BY SYDNEY HOOVER
Three Eudora teachers received fellowships aimed at addressing the achievement gap for low-income students and developing new practices for improving students’ reading skills.
The Eudora Schools Foundation selected Sarah Weirick, Jennifer Pate and Chris Lounsbury as its 2020 teacher fellows, a program aimed at improving professional development within the district to address student needs. The foundation awarded more than $5,000 between the two selected proposals.
“When teachers go above and beyond and we’re able to invest in those teachers, invest in their passion, and they bring that passion back to their colleagues, back to their classroom, back to their students, that brings it back to our community,” said Eudora Schools Foundation Executive Director Shanda Hurla.
Weirick, a high school English teacher, will use her grant to attend a program through Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. The program, called “Closing the Achievement Gap: Strategies for Excellence with Equity,” focuses on responding to the achievement gap created by class inequalities.
Weirick said this has long been a passion of hers, and she is looking into pursuing a graduate degree focusing on this topic.
“I thought it [the Harvard program] was kind of a long shot, but I applied anyway and I got in and I was just so excited and really without the foundation I don’t think I would have been able to make this happen,” Weirick said.
The program begins June 27 and lasts through July 1 on the Harvard campus. Following this, Weirick will bring what she learned back to Eudora to address how the district can help close gaps for students whose achievement lags.
Weirick said she wants to make the professional development teachings manageable for her colleagues so they can begin looking into how their teaching practices affect different groups of students.
“I think teachers always want to do what’s best and really help their students and so just for me to be able to come up with some manageable ways for them to incorporate that in their lesson would be my ultimate goal,” Weirick said.
At Eudora Elementary School, Pate and Lounsbury have already begun implementing knowledge from the program LETRS, which provides professional development on strategies of teaching language and literacy. The skills taught by LETRS are particularly impactful for students with dyslexia.
Pate, a third grade special education teacher, and Lounsbury, a reading specialist, have completed four of eight units online through the program, and will use their grant to attend an in-person training to become facilitators of the program. They will then be able to teach the training to their colleagues.
“There’s no more vital skill than learning to read. If you can teach a child to read, you set them up for future success,” Lounsbury said.
Pate said they have seen notable successes with the teaching strategies they have already been able to implement in their classrooms.
“It’s been very rewarding for the both of us and so obviously the next step would be to go and get trained and become a facilitator to teach others what we have been learning,” Pate said.
This is the third year the Eudora Schools Foundation has offered the fellowship program, its first providing grants to more than one proposal.
Reach reporter Sydney Hoover at eudoratimes@gmail.com.
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