a Chicago Public School: Mel Swandby
“My second graders are cute, sweet, curious, rambunctious, and loving,” Melanie Swandby wrote to her former PDS supervisor, Mary Klehr, at the beginning of the 2005-06 school year. “I am still totally exhausted,” Swandby said, “but this year I feel that I am exhausted from doing everything I can to teach them instead of spinning randomly everyday and feeling guilty about not doing a good job.”

In her second year at Chase Elementary School in Chicago, Swandby is simultaneously grappling with and enjoying the challenges that come with teaching in an urban public school with far fewer resources than the Madison schools where she completed her teacher training. After finishing her student teaching in Tammy Boyd’s second-grade classroom at Midvale Elementary School in 2004, Swandby headed straight for Chicago. Last year, she taught fourth grade in a bilingual classroom. This year she is teaching in a “general” second-grade classroom.

Swandby has found success in her classroom by integrating drama into literacy activities. Students act out scenes from stories that Swandby reads aloud and then make connections between what characters are feeling and the emotions that they experience in their own daily lives. Such activities, she says, help to build community in the classroom.

While Swandby remains committed to her students and teaching in public schools, she struggles with the disconnect between the walk and talk of professional development at Chase: “The reality is that you are alone. I have a 20-minute lunch period at a different time from my colleagues, and my ‘preps’ are 40 minutes, four times a week. There is little time for staff collaboration.” She also wrestles to meet the needs of each child, with little support, in terms of special education, ESL, Reading Recovery, or teaching assistants, available.

Professional Development Workshop to Be Offered in Fall 2006
The Workshop in Professional Development course at Wright Middle School “moved beyond the historical district model of professional development and helped me clarify what I know and don’t know about the influences of race and culture on my practice and the students I teach,” said instructional resource teacher Julie Melton. Language arts teacher Jon Hawkins, who studied how working in a PDS influenced his teaching, valued the challenging questions asked by the instructors, Hardin Coleman – professor of counseling psychology and associate dean of the School of Education, and PDS university faculty coordinator – and former PDS university supervisor Hilary Conklin.

This one- to three-credit course, which met monthly, promoted self-reflective practice, a critical examination of public education, and the exploration of topics relevant to participants’ work. Participating teachers wrote professional development plans, in which they identified areas for improvement in their practice and charted specific actions to meet their goals. Coleman will lead the monthly workshop again at Wright this fall, on the first Wednesday, 4:30-6:30 p.m. The course, open to all PDS staff and/or teachers working on professional development plans, is listed in the UW-Madison timetable as “Counseling Psychology 620” and “Curriculum and Instruction 675.”

Dr. Alfredo Artiles Comes to Wright Middle School
Professor Alfredo Artiles of Arizona State University, an expert in multicultural special education, spoke on April 27 at Wright Middle School to more than 40 teachers, administrators, university students, community members, and professors about using culturally responsive practices to reduce the disproportionate representation of ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse students in special education.

Artiles, whose visit was arranged by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, described his participation in a National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCRESt) project that seeks to transform how state education agencies address the achievement gap and special education referrals and placements. NCCRESt offers technical assistance and professional development to these agencies. Many of its resources are available online at: www.nccrest.org.

Spanish for School Employees Courses Offered for Memorial and West Staff
Back by popular demand, these intensive programs in Spanish are open to all staff at Memorial and West High Schools.

At Memorial, the course will be offered June 19-29 (8 sessions), 12:30-4:15 p.m., in the school’s Rock Neighborhood Center. ESL teachers and Spanish-speaking high school students will draw on Latin American cultures to help staff improve their basic oral communication skills.

The West course will be offered July 24-28, 9 a.m.-3 p.m., in the Teacher Education Building, 225 N. Mills St., on the UW-Madison campus, led by Spanish teacher Denise Hanson and Spanish-speaking high school students. The course will include formal instruction in the morning and conversational practice with the high school students in the afternoon.

The course is free, and participants will receive 3 PACs upon completing the program. Please contact Barb Smith (basmith@madison.k12.wi.us, 575-0704) at Memorial or Heather Lott (hlott@madison.k12.wi.us, 204-4100) at West to register.

Improving Discussions Seminar Offered Summer 2006
Diana Hess, associate professor of curriculum and instruction, will teach a three-credit course to help middle and high school in- and pre-service teachers, graduate students, and other educators improve the quality of discussions in their classrooms. Participants will learn about topic selection, various discussion models, recent research on student learning, and practical strategies for enhancing the effectiveness of discussions. The course will be held July 17-August 1 (8 sessions), 1-5 p.m., in the Teacher Education Building, 225 N. Mills St., on the UW-Madison campus.

