College of Education Magazine

MATTERS MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION MAGAZINE

CHANGE IS THE NEW NORMAL Understanding what’s ahead for K–12 education

ALSO INSIDE Literacy is a family affair Teaching social justice

2012

MISSION

STARTING BELL

AS EDUCATIONAL NEEDS GROW AND TAKE CENTER STAGE, OUR MISSION MATTERS MORE THAN EVER BEFORE, WRITES DEAN BILL HENK

Our mission has always mattered. It mattered for 50 years as a department and nearly 40 more as the School of Education. Now in our fourth year as the College of Education, OUR MISSION MATTERS MORE — more than ever before.

We will continue to excel in teaching, scholarship and service in the years ahead. But the time has come for us to be even more present to our community. Most of all, our commitment to social justice calls us to do whatever we can to bolster struggling K–12 schools of all types, as well as our challenged mental health care systems.

The College of Education also finds itself in a new era with a university president who is committed to civic engagement. In other words, this is our moment.

Through extraordinary work like that highlighted in this issue of Mission Matters, we hope to take a rightful place as a cornerstone of our great Catholic and Jesuit educational institution.

Please join us. Your efforts will be essential. We aspire to help others as never before; our Ignatian traditions of cura personalis and of magis — doing the more — demand as much.

Society and its members are depending on us. For their sake, we cannot afford to fail in this vital mission.

Sincerely, Bill Henk Dean of the College of Education Marquette University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Marquette University College of Education Office of the Dean 561 N. 15th St. Walter Schroeder Health and Education Complex, Room 124 Milwaukee, WI 53233 414.288.7376 marquette.edu/education Blog at marquetteeducator.wordpress.com Twitter at twitter.com/MUEducation Facebook at facebook.com/MUEducation Dean of the College of Education William A. Henk, Ed.D. Editor: Lori Fredrich lori.fredrich@marquette.edu

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News

Dr. Howard Fuller named among nation’s most powerful educators; college ranked among top schools; events of note.

Research and Innovation

Faculty and students reveal what it takes to foster socially just teaching.

Improving Children’s Lives

Dean Henk sees reason for hope in the new initiative, Milwaukee Succeeds; experts weigh in on the changes in store for K–12 education.

Advising Editor: Stephen Filmanowicz Copy Editor: Becky Dubin Jenkins Art Director: Sharon Grace Mission Matters is published annually for alumni, friends and supporters of the College of Education at Marquette University. We welcome feedback from our readers. Please feel free to contact us and share your ideas for people and topics you’d like to see covered in future issues.

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Life Stories

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Reflections

The story of one life — make that, one family — changed by the work of the Family Literacy Project.

Dr. Alan Burkard reflects on the role of school counselors as advocates and change agents.

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NEWS

NEWS powerful educators

Dr. Howard Fuller named one of nation’s most

Wendy Kopp, founder and CEO of Teach For America and co-founder and CEO of Teach For All, has named Dr. Howard Fuller, distinguished professor and director of Marquette’s Institute for the Transformation of Learning, one of the nation’s most powerful educators in a list published at forbes.com.

“ These individuals, who aren’t often in the national spotlight, demonstrate the leadership we need to ensure all children gain the skills necessary to get to and through college,” says Kopp.

In naming Fuller to the top-seven list, Forbes wrote,

“ For three decades, as superintendent, educator, organizer and advocate, Howard has relentlessly championed the right of parents to demand an excellent education for their children.”

Fuller is a former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent and has been an educational leader in the community for more than three decades.

Photo by Ben Smidt

COLLEGE RANKED AMONG TOP 100 BEST GRADUATE SCHOOLS FOR EDUCATION The College of Education was ranked 91 among more than 1,200 programs nationwide on the 2012 U.S. News & World Report list of best graduate schools. This ranking is up from 105 in 2011.

The 2012 list includes essential, detailed statistical information and scores in categories that include assessment by peers and superintendents, student selectivity, faculty resources and research activity.

