Haley Elmendorf, “The ACCESS Collection at UWM”
Mentor: Tania Mertzman Habeck, Teaching & Learning
Asset-based Cultural Competence Ensuring Student Success (ACCESS) is a U.S. Department of Education SEED Grant which allowed University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) to partner with 12 Milwaukee Public Schools to focus on the implementation of Culturally Based Practices (CBP) in teaching and learning. As the ACCESS grant period comes to a close, there is a need to ensure that high quality, culturally responsive materials developed over the course of the grant are sustained and accessible to educators in our community. We are working to create the ACCESS Collection with the Multiliteracies, Languages, and Cultures (MLC) Resource Library at UWM. Our research focuses on understanding the needs and current habits of educators and pre-service educators at UWM and Milwaukee Public Schools. Specifically, we will gain insight into how and where educators and pre-service educators currently access curricular materials, as well as the materials’ perceived cultural relevancy, quality, and validity to the urban education environment. Data is collected through anonymous surveys as well as in-depth, semi-structured interviews with both educators and education students. Much of the results from surveys will be analyzed using simple, quantitative frequencies. Themes and big ideas found through interviews will be used qualitatively to inform our final product delivery, including how to best tailor and market the ACCESS Collection to educators in our community. To compile and provide access to the materials created over the ACCESS grant period, we are considering using Libib, a library management service. Other compilation and access methods, such as Linktree, will be evaluated and considered based upon research results. The ACCESS Collection will make space for the benefits of work done through the grant to live on and improve educators’ access to high quality, culturally responsive curriculum materials that are relevant to the urban educational setting and will promote positive student outcomes.
Click the thumbnail below to open the full sized poster in a new tab.
Hello! My name is Haley and I’m a post-baccalaureate student pursuing my Elementary Education license here at UWM. I will be student teaching in the fall and have been conducting this research throughout the Spring semester, 2021. Thank you for taking the time to learn about our project!
Hello Haley! I really enjoyed the format of your poster it was very appealing to my eye. I have never heard of ACCESS before and it’s very interesting how the government partnership with UWM has helped Milwaukee Public Schools with culturally-based practices. I was wondering if you could further expand on what exactly a culturally-based practice?
Hi Kristin! Thank you for your interest in our project and your excellent question. For the purpose of our research, we focused on a definition of culturally-based practices that includes three core tenets:
1. Academic achievement or success
2. Sociopolitical/critical consciousness
3. Cultural competence
These tenets were identified by Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings, formerly of UW-Madison, in the ’90s. We address in our ongoing interviews the fact that this definition has evolved over time and can be viewed through different lenses personal to the practitioner.
Essentially, culturally-based practices recognize and incorporate all students’ varying funds of knowledge and involve learning experiences that are relevant to all students’ lives.