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Elkorn Middle School teacher
Susan Hammerly and a student show off a holiday project.
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High School students also receive awards in the categories of excellence scholars and initiative scholars. SLUE area students receiving those awards came from East Troy, Elkhorn, Williams Bay, Union Grove, and Big Foot.
The awards bring a monetary award to teachers and the district. The recipients and their families were honored at a grand banquet and pictures with Senator Kohl on March 17, 2002. In addition, as Susan Hammerly says, "You are in a room full of a lot of awe inspiring people."
Susan Hammerly teaches sixth-grade English at Elkhorn Middle School with a group of four other teachers. She stresses that the teachers are a team, " We support each other and help the students learn how to make a difference in their community," she says.
Susan is very proud of a school-to-work simulation called Dessert Playhouse, which she helped develop, and coordinates for the sixth grade. She describes the activity as, "It's an interdisciplinary project where the 6th graders run a white tablecloth, candle lit restaurant to serve homemade desserts to customers, and their families on the evening of the Christmas play. The students have all the jobs at the restaurant and theater: servers, chefs, escorts, and performers. Under the direct of teachers, the students even do all the baking of the homemade desserts, beginning weeks in advance. My English classes complete letters of invitation, as well as the training for the servers, chefs, and escorts. Reservations are handled through social studies. Decorations are created in math class. Literature class provides all the plays. From our advance baking days to set-up and clean-up the night of the playhouse, all of the students are engaged and eager participants. After they leave sixth-grade, our students and their families still comment on how they remember and enjoyed our candlelight Dessert Playhouse."
"When it comes to teaching, I believe the 'I's' have it," Hammmerly says of her personal educational philosophy. "I believe that students should be immersed in literacy and language. My classroom has examples of student and professional writers as models for young readers and writers to see, use, and emulate."
She also believes that students need some individualized activity. Whether the student process or product is altered, Susan believes projects or lessons can be adapted to fit the level of the learner without removing him or her from the classroom community.
"On the other hand, I also believe that learning may be a very interdependent activity. As adults we often seek out the advice and help of others, yet for years we have denied young learners these same advantages for learning. In my classroom, we might use collaborative groups or partners when we approach a new skill for the first time or when we brainstorm, plan draft, and revise pieces of writing," Susan says of her third 'I.'
Integration of technology into the classroom as a tool, not a separate entity, is my next educational principle," says the six-grade teacher. "When students give a presentation, I teach presentations software in conjunction with their research. We then have business letters to send we review or introduce word processing. Databases, overhead projectors, and computer display panels are all examples of techniques that need to be integrated into the students' handbag of literacy tools."
"Finally, I believe education is often interdisciplinary. In my class, we learn prepositions and poetry through art. We learn research and note taking with science and social studies. We run a restaurant and theater in partnership with technical education, family and consumer education, math class, and very generous community businesses. Adult life-the real world-is interdisciplinary, and sometimes my classroom is too," relates Hammerly.
In the future, Susan would like to return presenting at seminars. "I would like to present the Dessert Playhouse project to the Wisconsin Association of Middle Level Educators," she says," and would also like to present on middle level writing, particularly directed revision."
She would also like to continue to expand writing across the curriculum in her team and take post-graduate classes that present kinesthetic methods to teach in the classroom. The Kohl fellowship money would be wisely used on any of those goals.
Posted March 27, 2002