AAE Mini-grant program supports area teachers

<blockquote><p align=justify>LOUISIANA La. - Many people are aware of the Acadiana Educational Endowment’s support of teachers through its mini-grant program. The AEE is involved in other impressive projects that may not be as well known. Bob Hamm talked with Joseph N. Abraham, M.D., president, about the extensive work of the organization on behalf of quality public education.

Question: When and why was the AEE founded?

Answer: In 1989, when Alfred Lamson and Ray Authement were building the UL Foundation. A group of us asked, “What good does it do to build a great university, when our public schools are struggling to give children a basic education?”

Q: What is the motivation for your work?

A: Our board members love Acadiana, and we love our young people. So many communities try to look successful, and overlook the foundations of success. Community success is a slow, multigenerational effort, and progress is always about education.

Q: All progress is about education?

A: Always. It doesn’t matter what we need, a better citizen, a hardier workforce, a stronger economy, a more powerful military, reduced crime, decreased poverty, a healthier spiritual life. There is only one solution: education.


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Q: How does this translate to the AEE’s work with teachers?

A: It’s strange. Everybody “knows” that education is critical, and so, educators are essential. But little is being done about producing educators, recruiting the strongest students to

the profession, preparing them for their mission, and keeping them energized and growing in their work. One of the focuses of the AEE in the near future will be to look at better supporting and improving our colleges of education.

Q: What are some of the AEE’s accomplishments?

A: To date, we have awarded $170,000 in mini-grants to our public schools, and we are about to distribute another $20,000. Those mini-grants, $1,000 or less, have given teachers an introduction to grant writing and grant application. In another program, we became aware that many of our children do not experience the rich cultural life of Acadiana, so we created a Web site, CajunFun.com and a free fax page of the same name listing local activities. Currently, the fax page has over 1,500 subscribers. As an auxiliary service to CajunFun, we have created two free e-newsletters, UL Today and UL This Week, to keep people on and off campus informed of University offerings (readers can subscribe at www.ULToday.com). We have also established a $20,000 endowment with the UL Foundation for teachers to attend UL France. And we have made donations to the Children’s Museum of Acadiana, the Children’s Concert Series for the Acadiana Symphony, as well as to the Acadiana Youth Symphony. Our donation to the Youth Symphony, in fact, created the AYS Foundation.

Q: What areas are served by the AEE?

A: The AEE itself serves the eight parishes of Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary and Vermilion. However, we have recently created a subsidiary, The American Public School Endowments which will serve the entire United States. To generate funds for that expanded mission, we have also created the e-commerce Web site, booksXYZ.com. In fact, we are having a press conference this Thursday to lay out the particulars about APSE and booksXYZ.

Q: What do you see as the largest challenges to public education today?

A: Well, certainly everyone recognizes the funding problems. But the AEE is also interested in looking at the process of education itself. Our entire educational system is still largely based on medieval ideas, and the outdated concept that information — a book — is rare and expensive. First, consider that a teacher “lectures” (“reads”) some text or notes, while students copy it. Second and from that, we emphasize memorization rather than critical thinking. Third, the structure of the textbook, particularly the reference text, lead us to teach in highly organized, orderly ways, when it is clear that all of us — from toddler to cutting-edge researcher — learn best in less organized, “need-to-know” situations.
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