ATTEND MISSION RECOGNITION 2012 save the date April 10

The College of Education cordially invites you to mark your calendars for our second annual Mission Recognition Event, which will be held Tuesday, April 10, 2012, in the Henke Lounge and Lunda Room in the Alumni Memorial Union.

The event honors individuals and groups from within and outside the Marquette community that have made a significant contribution toward advancing the social justice mission of the college.

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS: SEEING THE DIFFERENCE IN OTHERS Do you know an alumnus/a who, through personal or professional achievements, truly embodies the mission of Marquette? Please nominate him or her for an Alumni National Award. Nominations received this year will be considered for an award in 2013. Visit marquette.edu/ awards to view the awards criteria and access the online nomination form. And save the date: The College of Education Alumni Awards will be held on Thursday, April 28.

CONNECT WITH US! The College of Education invites you to keep up with students, alumni and friends.

Twitter: twitter.com/MUEducation Facebook: facebook.com/MUEducation Web: marquette.edu/education Blog: marquetteeducator.wordpress.com We know how busy life can be, so we’ve created an easy way for you to keep up with the news and views from the popular Marquette Educator blog!

Sign up for our weekly email digest, delivered right to your inbox, at marquette.edu/educatorblog.

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RESEARCH AND INNOVATION

TEACHING SOCIAL JUSTICE

By Lori Fredrich

Research spanning six years brings clarity to the debate over teacher dispositions In the United States and beyond, students from low-income racial, ethnic and immigrant minority groups often do not have the same educational and life opportunities as their middle class, ethnic majority peers. As a response, teacher educators have regularly asked: What knowledge, skills and dispositions should teachers have to reduce the gap in educational opportunity and outcomes? What are the best ways to promote social justice by actively working to remove classroom and institutional barriers that keep all students from academic success?

These and other questions have been the focus of research conducted by Drs. Joan Whipp and Sharon Chubbuck, associate professors in the College of Education.

For years, their work has centered on Marquette’s own teacher education program, which was intentionally designed to prepare teachers to work in urban schools.

The partnership between the two faculty members dates back to 2006. Their original work was largely conceptual, responding primarily to the huge debate in teacher education over what dispositions are and how to assess them, as well as discussions about how social justice fits into the conversation on teaching dispositions. “Teachers are faced with myriad challenges in supporting the learning of their students,” explains Chubbuck. “While having solid knowledge and skills for effective teaching is essential, having the attitudes, beliefs and orientations to support and guide the application of that knowledge and skill is also essential.”

The pair’s more recent work has included a study of 64 recent graduates that follows their progress from the end of their student teaching experience into their first year of teaching.

The study tracks the subjects’ developing perceptions of socially just teaching; how they were enacting those perceptions in their teaching practice; and what pre-program, program and on-the-job knowledge, experiences and dispositions were contributing to that development.

Drs. Sharon Chubbuck and Joan Whipp, associate professors in the College of Education

Photo by Ben Smidt

In recent presentations at meetings hosted by major U.S. and European educational research associations, the research

Forming young people’s lives

By Elizabeth Fernholz Flattery, Ed ’04

A young teacher at a central-city Milwaukee high school reflects on the role her Marquette education — and everything she learned afterward — play in her approach to socially just teaching.

Photos by John Sibilski

partners have shared findings. Chief among them are the program factors found to be most related to the development of justice-oriented teaching goals and practices during the pre-service years and beyond. They include: 1) field experiences and student teaching in urban schools and community agencies with culturally diverse populations; 2) course content that sparked moral responses and challenged previous thinking; and 3) student teaching mentors and methods instructors who modeled and explicitly talked about culturally relevant teaching practices.

However, one of the more interesting findings of their research indicates that background experiences and pre-dispositions that future teachers bring to their collegelevel programs may matter even more. “Students whose prior experiences in multicultural settings have already established a dispositional orientation toward socially just teaching benefit most from the course work and field experiences,” Dr. Whipp clarifies. “However, particularly for students who enter our program with no cross-cultural experiences, we also need to think about adding early intensive and guided immersion experiences into the culture of the diverse students that our students will be teaching. We need to find ways to stay involved with our students and offer them guidance and support in their development as socially just teachers.”

