(THE PICKET)—Kappa Delta Pi, the education honors society, will be receiving four awards at Convocation, an international professional conference specifically for Kappa Delta Pi members, along with presenting two of their chapter projects.
Shepherd’s Kappa Delta Pi chapter will be receiving a program award for community service for the pen pal program this chapter runs as part of KDP’s national campaign, Literacy Alive. The chapter is only one in seven to receive this award this year.
KDP will also be receiving the Program Award for Professional Development for the department-wide professional development days. The chapter is one in seven to receive this award as well this year.
Along with these two awards, they will be receiving a Phoenix Award for chapter improvement, only one of four to receive this award this year, and Chelsea Wilson will be receiving a reward for her role as Kappa Delta Pi’s vice president. Dr. LeAnn Johnson, the academic advisor for KDP at Shepherd, nominated Wilson for that reward because of her distinguished leadership.
Both the pen pals project and the professional development project will be presented at a poster session at Convocation. The conference will be held in Orlando from Oct. 22 to 24.
In support of Kappa Delta Pi’s national initiative, Literacy Alive, Shepherd’s chapter conducts a pen pal program. This program pairs a college student with a third or fourth grade student.
The program is intended to improve elementary students’ vocabulary and writing skills. For this goal, many Shepherd pen pals would include a “word of the day” at the end of their letter and ask the student to use that word in their reply.
It is also intended to get and keep them interested in literacy, according to Caroline Kirkpatrick, the Literacy Alive coordinator for Shepherd’s KDP chapter.
The pen pal program was started over the 2014 to 2015 academic school year with a third grade class at Ranson Elementary School and a fourth grade class at Orchard View Intermediate School. The Shepherd pen pal writes to the student pen pal he or she is paired with on a monthly basis.
When deciding on a chapter idea for the Literacy Alive initiative, the pen pal program was decided on for two reasons.
First, students are more motivated when what they are learning is grounded in their reality.
“As teachers, we know that if we can situate learning opportunities in real world authentic contexts, student motivation and engagement increases. By giving young students a real person to write to, we provided this context so that students would look forward to writing,” Dr. Johnson said.
Second, many students in the area grow up in households where no one has attended college and many of those students believe that college is not even an option. With a pen pal providing them with information about college and studying, KDP hoped that the students would believe that college is an option for them, as well.
“Most students report to their pen pals that they have read at least one, if not more, books during the duration of the program. That is really what our program is aiming for, to encourage students to start reading,” Kirkpatrick said.
“The students (are excited about) having a positive role model and someone who can give them advice and expand their vocabulary,” Wilson said.
“One teacher commented that she had not been able to get one of her students to write more than one sentence at a time all year but he produced a page and a half letter for his pen pal and couldn’t wait to hear back and write the next letter,” Dr. Johnson said.
The pen pal project will be presented by Caroline Kirkpatrick, Jordyn Marion, Sarah Kidwell and Chelsea Wilson.
The professional development project will be presented by Mikaela Wesmiller and Bradley Davidson, the chapter president. It will be a poster presentation about professional development efforts made by Kappa Delta Pi to improve further teacher education, said Mikaela Wesmiller.
Keegan Brewster is a staff writer for The Picket. She can be reached at kbrews01@rams.shepherd.edu and followed on Twitter @keequinnb