Bethel Park educators speak at national conference about WQED partnership
Kids will be kids, as it is often believed.
And so speaking at a national conference represented a contrast to the typical day for two educators at Bethel Park’s Abraham Lincoln Elementary School.
“Nobody was asking to go to the bathroom. Nobody was falling out of their seats,” school librarian Denice Pazuchanics said. “They were actually listening, and they cared about what we were saying, too.”
Dawn Douds, left, and Denice Pazuchanics speak at the National Education Telecommunications Association Conference in Washington, D.C.
All joking aside, she and first-grader teacher Dawn Douds have an extended history of working above and beyond for the benefit of students and their families, much of it tied to a successful partnership with WQED.
To share information about the partnership, Douds and Pazuchanics were invited to speak recently at the PBS Kids luncheon as part of the National Education Telecommunications Association Conference in Washington, D.C.
They have been working for about five years with Cathy Cook, WQED manager of education projects, on bringing resources made available through the national Public Broadcast Service to the school.
“She was interested in finding out what kinds of activities we wanted to do and how some of the PBS Kids programs that they already had would fit in,” Pazuchanics said about Cook, the mother of two former Lincoln students. “They were looking to expand to partnerships with schools and local community organizations, and she immediately thought of us.”
PBS Kids supplies resources for programs that involve parents joining their children for a variety of primarily after school endeavors.
“We were supposed to do a family and community learning last spring. The material wasn’t quite ready, so we developed our own that was centered around our Lincoln garden,” Douds said, with the project assisted by a grant through WQED and donations by local businesses. “We kind of based it on the model we had been doing of having the families come in, having them all have dinner together, and then going ahead and doing the activities.”
“That’s how we ended up in Washington, D.C.,” Pazuchanics added.
It seems the folks at PBS are impressed by what takes place at Lincoln, especially with regard to the garden, and they wanted to spread the word to others who could benefit from partnerships between schools and their local public TV stations.
“When we work with WQED, we always talk about scaling: If we do this program, can we do it anywhere? Can anybody do this, at any school, any library?” Douds said.
“That’s another thing we touched on in Washington, D.C. We took what was existing and we scaled it to what we needed. And you can do that, too.”
Lincoln’s garden-based activities included families making worm-composting bins, herb gardens, bird feeders and seed balls to take home and plant.
“There was a cooking piece every week, so the children and the parents could taste different foods and recipes that were based on things that grew in our garden,” Douds said.
The growing continues at Lincoln, with a special school-wide activity taking place in May.
“Every student gets to plant something in the garden, and then families come up throughout the summer to maintain and help us work it. And then we donate everything to SHIM,” Douds reported.
Several local gardens, in fact, benefit the Bethel Park-based South Hills Interfaith Movement, which has three food pantries and is launching a March to Sack Hunger campaign to help keep the shelves stocked.
As for Pazuchanics and Douds, they’re glad to have had the opportunity to tell their story.
“To know that something you’re doing for your kiddos here in this little school is affecting somebody in another city or state, that’s amazing,” Douds said. “It was a great experience.”