Like so many new teachers, I had high hopes, aspirations and ideals when I graduated from Marquette. I was so happy to start my career as an English teacher at Messmer High School in Milwaukee, just a few miles north of campus.

Now in my eighth year there, I do not know if any teaching program can really prepare a teacher for the day-to-day reality of teaching. Although my program at Marquette gave me valuable experiences in classrooms in a variety of settings, I have learned that to be a teacher is to be so much more than a person who imparts knowledge of a certain subject. I have fulfilled the roles of guidance counselor, coach, parent and mediator. I am responsible for forming young people’s lives, something that so often extends beyond the school day and outside the classroom. Fortunately, my training in the College of Education instilled in me the notion that working in education is a means for fighting social injustice. It made me realize that this profession is not just a job, but a vocation.

Although it sounds clichéd, my students really have taught me more than I could ever express. They have taught me the meaning of resilience, compassion, determination and hope. I am impressed every single day by their ability to see beyond their circumstances and realize how education can be the vehicle for achieving their dreams. In one day they can make me want to pull my hair out and then well up with tears of pride. There are definitely times when the content I am teaching is secondary. Sometimes my job is more about creating meaningful relationships and fostering an environment of intellectual inquiry. My hope is for each of my students to feel valued and be challenged to go beyond what is expected of them. After all, that is what Marquette’s education program did for me.

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IMPROVING CHILDREN’S LIVES

Perspectives on K–12 education today The environment for K–12 education is more fluid than it has been in decades. Methods, technology, compensation and accountability are all on the table.

What big changes are ahead and what are the best strategies for tackling them? And can educational prospects for children in Milwaukee actually improve during this time of turmoil? Our experts weigh in.

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IMPROVING CHILDREN’S LIVES

By Bill Henk

Is Milwaukee Succeeds the vehicle to boost academic performance in the city? The dean of the College of Education says the answer this time may be — and must be — “yes.”

There is no mistaking that the goal of Milwaukee Succeeds, the new broadbased community partnership aimed at “helping ALL children, in EVERY school from cradle to career,” is ambitious. Neither should there be any doubt that realizing this goal is vital to the future of our region.

Now in my eighth year as dean of the College of Education at Marquette, I’ve seen my fair share of well-intended initiatives fall short of moving the needle of academic achievement very far for our school children. In this time, I’ve interacted with hundreds of concerned, talented and committed individuals and several advocacy groups seeking to make a positive difference.

Clearly the community “will” has been there, and probably the “skill” as well, but what has been missing is a potent, integrated vehicle to extend whatever success has been attained to a systemic level. In contemporary terms, we haven’t taken success “to scale.”

All of this begs the question of whether Milwaukee Succeeds represents that vehicle.

As a member of Milwaukee Succeeds’ Leadership Council and its operations planning group, I’ve witnessed the initiative take shape in recent months. The 38 community organizations pulled together by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation form an impressive group. Major partners include the Greater Milwaukee Committee, United Way, Urban League and Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce. The leaders of those organizations and several other CEOs, as well as the presidents of many local colleges and universities, sit at the table.

Even with that capacity, there are those in the community who question whether Milwaukee Succeeds can live up to its aspirations. Believe me, I understand the skepticism.

The obstacles are formidable, with poverty foremost among

them, followed closely in my opinion by sharp political differences over how education should be delivered. How can such disparate interests work together toward a common end?

It comes down to a simple premise — because we must.

Giving rational school reform everything we have amounts to a matter of social, ethical and moral responsibility. The stakes are just too high. We’re losing young lives here at an unconscionable clip.

Although the time to turn the corner is long overdue, it’s not too late. I honestly believe that our community now has its best chance to provide truly high-quality education for our school children. Milwaukee Succeeds looks to be one notable piece of the puzzle, but I’m also hopeful because of numerous factors, including the excellent executive leadership we now have in Milwaukee Public Schools and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee, the work of Schools That Can Milwaukee and the Greater Milwaukee Catholic Education Consortium, and the resurgence of the Milwaukee Partnership Academy. And surely many other groups can and will contribute.

