Faculty and staff from across UW–Madison’s School of Education are routinely quoted or make their voices heard in newspapers, magazines, and online news media outlets. Similarly, these experts are often interviewed and showcased on a range of local, national, and international radio and television news reports. Over the past year, there have been more than 100 School of Education-related media mentions. For the latest examples, visit: https://news.education.wisc.edu/in-the-media
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School’s new ‘Teacher Pledge’ program garners substantial media coverage
Media outlets around the Madison area, across the state of Wisconsin, and even in different parts of the country have reported on the UW–Madison School of Education’s bold new Teacher Pledge program.
The Teacher Pledge is part the School of Education’s Impact 2030 initiative, announced on Aug. 18. The program “pledges” to provide financial support — including up to in-state tuition, fees, and testing certification costs — for students enrolled in one of the School’s teacher education programs.
In return, after graduating the students “pledge” to teach for three or four years at a pre-kindergarten through 12th grade school in Wisconsin. Students who go on to teach in a high-need district or in a high-need subject area will fulfill their obligation in three years, while all others will do so in four.
The Teacher Pledge program is supported entirely via $18 million in donor funds. Over the next five years, the Teacher Pledge is expected to support more than 1,500 students in the School’s teacher education programs.
Following is a list of the media outlets that have reported on the Teacher Pledge program:
- The Capital Times: New UW program aims to diversify, attract teachers in Wisconsin schools
- Wisconsin State Journal: UW–Madison unveils loan forgiveness program to keep teachers in Wisconsin
- The State Journal story was shared with a chain of newspapers that includes papers in Baraboo, Beaver Dam, Columbus, Juneau, Portage, Racine, Reedsburg, Sauk Prairie, and Wisconsin Dells
- Channel 3000/WISC-TV/Ch. 3 video report: UW Madison School of Education launches multimillion dollar program to address teacher shortage
- Channel 3000/WISC-TV/Ch. 3: Niel Heinen’s editorial — A Pledge to Promote Teaching
- WSAW (Wausau)/Ch. 7 video report: UW–Madison unveils $18M forgivable loan program for education students
- NBC-15 report: UW–Madison invests in future educators with new Teacher Pledge program
- KAKE-TV (Wichita, Kansas): UW–Madison unveils loan forgiveness program to keep teachers in Wisconsin
- WisBusiness: UW–Madison School of Education unveils bold new program to invest in Wisconsin’s future teachers
- KESQ-TV (St. Joseph, Missouri): UW–Madison unveils loan forgiveness program to keep teachers in Wisconsin
- Fox 47 TV: UW–Madison School of Education launches program to address teacher shortages
- WORT-FM, Dean Diana Hess appears on the “8 O’Clock Buzz” with host Brian Standing: ‘Teacher Pledge’ aims to keep teachers in Wisconsin
- UMOJA magazine: UW–Madison School of Education unveils bold new program to invest in Wisconsin’s future teachers
Barry receives prestigious Reuben Award as cartoonist of the year
UW–Madison’s Lynda Barry is the recipient of the Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, which is chosen by a secret ballot of the members of the National Cartoonists Society.
This recognition is considered by many to be the cartooning profession’s highest honor.
The award was presented to Barry online on Sept. 12, at the finale of NCSFEST 2020, the virtual cartooning festival hosted by the National Cartoonists Society and the NCS Foundation. As she accepted the award, Barry said, “One of the things that’s so beautiful about comics is that whatever may be missing from your world, you might be able to find it in comics.”
Barry is an associate professor of interdisciplinary creativity and holds the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in the School of Education’s Art Department. In September 2019, she received a prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, which is often referred to as a “genius grant.” She is perhaps most widely known for her weekly comic strip that appeared in alternative newspapers, “Ernie Pook’s Comeek,” and her graphic novels such as “The Good Times Are Killing Me” and “The Greatest of Marlys.”
Learn more about Barry’s work and the Reuben Award in an article on the National Cartoonists Society website, here.
And make sure and check out her virtual acceptance speech here.
Wright speaks with NY Times about how school can help children cope with disaster
The New York Times utilized the expertise of UW–Madison’s Travis Wright for an article looking at how schools can help children cope with the aftermath of devastating wildfires and other disasters.
Wright is an associate professor with the School of Education’s Department of Counseling Psychology and is a nationally recognized expert on resilience and emotionally responsive teaching, especially for children developing in the midst of adversity.
Wright explained to the newspaper that schools can step in and provide support when parents are traumatized, and that familiar adults at school can help provide a “buffering effect” against trauma.
