(Vol. 1, No. 2 - Spring/Summer 1997)

Louisville Teacher Cadre Profile: Peg Hourigan

Peg Hourigan never sits still, in her classroom or in her life. She gave up an initial career in hotel management because she didn't want to move around as much as it required, but ever since she became a teacher, she has kept moving -- from special education, to social studies, to science, and from elementary to middle grades.

Standards-based reforms convinced Hourigan to re-evaluate her teaching at Kammerer Middle School. "I've thrown out things that didn't work because I realized they didn't fit with standards," she says. New to science classrooms, she assigns herself a lot of homework. "When I do lesson plans, I write down the core content that I want to cover, I look at national and district standards and benchmarks to know if I am on the right track," she explains.

Content and performance standards are good for her 8th graders, Hourigan believes. Initially, she questioned the district's heavy emphasis on KIRIS-style open response questions in science (they require students to draw on their knowledge of a subject to write short answers to questions, rather than simply choose from a list of answers), but Hourigan eventually bought into the idea because they "give kids a road map, a guideline, on how to organize their thinking."

Hourigan believes one of the reasons she was chosen to be a cadre teacher is because she emphasizes performance assessments in her classrooms. Students conduct laboratory experiments at least once a week, and her classroom overflows with projects that require performance. Colorful, unique models of atoms, for example, hang from the ceiling. Her students not only constructed the models but had to describe the element they chose to the whole class "without using notes."

Her teaching style is more like a coach, asking lots of questions, showing students how to take organized notes, and linking her instruction to what's ahead. Now that the KIRIS science tests have shifted from the eighth to the seventh grade, Hourigan wants "to help the seventh grade teachers as much as possible."

Hourigan worries about changes in her students' lives--the fast pace they live in, the media influences, and their lack of exercise. But, "my biggest fear," she says, "is not getting enough into those little brains!"

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