By ERIN HOPKINS

Staff Writer

Tech’s College of Education has received a grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help with funding toward Project ELEVATE: Effective Learning Experiences Via Active Teaching Enhancement.

The money from the grant will provide for any materials needed to help accomplish the project's goal. According to a grant statement for Project ELEVATE, there is a need to assist Louisiana teachers in their efforts to help all of their students improve academically.

Dr. Cathy Stockton, an associate dean of graduate studies and research and a professor of curriculum, instruction, and leadership, said Project ELEVATE is designed to assist teachers in educating their students with disabilities, primarily blindness in fourth to eighth grade.

"This is the day and age of the No Child Left Behind Act," Stockton said.

"Our special-needs children and students without any disabilities have to take the same standardized tests and we are going to have to make sure that those children will not get left behind.”

Stockton said Project ELEVATE is geared toward helping classroom teachers to improve on teaching math skills to students with disabilities.

"There are many projects already that help these students with reading and language skills, but not many that help with their math skills," Stockton said. Stockton said the project includes several different objectives to accomplish this goal, such as to increase collaborations among school districts and facilities around Ruston, to identify professional developmental needs of teachers, to identify the needs of the teachers in their subject matter knowledge, to better assist teachers in preparing their students for standardized tests and to create opportunities for parental involvement.

Dr. Walt Buboltz, director of training of the doctoral and program counseling psychology, said this project is also a good opportunity for Tech to get involved with the community's schools and is different from other projects in one major way.

"With this project we are asking the teachers what needs improvement in their classrooms," Buboltz said. "Most of the time it is mainly classroom management that needs improving."

Dr. Ron Ferguson, an assistant director of the Professional Development and Research Institute on Blindness, said the project will work mainly with the teachers.

"We are going to be surveying the special education teachers and what the issues are they need to dealing with," Ferguson said.

He said workshops will be created based on those surveys to help the teachers in the areas needed. Some workshops already have been planned, such as behavior management, assessing the skills of the students and parent training.

"We see here at the institute a need for projects like this," Ferguson said.

"It's taken too long to take action, and we need to begin addressing this need before we can no longer do anything about it."