“Being able to stay connected to their teachers and each other in the midst of this crisis will actually be really positive for them,” Wright said of students in the Phoenix-Talent School District in Oregon, where an estimated 40 percent of students lost their homes in a wildfire recently, including 80 percent of students at one elementary school.
Wright explained that the structure of school can help children “make sense of a world that feels random and frightening.” He noted that for a young child, a wildfire “seems like it comes out of nowhere.”
A wildfire not only disrupts their sense of cause and effect, he said, but interferes with their ability to comprehend other patterns in everyday life, from relationships to math. He said that instructors can help young children find a sense of control by gently enforcing routines and rules.
“That not only helps them get back on track with their learning, but it also helps them feel safer and more regulated,” he said.
Learn more by reading the full article at nytimes.com, here.
Ladson-Billings, McKinney de Royston discuss with WORT how Black Lives Matter is changing education
Two professors from UW–Madison’s School of Education discussed how the Black Lives Matter movement is reshaping education with WORT-FM’s “A Public Affair” program.
The segment was titled, “How Black Lives Matter is Changing Education.”
Gloria Ladson-Billings, a professor emerita, and Maxine McKinney de Royston, an assistant professor with the Department of Curriculum and Instruction, were interviewed for the program by host Ali Mudrow.
Over the course of the conversation, they took up a variety of topics, including: neoliberal austerity in education; the role of white parents and educators; discipline in schools; the problem with the so-called “achievement gap”; professional opportunities and barriers for Black educators; the carceral logic of schools and why removing school resource officers isn’t enough; and how to get adults to stop punishing, and start teaching. Black kids.
While both Ladson-Billings and McKinney de Royston recognized increased local activity and consciousness about racism in the Madison community, they expressed doubts that it will lead to structural change.
Ladson-Billings noted that social movements tend to operate as a “swinging back and forth.” She said now is an opportunity for us to change, but she is fearful “that we’ll do some superficial things — we’ll color in some faces, we’ll argue that we need more Black teachers,” but we won’t see any formal, structural changes. She expressed, “that’s just not how the system responds.”
McKinney de Royston said that there are more conversations happening about racism in our community, particularly among white people, “that couldn’t have happened a year ago.” But, she said, “we have a lot of white parents who engage in opportunity hoarding, who actively engage in accessing materials and blocking access of materials and opportunities for other kids and families.”
She asked white parents in Madison: “What are they willing to give up and what they are willing to do given their newfound consciousness … what are (they) now willing to do that they weren’t willing to do before?”
Hear the full conversation on WORT-FM’s website, here.
Welton talks to Education Week about building anti-racist schools
Education Week utilized the expertise of UW–Madison’s Anjalé Welton for an article about how to support school principals in building anti-racist schools.
Welton is a professor in the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis.
One problem, the article says, is that university-based preparation programs do not prioritize anti-racist school leadership in their curriculum. Whether those courses are even taught, according to Welton, is dependent on whether university faculty see them as worthy of including in the syllabus.
“What’s so frustrating is that racial-equity work is deemed as something that is ad hoc, something I tackle after I have all the other school-improvement-related needs,” Welton said, speaking of how some school leaders approach the job. “This should be the centerpiece of what you do. This should be what it is about. It should be the driver of what you do.”
Prep programs have a lot of work to do, continued Welton. “We need to be upfront about whiteness and white supremacy,” she said. “We need to help educators understand how they function and how whiteness and white supremacy are tethered to anti-Blackness and other ways in which we pathologize racially minoritized groups and communities.”
Welton warned that doing this work requires more than “just reading a few books.”
“It’s about everyone being committed and b(r)ought into doing the headwork, really doing the important reflective work about their own identity, their attitudes that they bring to the table,” said Welton. “But also not just doing that work but constantly reflecting on how systems, structures, norms continue to reproduce racism within schools — who are they serving, who are they not serving — and continuously doing that work and not letting it just be a single moment.”
Learn more about how to better support and prepare school leaders in building anti-racist schools by reading the full article on the Education Week website, here.
WISC-TV/Ch. 3 highlights ‘virtual PE’ videos from UW–Madison’s Kuhrasch
With many schools remaining virtual this fall, there is a need for more physical education at home. Madison’s local CBS affiliate, WISC-TV/Ch. 3, highlighted one valuable resource for parents who are looking for ways to keep their children active, developed by UW–Madison’s Cindy Kuhrasch.
Kuhrasch is the head of the Physical Education Teacher Education program in the School of Education’s Department of Kinesiology.
Kuhrasch is posting videos on social media showing physical activities that are safe for kids, the article explains. Not only that, but the activities are designed to help children develop their social and emotional skills.
“We’re using movement as a means to educate,” Kuhrasch tells WISC. “We can use movement as a medium to teach a lot of really good things, including social and emotional skills which are very much needed right now.”