Maybe I’m a hopeless optimist. Maybe I’m naïve and unrealistic. Maybe my educational expertise isn’t sufficient to anticipate how much can and will go wrong. Or maybe I just can’t bear the thought of failing the kids again.

The harsh truth is this: If we don’t ALL pull together, then Milwaukee Succeeds and every other initiative face long odds. We can’t afford to be lukewarm. We must tackle the challenges head on regardless of how daunting they might be. We need to believe in the will and skill of the Milwaukee community, put our political differences aside, and passionately resolve to make our educational landscape vibrant once and for all.

A version of this story ran in the Sunday opinion section of the Milwaukee Journal–Sentinel.

What changes next?

TEACHER EVALUATION Dr. Eileen Schwalbach, Arts ’72* President of Mount Mary College

Photo by Ben Smidt

“One change that will affect K–12 urban education in the future is the anticipated revision of the teacher evaluation process. Though the details have not been finalized, one can predict that even greater accountability will be expected of teachers to ensure that all children are learning at high levels. Teachers in urban schools, educating the most challenging students, will need to pool their knowledge, share lessons, examine classroom data and relentlessly work together to do whatever it takes to ensure that all children will achieve.”

BLENDED SCHOOLING Dr. Howard Fuller, Grad ’95* Director of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning “There will be a continuing move toward blended schooling. Students will continue to come to a facility for instruction but will spend a considerable amount of time using online programs.

The quality of these tools will continue to improve over time. This, coupled with a continued push for ensuring that every student has a quality teacher, will have an impact on how teachers are developed and how they are used in the building. Two examples that are currently in use will become much more common: (1) The high-performing teachers will be videotaped, and their lessons will be made available

to other classes; and (2) These same teachers will develop modules of their lesson plan preparation and their instructional practices, which will be used by their colleagues to improve their teaching preparation and their interaction with their own students.

“In addition to blended schooling, there will continue to be a focus on evaluating teacher performance based on the academic results of their students. This will force teacher preparation programs to evaluate the effectiveness of their programs based on the academic results of their graduates’ students.”

24–7 STUDENT FOCUS Dr. Arnold Mitchem, Grad ’81* President of the Council for Opportunity in Education “One thing that will change with respect to K–12 education? The number and percentage of low-income students will continue to increase.

Public, parochial and charter schools will increasingly recognize that they can’t be expected to do it alone and will look to other partners — colleges and universities, community groups, businesses — ­ to provide networks to support students and their families.

There will be increasing recognition that accountability doesn’t begin and end with schools but that the whole experience of children and youth — in school, after school, Saturdays and summers — must be viewed as time to be used in assuring that all America’s children are college- and career-ready.”

Photo by Ben Smidt

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IMPROVING CHILDREN’S LIVES

Photo by John Sibilski

EDUCATING GLOBAL CITIZENS Sarah Jerome, Grad ’89* Superintendent of the Arlington Heights (Ill.) School District “The World Future Society recently shared its forecasts for the next 25 years. While these forecasts are focused on energy, water, food, nanotechnology, weather, economy, transportation and political alliances, they all relate to education and they all presume an interdependent global society. The educated global citizen will need to be a nimble and flexible learner — one who can navigate the global society with high levels of transliteracy skills. Transliteracy is a new term meaning the ability to read, write and communicate across the world using multiple mediums. In addition, the educated global citizen will need to be multilingual and a diplomatic, creative, innovative problem-solver. These are skills that can be overtly taught in K–12 schools. Teaching students to be peacemakers may turn out to be the most essential skill of the 21st century.”

