Contact School District of La Crosse
807 East Avenue South
La Crosse, Wisconsin 54601
(608) 789-7600
https://www.lacrosseschools.org/

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I had the opportunity to be a part of your rebuilding for learning and it's in an initiative that I know that the school District of La Crosse had for quite a few years. A chance for teachers to get together and explain some of the things they're doing to some of the other teachers. That way the teachers can all can learn from each other exactly. So we really established a connection between the school District of La Crosse and employees from the county employees from the city and what we were really trying to accomplish with that the organization was once really happening. How can we best support our students, our families, what we've seen. I think over the last few years is that we do have more and more of our students living in crisis. Actually, sometimes at home for various reasons, very complicated reason sometimes and sometimes in navigating those crises really involves a lot of different individuals including social workers, including child protective services, etc. and so what we really try to do in the first few years of rebuilding for learning was to bring together individuals we've had about 100 2025 people at our first one and it really was to bring together individuals from the city and the County and the school district and just have face-to-face meetings and build relationships with one another so that when it is time for us to have a discussion about a certain situation that we all should be involved with and supporting a family and supporting a child that is not the first time we've had a discussion with each other. We recognize faces. We recognize voices and we can get past those sub pleasantries and really get into the challenges that might be existing so that we can best help a child and get that child back on the right track again and so it started as a small group about 120 people last year. I think it was 1400 and we are a La Crosse Center and so we had our staff there several concurrent sessions about a myriad of different issues and challenges that were experiencing center classrooms in our community. All of these things are so intertwined and just having a good opportunity to visit with one another about that and also to gain knowledge from others. Send some experts in the field so that we can do our jobs better and I'm wondering Randy if a lot of community members don't realize we do have a group of kids that are homeless in a group of kids that are maybe writing a couch and are at a friend's house rather than having a home to go to because it that they're not getting along with their families or that their living in the car somewhere because they don't have a place to go. Actually, we've talked about school safety a little bit before Bob and I think that what's unfortunate is that for many of our students. School is the safest place in the life it's the place for them to be is the place were they feel safest all the time because outside of school, they're not always sure sure about their own safety. Sometimes whether it's a difficult living situation that their involvement or whether it's of friends who really aren't so much friends along the way and so these are some of the things we try better to understand. We really have been working hard to better understand the cultural pieces that come alongside of the solid instruction and making sure that everyone is welcome everyone has a role of the inclusive practices that are teachers are really trying to also better understand how do we work to make sure every single child is valued every child who somehow is marginalized in our community. Our job in public education is to un-marginalize it goes deeper than just while here, let's take another test store here. Let's do this intervention on reading or mathematics, let's address some of these challenges here so that you can do better but common theme has been a trauma informed care trauma informed understanding what it means to help a kid what it means to be a teacher who is better understanding of trauma informed of what it means for us ourselves as educators along the way. That's been a common theme just about through every one of these except we ask a different nuances each time we understand better how culture tolerates how socioeconomics impacts that particular piece and so these are important things for us as educators and now is the time for our schools also for our parents to be together and how we support our children how we build the character how we ensure that our students are better understanding the challenges that they own face that they face right now because of more we do that now, the better we understand each other. Right now, the better chance a child has somewhere down the road to really be a productive citizen that they really stand out to be already. This is help the child to be an individual no interest to be okay for some students, not to be successful when it comes time to take tests and/or other ways that we measure success along the way but some is not okay anymore. It has to be 100% of our students in order to do that we have to work with students at that individual level lesson mathematics and reading once more and other factors that are going on though in the life of the child and how we might be able to support or mitigate the edits to these partnerships and are rebuilding for learning efforts in connecting dots with several different entities and educators that we have a much better chance to focus on the individual child as opposed to depending on a system of standardization that has never met the needs of every child