Cherokee-Thoreau PDS Seminar Goes to Chicago
“A life with children forces you to be smarter than you are and asks you to be better than you are,” renowned educator Bill Ayers told students in Cherokee Middle and Thoreau Elementary Schools’ PDS seminar during their visit to the University of Illinois-Chicago in late February. Ayers talked with the students for nearly two hours about the challenges and joys of teaching diverse students in urban settings. “The students loved him, because he listened to them closely and took them seriously,” said university supervisor Ryan Flessner.

The PDS Partnership proudly acknowledges the accomplishments of this semester’s student teachers, as well as the mentoring and leadership of their cooperating teachers, instructional resource teachers, and teaching assistants. Here is a roster of this semester’s student teachers, grade level/subject area, and (in parentheses) their cooperating teachers:

Lincoln/Midvale Elementary Schools (Mary Klehr, supervisor):

• Shana McNamara, 5th grade, Lincoln (Adrienne Pressman).
• Erin Moore, 3rd grade, Lincoln (Kim O’Donahue).
• Laura Traastad, 2nd grade, Midvale (Tammy Boyd).
• Megan White, 3rd grade, Lincoln (Staci Aparicio).

Thoreau Elementary Schools (Nancy Booth, supervisor):

• Kasie Knadle, 5th grade (Greg Vallee).

Cherokee Middle School (Ryan Flessner, supervisor):

• Kelly Murray, 6th grade (Debbie Stamler).

Wright Middle School (Ann Niedermeier, PDS coordinator):

• Danielle Tadyshak, 6th grade language arts (Jon Hawkins).

Memorial High School (Barbara Smith, PDS coordinator):

• Christine Carlson, art (Teresa Parris-ford).
• April Sopkin, art (Joseph Frontier).
• Danika Woods, art (Geoffrey Herman).
• Caitlin Sullivan, French (Linda Christen).
• Derek Etheridge, mathematics (Victor Levine).
• Tracy Stephani, mathematics (Signe Carney).
• Wiley Utterback, mathematics (Kevin Hodgson) and science (Gordon Perkins).
• Sarah Redding, music (Paul Ulrich).
• Kristen Kalymon, school psychologist training (Kathryn Bush).
• Nicole Olsen, science (Nancy Piraino).
• Stephanie Waite, science (Claudia Johnson).
• Dan Gutknect, social studies (Kendra Parks).
• Katherine Porter, social studies (Michael Lovenberg).
• Jasmin Altmann, Spanish (Becky Hay De Garcia).
• Lynn Hunley, Spanish (Katherine Nickols).

Jefferson Middle School (Cindy LaPoint and Barbara Smith, PDS coordinators):

• CeCe Bakken, 8th-grade social studies (Marcia Ouchakof).
• Kristen Lindroth, 8th-grade language arts (Molly Tormey).
• Liz Rasmussen, 7th-grade mathematics (Kristina Whiting).

West High School (Heather Lott, PDS coordinator):

• David Kriebel, art (Philip Lyons).
• Brooke Safranek, art (Barbara Drew).
• Jessica Stein, art (Robert Wochinski).
• Jennifer Ebert, behavioral and emotional disorder program (Paul Burnham).
• Elsie Saucedo, behavioral and emotional disorder program (Robin Perry).
• Elizabeth Farrow, English (Steve Olson)
• Benjamin Paulson, science (John Rademacher).
• Kevin Reitman, science (Donald Vincent).
• Bradley Eder, social studies (Daniel Dreckschmidt).
• Rachel Ring, special education (Fred Swanson).

Students fulfilling practicum requirements:

• Lincoln/Midvale: 11 students in early-middle childhood science/social studies, mathematics/art, and literacy.
• Cherokee/Thoreau: 14 students in science/social studies, mathematics, and literacy.
• Jefferson: 3 students in social studies and a cross-categorical placement.
• Memorial  High School: 5 students in English, family and consumer education, mathematics, and social studies.

The Madison Professional Development School Partnership, formed in 1997-1998, is a joint effort in teacher education involving the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), Madison Teachers’ Incorporated (MTI), and the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Participation in this program is available to selected UW-Madison elementary and secondary education majors.

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