LESS UNION-DRIVEN RIGIDITY Dr. Robert Lowe Professor in Educational Policy and Leadership

Photo by Ben Smidt

“One important feature of the urban educational landscape that will change is the power of organized teachers: It will diminish — perhaps dramatically — as state legislatures not only act to trim benefits but also seek to end the very right to bargain collectively. Already, the proliferation of charter schools not bound by collective bargaining agreements is reducing the percentage of city teachers who belong to unions. Although the attack on teacher unions mostly comes from the right, elements of their critique should be embraced by the left as well. After all, almost nothing is easier than attaining tenure, nothing harder than dismissing a tenured teacher, nothing more frustrating for a school community than seniority alone determining who gets hired and who gets laid off. None of this is good for teaching and learning. Some union locals, it is true, have become

more flexible about these matters, but, in general, the teacher union mantra that what is good for teachers necessarily is good for the education of children rings false. Even so, vanquishing the unions is unlikely to create a better environment for teaching and learning.

Even though it was a huge mistake for the unions to define teachers as workers rather than professionals, it was the pressure of organized teachers exclusively that resulted in more professional salaries, better working conditions and protections against arbitrary treatment. Without that pressure, the conditions to be good educators will be swept away, along with the bureaucratic rules and excessive protections that have limited good education.”

ENTREPRENEURIAL TEACHERS Ricardo Diaz Executive Director of the United Community Center “In the current political landscape, the changes in the role of the teacher’s union will have a big effect on urban education. As the profession becomes more competitive and includes using student performance to determine teacher salaries, the teacher of tomorrow will need to be flexible, entrepreneurial, creative and a true multitasker. This may involve longer school days and longer school years, as our education system evolves to better meet students needs. Competition for teaching positions from ‘teacher corps’ programs will grow as new approaches to education rise to the surface. With the right administrative guidance and support, many teachers will flourish as they are allowed to be creative and use their passion and personal skills to benefit students.” * I ndicates the expert is a College of Education alumnus or alumna.

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LIFE STORIES

The Patterson/Harris family: front to back, Markesha (19), Miracle (3), Ydisa, Traveon (14, nephew), Mark Anthony (13), Melinda (18) and Marilynjean (12).

Photo by John Sibilski

WHERE LITERACY IS A FAMILY AFFAIR

By Jessie Bazan, Comm ’14

MARKESHA HARRIS WAS THE FIRST OF FOUR CHILDREN IN HER FAMILY TO WORK ON LITERACY SKILLS AT THE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION’S HARTMAN FAMILY LITERACY CENTER. NOW SHE’S A MARQUETTE FRESHMAN STUDYING ENGINEERING. Hopping off the big yellow school bus, Markesha Harris clutched her mother’s hand. The duo began making their way down the 16th Street sidewalk, off to another afternoon at Marquette’s Hartman Family Literacy Center, where Markesha was newly enrolled in the reading program and her mom, Ydisa Patterson, had just started volunteering.

“There’s the nursing building,” Ydisa pointed out to her awestruck daughter, then a third-grader at Urban Day School. “Over there, that’s the engineering building.”

Gazing around at the towering groups of college students, young Markesha inquired, “Mama, do they stay in one building all day?”

“No!” Ydisa said with a laugh. “You change from classroom to classroom. When you get to college, you’ll change from building to building.”

Ten years later, Ydisa beams with pride as she describes how Markesha now lives these words as a first-year engineering student at Marquette. It wasn’t always a matter of when Markesha would go to college, but if. Before she came to the Hartman Center as a third-grader, Markesha was having a difficult time in school. Not only was she learning to overcome a speech impediment, but she was reluctant to raise her hand in class, said teachers, out of fear that she’d be teased over her struggles with reading. That’s when Ydisa looked into Hartman.

Established in 1992, the Hartman Family Literacy Center is a teaching, research and service site operated by the College of Education. Twice a week, second- through fifth-graders from select Milwaukee public and charter schools are bussed to the center’s offices in the Walter Schroeder Complex. They spend an hour and a half in groups of two or three being tutored by undergraduate teachers under the supervision of Marquette education professors.

After just six months of twice-weekly phonics-based sessions to help her recognize words and develop better comprehension strategies, Markesha was showing signs of improvement with her reading and confidence.

