LAFAYETTE, La. – Vermilionville, The College of Education at UL Lafayette and the Lafayette Parish School System have teamed up to prepare student-teachers for life in the classroom. That partnership is called V.E.E.P., the Vermilionville Education Enrichment Partnership. The program benefits not only the teachers-in-training, but also Lafayette Parish students.
Students majoring in Education at UL and who are about to graduate from their studies tour the village and learn about the history and the culture of the area. The UL students then set up a hands-on activity at different locations around the park. Based on their experiences, future teachers develop interactive lesson plans. It gives them an opportunity to implement their lesson plans, see how effective they are once they’re in action and how agile they are in adjusting for different learners.
On Monday, UL Education majors presented their lessons on social studies and English/language arts to 140 eighth-grade students from Lafayette Middle.
“They’re really curious about what’s going on,” said Toby Daspit, Associate Professor of Education at UL. “I think it gives them an opportunity to reflect on things that sometimes, inside the schoolhouse, we don’t have as much time to do. So to sort of get away for a day and really spend time thinking about our local history and culture.”
They create lessons and then those go into a pile that teachers in the Acadiana region and throughout the world can use as well and so in the future students can also learn from those lessons that they worked hard to create.
