Curriculum and Instruction News
The 2019 Wisconsin Teachers of the Year have been announced and one of this year's award winners is UW-Madison alumnus Benjamin Grignon. Grignon graduated from the School of Education's Art Department in 2005 with a bachelor of fine arts degree. Currently, Grignon teaches traditional Menominee crafts at Menominee Indian High School in Keshena. As part of the Teacher of the Year honor, Grignon will receive $3,000 from the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation.
Each summer, UW-Madison teams up with Urban Word NYC to offer educators and community leaders a four-day program to learn the best practices in hip hop and spoken word pedagogy. The Institute brings together the leading educators, professors, emcees and activists utilizing the media of spoken word, hip hop and urban arts as relevant, dynamic and necessary educational tools to engage students across multi-disciplinary curricula. The institute, which is co-sponsored in part by the School of Education's office of Education Outreach and Partnerships, will take place July 9-12 in the Education Building on the UW-Madison campus.
UW-Madison alumnus David Harris recently published the second edition of "Reasoning with Democratic Values: Ethical Issues in American History." Harris earned his master’s degree in 1970 and Ph.D. in 1976 from the School of Education's Department of Curriculum and Instruction. Harris authored the book with Anne-Lise Halvorsen from the College of Education at Michigan State University and Paul Dain, a retired high school social studies teacher. The first edition was written by Harris and UW-Madison's Professor Alan Lockwood in 1985. The second edition contains more than 75 percent new content, and the authors have pledged their royalties to teacher education and are offering professional development for teachers across the country without fees.
The Isthmus newspaper recently put the spotlight on Whoopensocker, an innovative arts education initiative that works with students in local elementary schools. The program was launched with the help of UW-Madison’s Erica Halverson, who is a professor with the School of Education's No. 1-ranked Department of Curriculum and Instruction.
The Wisconsin Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (WACTE) presented awards to 59 outstanding educators from across Wisconsin in April, including three people who graduated from UW-Madison’s School of Education. Radeen Yang, an alumna of the Department of Rehabilitation Psychology and Special Education, received an Early Career Educator Award. Ellen Boyle and Tonya Rasmussen received a Pre-Service Educator Award, which is presented to an outstanding educator who has demonstrated a sustained pattern of mentoring pre-service educators for at least five years.
Three finalists to become the UW-Madison School of Education’s Associate Dean for Diversity and Inclusion will be delivering public presentations and take part in a question-and-answer session as part of the interview process.
The National Academy of Education (NAEd) on May 17 announced the recipients of the 2018 NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral and Dissertation Fellowships, and four scholars from UW-Madison are receiving support. Walter Stern, an assistant professor with the Department of Educational Policy Studies, is receiving a Postdoctoral Fellowship, while Ph.D. students Gwen Baxley, Giselle Martinez Negrette and Stacy Priniski are being awarded Dissertation Fellowships. These prestigious fellowships provide funding and professional development to early-career researchers whose projects address critical issues in the history, theory or practice of formal or informal education, at the national and international levels.
UW-Madison announced that 18 students have been selected to receive grants through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program for the 2018-2019 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. And among those receiving this prestigious honor is the School of Education’s Britta Pigorsch, who earned her undergraduate degree in elementary education and political science. Pigorsch is one of eight UW-Madison finalists to be awarded Fulbright U.S. Student Program grants for English Teaching Assistantships. Pigorsch will be taking her talents to the Netherlands with this Fulbright award.
The Grand Challenges initiative developed in UW–Madison’s School of Education, which aims to ignite cross-disciplinary innovation, has awarded grants to four projects that display the potential to transform lives by supporting young people and families in Wisconsin. “I am so excited about how the Grand Challenges initiative has provided support for our faculty and staff to work in collaboration with community organizations and others from across UW–Madison to develop new interdisciplinary teams,” says School of Education Dean Diana Hess.
The Phi Kappa Phi, Chapter 021 at UW-Madison, has inducted 142 students into membership at its 98th Phi Kappa Phi Induction Ceremony. The ceremony was held on April 22 in Tripp Commons, Memorial Union. The keynote speaker was David Danaher, professor of Slavic studies in the Department of German, Nordic and Slavic. Honorary membership was granted to three UW-Madison Professors, including the School of Education's Nicholas Hillman. In addition, graduate students Jessie Nixon and Giselle Martinez Negeette received Zillman Summer Research Fellowships.