WKBT La Crosse, WI-NewsChannel 8-UW-La Crosse Students Heading Back to Elementary School

UW-La Crosse Students Heading Back to Elementary School

In just about a month kids will be heading back to the classroom.  But at 1 Onalaska elementary school, there will be more than just elementary students.

Irving Pertzsch and UWL are teaming up to make the elementary school a professional development school, or P.D.S.  That means elementary education students from UWL, in route to their degree, will help out kids at Irving Pertzsch.  The focus will be on science, technology, engineering, and math, or STEM.  The program should benefit both the college and elementary students.

Representatives of Irving Pertzsch and UWL got together to begin planning for the PDS.  The first step is looking at the elementary school's current lesson plans.  "In terms of the elementary student, what we would like to do is we're working on the science curriculum to help improve that which would help the elementary students," says UWL associate professor of Biology, Tim Gerber.

An improved curriculum will give the young students a better understanding of the STEM subjects.  College students will benefit by getting real world experience in the classroom which is also good news for youngsters.  "Every classroom teacher struggles a little bit with there's just not enough time in the day, you want to meet the needs of every student so this is another person, another adult who can help excite the students, teach the students, work with them, just be a resource for them in these areas," says Irving Pertzsch principal, Jac Lyga.

The professional development school will hopefully make the math and science professions more interesting and appealing to young students.  That's good news for people already in those fields and also will relieve pressure coming from the federal, state, and local governments.  "They're very interested in trying to boost the number of scientists and engineers and people like that, that are native born," says Gerber.

Onalaska's Middle School and Eagle Bluff Elementary are already set up as professional development schools, but in different subjects.  Eagle Bluff is a literacy PDS for example.  Another reason to be excited about this is it gives the elementary school an early look at future teachers.

The school district of Onalaska and UWL have been partnered together for about 8 years now.  Irving Pertzch's PDS is set to begin for Spring semester in 2008.