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Who We Are
Wisconsin Teachers of Local Culture (WTLC) is a vibrant network of committed local culture educators that includes classroom teachers, administrators, museum educators, librarians, and cultural resource specialists. This network provides support in the areas of curriculum development, teaching, resource identification, communication, and advocacy.
Special Opportunity!
Making It Home: A Wisconsin Cultural Tour for K-12 Teachers.
Wisconsin Teachers
of Local Culture is planning
new cultural tours for summer 2008 in cooperation with the UW-Madison's
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, the Wisconsin Arts
Board and the Wisconsin Humanities Council. See
tour details here...
For more information contact Debbie Kmetz at (608) 262-8180. Think about joining us this coming summer!
Past tours:
2007 Here
at Home: A Wisconsin Cultural Tour for K-12 Teachers
More cultural tours and projects
Membership
Membership is open to anyone interested in supporting local cultural studies. To become a member, send your name, institutional affiliation, address, phone number, and email address to Debbie Kmetz, Wisconsin Teachers of Local Culture, c/o Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, 901 University Bay Drive, Madison, WI 54705.
WTLC History
WTLC has long been the dream of several Wisconsin folklorists who are deeply involved with local culture and curricula. To help make that dream a reality, twelve educators who work in school districts, classrooms, public agencies, and private non-profits came together in September 2003 for a planning meeting at Folklore Village in Dodgeville. We spent an energizing day visioning what WTLC might become, what services it might provide, and what our first gathering might entail.Visions for WTLC
Those who gathered in September 2003 envisioned that:
WTLC can be a community of
educators of all subject areas and grade levels that provides inspiration,
support and delight through its exchange of ideas and resources.
WTLC can help uncover what
is so familiar that it’s unseen – our local cultural lives.
Local culture resides in our relations with the local environment and
landscapes, in our local music and artistic expressions, in our community’s history and contemporary social issues,
and in our family’s stories. WTLC can enable PK-16 educators to
recognize local culture and then help their students understand what being
a social creature is all about, to understand their own cultural depth,
and develop a respect for the deep and broad cultures of others as lived
locally.
| Local
culture has connections to all aspects of the curriculum, including
|
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| •art, music, theater, | |
| •geography, history, sociology, economics, political science, psychology, anthropology, folklore, | |
| •reading, writing, speaking, listening, | |
| •foreign languages, English as a second language, | |
| •media and technology, international education, | |
| •natural history and environmental education. | |
By
uncovering the connections between local culture and the curriculum, WTLC
can enable teachers to create integrated lessons that are linked with
academic standards and that allow broad contextualization of specific
knowledge. By examining various local cultures in Wisconsin, WTLC can
provide teachers with resources to address social tensions and cultural
opportunities that arise from changing demographics in their communities.
WTLC
can become a home for like-minded educators who may feel isolated in their
particular teaching situation. Through various means of supporting each
other, WTLC can be the hub through which Wisconsin educators connect with
others who are committed to including local cultural studies in their
teaching and outreach. WTLC also can be a united voice that advocates
for public understanding and recognition of the value of local cultural
studies.
Local Culture Resources and Projects from Wisconsin Educators!
Wisconsin Folks
Wisconsin Folks invites upper elementary students and their teachers to meet outstanding traditional and ethnic artists in Wisconsin. Learn about each artist and the traditions that inform their creations. Learn through text, images, audio, video and interactive games.
Dane County Cultural Tour
The extensive website Dane County Cultural Tour documents the 2001-02
year-long project by Mark Wagler's 4th/5th grade class. See the people and places they visited in the rural and urban areas of Dane County. Read the students' reflections and descriptive essays. See their drawings and photos. Use the assignments created by Mark Wagler that he used during the course of the project.
Hmong Cultural TourAnother extensive website by Mark Wagler's 4th/5th grade class, the Hmong Cultural Tour documents their exploration of Hmong communities throughout Wisconsin. Created through a year-long project in 2002-3, the Hmong Cultural Tour was part of the research relied upon by the Madison Children's Museum in the production of the "Hmong at Heart" exhibit.
Field Guide to Hmong Culture 
Field Guide to Hmong Culture is a comprehensive resource created in association with the Madison Children Museum's "Hmong at Heart" exhibit.
Written by Dia Cha, Mai Zong Vue, and Steve Carmen, it is produced by the Madison Children's Museum.
Kids' Guide to Local Culture
The Kids' Guide to Local Culture provides elementary students with
kid-friendly strategies for investigating the cultural content of their own
communities. Use it to explore different cultural elements such as power, aesthetics, beliefs, and occupations. This resource is published by the Madison Children's Museum.
