Terry Kaldhusdal
Wisconsin Teacher of the Year
Magee Elementary, Genesee Depot
Grade 4, All Subjects

My teaching philosophy
My personal education philosophy is to learn by doing. I remember early in my teaching career, my students and I were reading how a bill becomes a law. Dan, one of my fourth graders, said to me, “Why can’t we just do it?”

“I love that idea,” I said, and my students have been “doing” ever since. When studying government, they think like politicians. They write and vote on bills with “politicians” from other schools and other school districts. When studying history, they think like archeologists. They find an artifact, “dig” for information, create a hypothesis and compare their theory with other “archeologists” from other classrooms. When studying literature, they think like scholars. They author book reviews for Amazon.com. When studying language arts, they think like authors. They take their life stories and create a narrative for the school-wide newspaper. When studying math, they think like statisticians. They draft and trade baseball players while learning fractions, division, and probability.

My philosophy in action
I believe the most important skill I can teach my students is how to think. It’s important they understand that I don’t have all the answers. I ask them to study their answers for logic and reasoning, guess and then check their theories, and bounce their ideas off their classmates. I believe that no one has a monopoly on the truth. I believe my students should question me and challenge me.

My greatest teaching accomplishment
My greatest teaching accomplishment happens every day when I see a student who is struggling light up with a new understanding of a complex idea. After a recent lesson on subtraction algorithms, Bailee, who is both quiet and humble, said, “Mr. Kaldhusdal, I’ve never felt so smart in my whole life.” Bailee had been struggling with subtracting large numbers. I explained there are many ways to subtract numbers, and she needed to find the method that worked best for her. She did, and she now has a new love for mathematics.

I only hope that those moments last a lifetime for each of my students. One of my former fourth graders, who is now a teacher, wrote to me last year with an idea. She was teaching English in France and was struggling to motivate her students. She asked if my students would write a friendly letter to her class. I was honored that she asked. A parent recently called me because her son wanted to quit in the middle of his freshman year of college. “Could you please talk to him,” she said. “He still looks up to you. I think he’ll listen to you.” I was honored to make the call. Last night I received an e-mail from a former student named Michael. He’s a sophomore in college struggling in his mathematics class. Although Michael has a great work ethic, he also has a learning disability. “I feel like all my hard work is making me go in the opposite direction,” he wrote. “If you have any ideas I’d greatly appreciate it.” He’s searching for hope, and I’m honored that he wrote to me.

I measure my accomplishments by my students’ contributions and accomplishments years after I’ve taught them. It’s not about my accomplishments. It’s about my students’ accomplishments. Their contributions to society and their accomplishments are my biggest joy.

The most critical issues facing educators
The global economy and the race to balance our thirst for energy with our need to protect our planet has placed a new emphasis on our public education system. While there is an abundance of educational issues facing the nation, including accountability, funding, and recruiting qualified teachers, the issue that covers all of these is the widening achievement gap. The gap in performance between disadvantaged and privileged students is growing. The chasm continues to swell despite efforts across the country to reverse the trend.

What I know best is what I see in my home state of Wisconsin. Standard and Poor’s recently reported that only one school in Wisconsin is beginning to close the achievement gap between black and white students. While this one school has narrowed the gap, they still have a 25 percent differential in math scores between the races.

As a coordinator of the Southeastern Wisconsin Young Authors Conference at the Milwaukee Art Museum, I’ve seen the divide in achievement first hand. Many of the inner city Milwaukee and Chicago students come to the conference lagging behind their suburban white cohorts. Students at the conference are grouped in small teams within their grade level. While the grade levels are the same, the homes and schools of the students are not. The conference allows all students to make many connections. They connect to the art and connect with students outside of their community. They learn to work with students who see the world in a different way, enriching their own narrative masterpiece. While the stories written by the inner city students are far more dramatic then their suburban contemporaries, the writing does not meet traditional standards of proficiency.

From a classroom perspective, the solutions reach across a school’s community. It would start with standardized testing, but the current framework is useless to a classroom teacher. In my school, testing begins in October, just over one month after students first walk into the classroom. Sometimes, I receive the results weeks before they leave me for the joys of summer.

Today, standardized tests are used as a financial hammer to penalize “bad” schools, instead of an instructional tool to help teachers find those students in need. This must change. Best teaching practices state that an assessment is only effective if the results are communicated quickly. What’s true for the classroom is true for my state and our country.

Ways to resolve this issue
To close the achievement gap, failing school environments must change. Students, teachers, administrators, and the community must believe that each student can succeed. They must have high standards and make those expectations clear. The change must include more than content. The change must also include repairing a school’s practices.

Students must feel engaged to succeed, and there’s no universal remedy. What motivates my students one year, may fall flat the next. There’s no cookie-cutter solution to reach every student every day. Educational policy must be flexible to allow creativity to flourish. While testing and interpreting data is a science, teaching is an art; policy must reflect the creative, out-of-the-box thinking good teaching requires. I’m responsible for a failing student in my classroom. Each year, I must find what moves my students, and each year, the answer changes. A school community must be willing to change and change quickly, based on its current population.

To close the gap, students must also connect with an adult in the building. Students must have at least one adult they can trust and lean on. Students who are latchkey children, or who worry about their next meal, or who worry for their safety, need to connect to an adult at school.

My first goal in my class is to build a positive environment around trust. This process takes minutes for some and months for others, but in the end, it’s important that they trust their classmates and me. A good teacher is an instructor, a counselor, a tutor, a coach, a friend, a mentor. Schools must be flexible enough to allow those relationships to build.
Quality teachers are the first line of defense for closing the achievement gap. However, studies have shown that too many teachers, especially those in low-achieving schools, are not qualified. Teachers trained in their content area who have mastered content strategies unquestionably affect student achievement. We must make it easier for those who want to dedicate their lives to teaching.

For any of this to happen, our schools need leadership. They need leaders who have vision, who will create a community that sets high expectations, who will lift the instruction, who will monitor the data, and most importantly, who will create an environment that allows alternative plans for those who are in need of help.

One thought to inspire teachers to succeed
Teachers must be willing to face their weaknesses and seek change. What we ask of our students, we must ask of ourselves.

One lesson every student should learn
The first thing I ask my students is this: “What is the most important thing you need to learn this year?” Their answers range from math to reading to writing to history to science, but I tell them that they need to learn how to think, share, and learn. Those who think they know it all will fail to learn, and those who fail to learn will be stuck in the past.

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