“After coming here, I wasn’t as shy anymore,” she said. “I would raise my hand more, and I was able to express my opinion.”

Spending so many afternoons on the Marquette campus, Markesha soon began thinking more seriously about her academic future. “I already liked school beforehand, and I still like it,” she said. “(The Hartman Center) made me think about college at a very young age. It probably would have been on my radar, but probably not Marquette.”

Before her job at the center, Ydisa was on welfare. After she was hired, the center worked hard to accommodate her growing family by being flexible with scheduling and allowing Ydisa to bring her young children to work so she would not have to pay for daycare. Not only has the center given Ydisa stability, but it also instilled in her kids a love of reading and gave Markesha a platform for her educational future.

After Markesha completed the program, her newfound confidence remained with her as she moved on to Messmer High School. There, she had a 4.0 grade point average and was involved in 12 extracurricular activities, including the robotics club, cheerleading and even football.

When it came time to choose a college, her search had an obvious starting point. Thanks to her hard work and record of success at Messmer, Markesha received a scholarship from the CG Schmidt Co. and was accepted into Marquette’s competitive engineering program. Someday, she hopes to work for NASA and go to outer space.

While serving as Hartman program coordinator from 1993–2007, Coreen Bukowski worked closely with Markesha and now sees her as a role model for other students. Markesha talked often in those days about her hopes of attending Marquette, recalled Bukowski. “Now that she attends Marquette and is working toward a computer engineering degree, I find that to be very inspiring for struggling young readers.”

Over the years, the family’s involvement with the Hartman Center has never wavered. Markesha continued at the center, volunteering throughout grade school and high school and is now employed there as a student worker. Meanwhile, three of her siblings have participated in the tutoring program, and Ydisa has worked part time at the center as a parent coordinator for the past 11 years.

Before her job at the center, Ydisa was on welfare. After she was hired, the center worked hard to accommodate her growing family by being flexible with scheduling and allowing Ydisa to bring her young children to work so she would not have to pay for daycare. Not only has the center given Ydisa stability, but it also instilled in her kids a love of reading and gave Markesha a platform for her educational future. “It’s really nice how they call it the Hartman Family Literacy Center. I think back on that a lot,” Ydisa said.

Some of her neighbors don’t see the value of getting off welfare, Ydisa explained, but she has witnessed firsthand the positive impact a quality education can have and how determined her daughter is to succeed.

She said “A lot of kids from the inner city, when they hear Marquette, they look up to it. I’m just proud Markesha is here and that we started at the Hartman Center.”

Photos by John Sibilski

Michelle Johnson, Ed ’12, and Laura Weber, Ed ’12, (foreground) join Hartman Center students for a literacy recognition event.

GIVING UNDERGRADUATE TEACHERS A BIG HEAD START IN LITERACY EDUCATION Photos by Ben Scmidt

Though students such as Markesha Harris certainly benefit from their time at the Hartman Center, Marquette’s student teachers share deeply in the program’s benefits as well. According to the program’s director, associate professor Dr. Kathleen Clark, the Hartman Center offers undergraduates an exceptional environment for learning how to teach reading and gives them key opportunities they may not get at other institutions — specifically the opportunity to assume the responsibilities of a teacher in their own Hartman Center classrooms and work extensively with students who experience difficulty learning to read.

“The (pre-service) teachers must design and implement reading instruction that meets their specific students’ word recognition, comprehension and fluency needs,” Clark explains. Daily monitoring of student progress is another responsibility. “If children are not making sufficient gains, the teachers must change the instruction. … ” Hartman’s undergraduate teachers receive considerable supervision from university faculty members and course supervisors, who are practicing teachers and reading specialists, but are recognizably “the teachers in their own classrooms,” says Clark. “I think this makes a huge difference in terms of their professional development as teachers, as opposed to being a guest in someone else’s classroom.”

In working with elementary school students at the Hartman Center, Marquette undergraduates are taught specific

instructional routines focusing on high-frequency words, decoding by analogy and explicit comprehension instruction.