Teachers' Guide to Local Culture
The Teachers' Guide to Local Culture is the companion to the Kids' Guide. After a detailed introduction that covers topics from pedagogy to practical matters, the guide gives several lesson plans on topics such as home remedies, rites of passage, storytelling and foodways. This resource is published by the Madison Children's Museum.
Park Street Cultural Tour
See the results of Mark Wagler's 4th/5th grade students' exploration of the
cultures of Park Street in Madison. Read their observations of the people and places along this main thoroughfare near Randall Elementary.
Wisconsin Weather Stories
The Wisconsin Weather Stories website provides K-12 units on the science and stories of Wisconsin
weather.
This interdisciplinary curriculum was produced through a partnership between the Wisconsin Arts Board, UW-Madison atmospheric scientists and folklorists, and five classroom teachers from across the state.
Wisconsin History Lesson Plans
Find teacher-developed lesson plans about Wisconsin state and local
history from the Wisconsin Historical Society's Office of School Services. These lessons offer creative ideas at both the elementary and secondary levels.
Bridging Cultural Gaps
Displaced by a civil war beginning in 1991, Somali refugees have moved to the Twin Cities in large numbers. Many have continued on to Barron to work in the Jennie'O Turkey Store. The population of Barron is now about 15% Somali, a big change for this small town. This lesson was developed by Barron Area School District 's ESL coordinator Kim Frandsen and ESL aide Esa Kohi to bridge cultural divides between students. The ESL students involved were Somali, Kenyan, and Mexican. Materials they used include a "What does it mean to me?" cultural self-questionnaire and interview questions ESL students used for interviewing American-born students.
Family Treasures, Family Pottery
Barron School District art teacher Jean Waters explored family pottery and ceramics in this engaging project with elementary students. The project was based around the idea that every family has items that embody family culture. Families tell stories about how they acquired these items. Children learn a family's traditions for when and how to use these treasures and to identify decorative symbols and designs as reflecting their heritage. See student work, a letter sent home about the project, and a worksheet students used to identify their family treasure.
Outdoor Project Facililty
When Northwoods Community Elementary School in Harshaw was preparing to add a structure to their outdoor classroom, they looked to community members with local knowledge to perfect the design and use plans. This project outlines how second grade teacher Tami Marten involved her students in the planning through interviews with school custodian and local expert Rick Rudis. Through this service learning project, the students researched best designs, made a scale model, and presented their recommendations to the school's governing council. Find the interview questionnaire they used and the design for the outdoor project facility.
Traditional Birdhouses
Who are the people you interact with every day who have tremendous local knowledge? How do they embody local culture? Third grade teacher Kelli Jacobi and her students at Northwoods Community Elementary School in Harshaw explored those questions when they recruited school custodian Rick Rudis to help them build birdhouses appropriate to their northwoods environment.
Rhinelander Cultural Tour 2004
Culture is right in our own backyards. We don't need to go further than the end of our own street to meet someone fascinating who can inform and delight with their local knowledge. These fifth grade students discovered this as they created a cultural tour for the Wisconsin Teachers of Local Culture inaugural conference held in 2004 in Rhinelander. They led the attendees on the tour and then presented a session with their teacher, Gifted and Talented Coordinator Kristin Larsen, on how they did it. Find a slide show that documents how the class created the tour, a fieldwork permission slip for students, and a list of "out-takes." The out-takes are places that were intriguing but didn't make it into the final tour.
Rhinelander Cultural Tour 2005
In the 2004-05 school year, Kristin Larsen was a classroom teacher in Northwoods Community Secondary School, a newly opened charter school in Rhinelander. She and a group of her sixth grade students embarked on developing a Rhinelander Cultural Tour, again designed for the Wisconsin Teachers of Local Culture conference, to be held in Rhinelander in June 2005.
Music and Culture
Shorewood High School Spanish teacher Mary Pat Clausen led several projects that connected her students with local Latino culture. They interviewed Spanish speakers in Shorewood and hosted artist in residence Julio Pabon, a Milwaukee-based Puerto Rican drummer.
M.O.S.T. Exploring Delavan
Bilingual and bicultural teacher Sonia Lee serves as advisor to Project M.O.S.T. middle and high school student leaders in the Delavan/Darien schools.
During the 2005 and 2006 academic years, the M.O.S.T. students explored the local culture of Delavan, interviewing community residents and visiting interesting sites.
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures Home Page