Hometown Hero - Gretchen Lorenz
Photo from WXOW.com
This week’s Hometown Hero is Gretchen Lorenz of Onalaska. Gretchen and her fifth grade students at Eagle Bluff Elementary received a $300 grant from the Tools for Schools program. Sponsored by WXOW and SSE Music, the Tools for Schools program helps one deserving teacher or class each month purchase the supplies they need for their classroom.
Gretchen says that the money will go towards purchasing textbooks for the new common core curriculum. These new educational standards require new and different resources than what Eagle Bluff currently has available. For example, Gretchen’s students get to learn about graphic novels this year but none of the 5th grade teachers have one. So instead of making hundreds of trips to the library or forcing her students to learn without the tools they need, Gretchen looked for outside the box methods of getting new textbooks.
Gretchen isn’t the only one excited about the new school supplies. She says her students are ecstatic about the new books and technology. They get to help their teacher choose what books to purchase and which titles to get. For fun and a math lesson, the kids also calculated how much money each of them would get if they split the $300 (it would be $16, but from the sound of things, they are more excited for the new books).
The fifth graders at Eagle Bluff also learned a lot about persuasive arguments by watching their teacher apply for the grant and Gretchen isn’t done with her creative thinking. As part of their lesson on persuasive writing, her students wrote essays to their Parent-Teacher-Student Organization to convince them to donate their extra money to Eagle Bluff. They are also learning how to debate and are currently preparing for a legislative debate with Senator Shilling and myself later this week.
Congratulations to you and your students, Gretchen! Keep up the good work and continue to be a Hometown Hero.
Hometown Hero is a weekly feature put together by Rep. Steve Doyle (D-Onalaska). If you have any suggestions of a Hometown Hero, send a short description of why you think this person should be a Hometown Hero and contact information of both you and the nominee to rep.doyle@legis.wisconsin.gov.