All of the activities are designed to to be easy to do at home, with one or maybe two people, and using little to no equipment. “Movement is easy with a little imagination,” said Kuhrasch.
Learn more about Kuhrasch’s work on the Channel3000.com website, You can also find her videos on Facebook and Twitter.
Rudolph speaks with The Atlantic about benefits of inquiry-driven science learning
The Atlantic utilized the expertise of UW–Madison’s John Rudolph for an article examining an innovative approach to K-12 science learning that started in a Michigan elementary school.
Rudolph is the department chair and a professor in the School of Education’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
The article — titled “Children Are Born Scientists. What If School Encouraged That?” — focuses on the work of Gary Koppelman, who designed an acclaimed science lab at Blissfield Elementary, a small rural school in southeast Michigan. A “hands-on, minds-on” teaching approach drives instruction in the lab — now used by over 1,200 students in Blissfield’s elementary, middle, and high schools — and students have daily opportunities to “engage with the natural world, ask questions, collect and analyze data, and work with their peers to come up with answers.”
Inquiry-driven science classrooms (such as the one at Blissfield) are rare in elementary grades, said Rudolph in the article. He explained that that most schools focus on factual content, for instance, memorizing the parts of the eye, and drawing diagrams and writing reports to supplement learning.
It’s less common, Rudolph said, for students to get the chance to engage in intellectual dialogue around questions such as “Why do humans have eyes?” or “How are the eyes of various animals different and why?”
Rudolph explained that the latter approach requires more “teacher training, funding, and complex assessments,” but he believes “the payoff is worth it.”
The article continues: “Not only do students learn critical thinking and communication skills, they also develop an intimate understanding of and appreciation for how scientists come up with evidence and develop conclusions, which Rudolph views as a largely neglected part of science education. A lack of such understanding, he thinks, contributes to scientific illiteracy — from skepticism about climate change to growing opposition to vaccination.”
In Blissfield, the article explains, the impact of Koppelman’s Environmental Life Lab has been huge. The district has consistently outperformed state averages on standardized science tests, and more of the district’s students are going on to major in STEM fields in college.
To learn more about the science lab at Blissfield Elementary and their hands-on approach to science learning, check out the full article on The Atlantic website, here.
Around the School …
• The Wisconsin State Journal utilized the expertise of UW–Madison’s Yorel Lashley for an article about supporting the social and emotional learning needs of students. “Now, in the time of COVID, social and emotional learning is even more important,” said Lashley, the director of arts in the School of Education’s office of Professional Learning and Community Engagement (PLACE). “Most people are suffering some sort of isolation. Everyone is going through it.” For more of Lashley’s insights, check out the full article on the Madison.com website, here.
• CNBC utilized the expertise of UW–Madison’s Madeline Hafner for a report examining how the coronavirus might worsen existing racial and economic inequalities in America’s school systems. Hefner is the executive director of the Minority Student Achievement Network, which is housed in the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research. Check out the full article on the CNBC website, here.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education utilized the expertise of UW–Madison’s Jerlando Jackson in an article examining the causes of the recent protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the shooting of a Black man, 29-year-old Jacob Blake, by a police officer on Aug. 23.
• Jackson is a Vilas Distinguished Professor and chair of the School of Education’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, as well as the director and chief research scientist at Wisconsin’s Equity and Inclusion Laboratory. He noted a 2013 study from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee found that Wisconsin incarcerated the most Black men in the United States, which in turn has the highest incarceration rate of any country. For more insights from Jackson and other experts on this critical issue, check out the full article on the Diverse Issues in Higher Education website, here.
• NPR’s “All Things Considered” sought out the expertise of UW–Madison’s Julie Mead for a report on how parents of special education students are advocating for their children who have lost access to essential programming and services due to schools going remote during the COVID-19 pandemic. Mead is the associate dean for education at the School of Education and a professor with the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. Access the full report on NPR’s website, here.
• Luis Columna appeared on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Larry Meiller Show” to talk about the Fit Families program for children with autism spectrum disorder and their families. Columna is the director of Fit Families and an associate professor with the School of Education’s Department of Kinesiology. To learn more about Fit Families, listen to the full program on the WPR website, here.
• UW–Madison’s Craig Albers shared his thoughts on the stress parents are experiencing making school decisions this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic in a news report for WSAW-TV in Wausau. Albers, an associate professor with the School of Education’s Department of Educational Psychology and co-director of the Rural Education Research and Implementation Center (RERIC), spoke about the unique concerns that families in rural areas face because there are fewer employment options. Access the full report on WSAW-TV’s website, here.