Undergraduate teachers at the Hartman Center also gain invaluable problem-solving experience. “The children who come to the Hartman Center are reading a year or more below their grade placement in school,” explains Clark.

“When you’re working with children who struggle, you really must focus on what each specific child needs to become a more proficient reader and provide it. You can’t just think about moving through curriculum materials.”

Whether it’s the proven instructional methods, the personalized attention or both, the results are impressive.

In the past six 10-week program sessions, 68 percent of children enrolled at the center made gains of one or more levels (e.g., grade two to grade three) in word recognition, comprehension or both on the Qualitative Reading Inventory, the highly regarded instrument (developed by Dr. Lauren Leslie of Marquette and Dr. JoAnne Schudt Caldwell of Cardinal Stritch University) used to place children in the program and monitor progress.

In the end, the unique context of the Hartman Center leaves Marquette teachers in training better equipped and prepared to teach in their own schools. “All teachers will work with children who struggle at some point in their careers. Our students just get to do it in a concentrated, fairly lengthy and well-supervised environment as pre-service teachers. So the context enables Marquette students to really learn to think in ways that you don’t often get to as undergraduates,” says Clark. “Most of what we hear is this is the course that really taught them how to teach.”

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REFLECTIONS

Photo by Ben Smidt

School counselors rise to meet changing K–12 landscape

By Dr. Alan Burkard

A few years ago, to address a class assignment for one of my research classes, a school counseling student examined reading scores at the school where she was completing her practicum experience. She noticed the student scores had remained consistently at the basic or minimal performance levels but was puzzled because the school had a reading intervention designed to elevate these scores. I encouraged her to scrutinize the problem further, specifically examining other factors that may have been contributing to the problem. She discovered that most students did not arrive at school until about 10:30 a.m. The reading intervention, however, was scheduled during the first class period of the day, just after 8 a.m. Consequently, many of the students in need of reading assistance did not receive the full benefit of the intervention. Needless to say, my student was shocked and initially speechless, although her concern drove her to action.

Having traveled the country as the president of the American School Counselor Association this year, I find that this kind of story illustrates the typical concerns that today’s school counselors are compelled to address. The field of school counseling has undergone significant transformation in the past 15 years. No longer is graduate training simply promoting the development of strong counseling skills.

Although contemporary school counselors must develop these foundational helping skills, they are also expected to be strong leaders who rely on the use of data to make decisions about curriculum, standards-based education and interventions. They are agents as well for systemic change in schools. They specifically target academic, career and personal-social concerns for change at the individual, group and classroom levels. They collaborate with other educational professionals and parents to promote positive development for students. Furthermore, they are particularly

attuned to social justice concerns, such as gaps in achievement that are too often apparent across culturally and economically diverse groups.

We have been particularly blessed at Marquette to have a program that can and has evolved concurrently with the changing landscape of contemporary education. Current school counselors consider themselves to be reformers and social justice advocates. Similarly, our students are encouraged to develop the leadership and advocacy skills to influence school climates positively and to identify — ­ and intervene to close — achievement gaps. These skills and the innovative spirit of our students will be critical to addressing the difficult political environment of schools and the communities in which they reside.

Certainly the past year in Wisconsin politics has demonstrated the difficult environment that graduates of our school counseling program will face as new professionals. Perhaps fortunate for elementary, middle, and high school students and their families, our program students were selected to attend Marquette because of their energy, passion and excitement for the school counseling profession. Upon graduation, these students leave our institution ready to act as leaders and advocates in schools, having acquired the knowledge, skills and dispositions to develop comprehensive school counseling programs that meet the needs of students and their families. As such, I know that every graduate of our program will have a positive effect on the schools in which they are employed, for coming to Marquette meant they elected to care for the whole person by becoming leaders, advocates, educators and counselors for the benefit of all students.

Dr. Alan Burkard is an associate professor and chair of counselor education and counseling psychology.

MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF EDUCATION Office of the Dean : 561 N. 15th St. : Walter Schroeder Health and Education Complex, Room 124 Milwaukee, WI 53233 : 414.288.7376 : marquette.edu/education