{"id":3611,"date":"2016-09-14T10:28:58","date_gmt":"2016-09-14T15:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/for-wisconsin\/?post_type=campus_story&p=3611"},"modified":"2016-09-14T12:03:04","modified_gmt":"2016-09-14T17:03:04","slug":"uw-eau-claire-increasing-k-12-student-literacy-is-goal-of-collaborative-program","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-eau-claire-increasing-k-12-student-literacy-is-goal-of-collaborative-program\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-Eau Claire: Increasing K-12 student literacy is goal of collaborative program"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Education<\/a>
Education professionals from the Augusta and Cornell school districts participate in a workshop led by UW-Eau Claire education studies faculty. The workshop is part of a three-year program supported by a UW System Improving Teacher Quality grant.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Two regional school districts will work to boost students\u2019 literacy skills, thanks to a recent event at UW-Eau Claire.<\/p>\n

The university recently hosted 100 teachers, principals, and other education professionals from the Augusta and Cornell school districts for a workshop led by education studies faculty members Janine Fisk and Deb Pattee, and music education faculty member Laura Dunbar.<\/p>\n

The workshop, however, was just the beginning of a three-year-long program, \u201cImproving Teacher Quality and Reading Achievement through Knowledge, Collaboration and Culturally Relevant Pedagogies,\u201d proposed by Fisk and Pattee, and developed in collaboration with professionals in the Cornell and Augusta districts.<\/p>\n

This ambitious and comprehensive teacher development program was made possible by a UW System Improving Teacher Quality grant secured by Fisk, Pattee and Dunbar. The grant awards about $125,000 per year for three years.<\/p>\n

In addition to the annual summer workshops, the grant will cover the program\u2019s biannual two-day seminars, one each fall and spring, as well as stipends for each teacher to hire a substitute for one day during the academic year. This will give the teachers time to learn from each other through collaboration and observation, something many educators don\u2019t often get the chance to do.<\/p>\n

The Augusta and Cornell school districts were chosen by the UW-Eau Claire faculty trio based on their high percentage of students in poverty and their geographical closeness to each other, making them the perfect districts to collaborate and tackle the intertwined issues of literacy and poverty.<\/p>\n

According to a report from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 63.8% of students in the Cornell School District were eligible for the state\u2019s free and reduced lunch program as of 2015. The same report showed the Augusta School District to have similarly high levels of eligibility for the program at 50.2%, putting both districts in the top quarter of schools statewide.<\/p>\n

DPI District Report Cards from the 2013-14 academic school year show Augusta and Cornell school districts to have scored similarly to the state average in student reading achievement, student reading growth and closing reading achievement gaps. But while standardized test scores can be helpful in tracking achievement and growth statewide, Pattee said education is fundamentally about students on an individual level.<\/p>\n

\u201c[What we taught at the workshop] enters into their practices, and it\u2019s all about student learning. I mean that is what it\u2019s about. Test scores? Yes, but it\u2019s about student learning. As long as we keep the students in mind. Who are our students? We emphasize that a lot. What you would do in one district might not work in another district,\u201d Pattee said, later adding, \u201cThey need to know who their students are before they can work on content.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carol Dweck, foundational researcher in the study of mindsets, says praising qualities like talent or intelligence can actually hinder students\u2019 self-esteem and accomplishments by allowing them to think they don\u2019t need to develop any further. Basically, if you tell a student they\u2019re smart, they will accept intelligence \u2014 not dedication nor perseverance \u2014 as their defining trait and will stop putting in any effort. This creates what Dweck calls a fixed mindset: one in which people believe their and others\u2019 abilities are static.<\/p>\n

In their workshops, Pattee, Fisk and Dunbar worked with the attending teachers to discourage the fixed mindset, instead introducing Dweck\u2019s growth mindset, wherein people believe their and others\u2019 inherent abilities are only starting points to be improved upon with effort and self-development. It seems simple enough, but Fisk said that when a teacher approaches their students with this frame of mind, students can only benefit.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt makes a huge difference,\u201d Fisk said. \u201cYou want to encourage your students so that they have a growth mindset, so they feel like they can grow and learn. We show that to our students by who we are and how we model it. So if we don\u2019t come into the classroom with that growth mindset, sometimes we put limitations on our students or make them feel like they can\u2019t learn or they\u2019re bad at reading or whatever, because we don\u2019t have that growth mindset to help encourage all students along the way.\u201d \u201cOr they put that negative fixed mindset on themselves,\u201d Pattee added, and Fisk continued, \u201cbecause they compare themselves to other students.\u201d<\/p>\n

Pattee, Fisk and Dunbar stress that while they\u2019ve initiated the project, their role with the participating educators is to be equal contributors in the learning process.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is our intent that we aren\u2019t there as the \u2018university folks,\u2019 the experts. We\u2019re not. In fact, they\u2019re the ones teaching out there every day. We\u2019re all in this together,\u201d Pattee said, later adding, \u201cWe really believe [the workshop] was so successful because it\u2019s a collaboration, not just the university coming in and doing whatever we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the UW-Eau Claire educators have a lot of planning to do for their program\u2019s next three years, last week\u2019s workshop provided an encouraging start.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was very invigorating, and I believe that teachers were energized,\u201d Pattee said, \u201cand that will no doubt affect their families and their communities.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two regional school districts will work to boost students\u2019 literacy skills, thanks to a recent event at UW-Eau Claire. The university recently hosted 100 teachers, principals, and other education professionals from the Augusta and Cornell school districts for a workshop led by education studies faculty members Janine Fisk and Deb Pattee, and music education faculty […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":3613,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","institution":[96],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-3611","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-eau-claire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/3611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3613"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=3611"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=3611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}