Miss Mary Summers  has been teaching for 12 years, all of which have been with the Eleva-Strum District. Her favorite part about her job is watching students succeed. Whether it is on the court during a basketball or volleyball game, watching the dance team compete at state, on stage for the annual musical or in the classroom, she loves to be a part of students’ successful moments.

Currently, Miss Summers is teaching numerous classes so she has a lot of different things that her students are working on, depending on their class level. In her junior English class, students are learning about the Holocaust and the literature used during the Holocaust. Her freshman English class is just wrapping up a unit on Romeo and Juliet.  English 10 just finished their unit on To Kill a Mockingbird. She has plans to end the year with an essay project for each grade.

By the end of the school year, Miss Summers hopes that the students in her classroom will be able to accomplish the goals that they have set for themselves by becoming stronger essay writers. She hopes that the juniors will have a better understanding of what happened during the Holocaust and will be able to relate the historical literature types to modern-day literature types.  

Miss Summers is still very excited about the DLI taking place at Eleva-Strum. She said, “I feel very blessed to work in a school where this is an option for our students. The excitement has yet to wear off for me yet!” Her students use their technology every day by logging on to their computers right away when they come in to complete their bell work. Some of her classes have begun to use Edmodo (an online course management program), and she has big plans to use it more next year. Miss Summers uses the technology to communicate homework assignments with her students via email, and she has had to make far less copies of assignments this year by doing so. She projects pictures and passages from her textbook to the screen in the front of her room for students to view by using her projector and document camera. Recently, Miss Summers has begun to use GarageBand to read aloud passages to students who have difficulty reading, allowing them to follow along with her.

Miss Summers realized that at the beginning of the year most of her students were very uncomfortable with the new technology because it was new and they seemed to be worried. Now, she says they are much more comfortable and are even trying out many of the more difficult programs to see if they can produce higher-quality assignments for their classes!

Written by Ali Lorenz

Mrs. Stephenie Ebsen is currently in her first year in the Eleva-Strum School District as a teacher and Food Service Director at Central. Mrs. Ebsen just began teaching two new classes—Scandinavian Studies and Living Skills—and is excited about both because not only will she be able to teach her students about their community’s heritage, but will also be learning about her own at the same time. Her goals include initiating an evolution in her students’ knowledge of themselves, their families, and their communities while helping them understand where they are, where they have been, and where they are going in their future.

Mrs. Ebsen enjoys several things about teaching: having the chance to make a difference for one student or many, being a part of shaping students’ futures, and creating menus for the breakfast and lunch programs will ultimately be healthier than the processed foods we usually eat.

So far, Mrs. Ebsen has been content with the DLI’s (Digital Learning Initiative) impact on her classes this year because it makes the information her students are learning about more accessible. For most of the students, having the technology on hand has been a positive experience. Although she has encountered a few problems with keeping some students on track, she is pleased with the overall response and accomplishments her students have had with the devices.

Mrs. Ebsen is also Eleva-Strum’s FCCLA advisor. In FCCLA, she teaches students to be leaders in their school and community. Right now, FCCLA members are working on their STAR events (Students Taking Action for Recognition). They will be competing with their STAR events at Regionals in February at UW-Stout. If they receive gold at Regionals, they will advance to the State competition, which is held at the Kalahari in the Wisconsin Dells in April. Mrs. Ebsen says, “It is great to see students getting excited about their futures while they prepare for these events!"

Written by Ali Lorenz

Ms. Megan Leis is one of two high school math teachers at Central. She is in her third year here and teaches several classes including Geometry, Statistics, Pre-Calculus, and Advanced Placement Calculus. Ms. Leis enjoys the new and exciting challenges that are brought to her classroom each day, but she appreciates the interactions with her students the most; she loves to help them learn new things and grasp new concepts.

Right now in Statistics, students are collecting data and using spreadsheets to organize their calculations and analyze their information on their MacBooks. Students in AP Calculus are discussing rates of change (such as velocity and acceleration) and learning how to use and solve for derivatives in different situations during a problem. Geometry students are learning about similar shapes, Pre-Calculus students are using exponential and logarithmic equations to solve for things like interest.

Ms. Leis is very excited about the DLI (Digital Learning Initiative) and believes that the technology has allowed teachers to incorporate more applicable and exciting things into their lessons through interminable options. She has found new ways to present the material she needs to teach to her students by using her iPad. Using an application called Notability, she is able to project the information on her iPad to a screen in the front of the room so everyone has a clear view of what they need to take notes on.

To send out quizzes or post notes and videos, Ms. Leis uses an online learning community called Edmodo. Students can access this website at any time to catch up from being absent, watch the lesson and take notes, and come prepared to class the next day. She also uses it for “flipped classrooms,” in which students learn the material at home by watching the videos and taking notes; they then come to class the next day to discuss and complete homework. This has been working very well, especially in Ms. Leis’s upper level classes.

Ms. Leis thinks that students enjoy teaching methods that include technology and prefer them for the most part. She finds that they are finding other ways to help themselves discover new things and are implementing those discoveries into becoming better students.

 Written by Ali Lorenz