Elementary education major Diana Boomsma wins McGraw Award
May 07, 2020
Photo by Craig Schreiner | Written by Craig Schreiner
Diana Boomsma, a senior elementary education student at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, is the recipient of the McGraw Award for Student Excellence, the university’s top student award. Boomsma, a nontraditional student who will graduate in December 2020, is married and the mother of a one-year-old.
Boomsma attended Madison College and UW-Platteville before becoming a Warhawk. She also held positions as an assistant director at Madison School and Community Recreation in Madison and as a caregiver for seniors. Being a caregiver for her own nieces and nephews and working at MSCR sparked her interest in teaching, after considering fields as diverse as medicine and culinary arts. Her goal is to become a professor of education.
“I plan on using my education and life experiences to teach other aspiring teachers how to address the needs of emergent bilingual students,” she said. “We are a nation where English is not the only spoken language.”
At UW-Whitewater, she was a recipient of the Dr. Ernella S. Hunziker Scholarship, a scholarship for returning women students at UW-Whitewater. She was also a McNair Scholar, conducting undergraduate research and exhibiting her project on bilingual education in the 2019 UW System Research in the Rotunda event at the State Capitol in Madison.
“She was a joy to teach,” said Laura Porterfield, an associate professor of educational foundations who was Boomsma’s faculty undergraduate research mentor. “She is modest and interested in doing the work it takes to better the lives of others.”
As part of her research, Boomsma did a three-week field study observing the writing ability and peer interaction of six bilingual students at Lincoln Elementary School in Whitewater. Her undergraduate research on emergent bilingual learners was accepted by Johns Hopkins University as part of a symposium.
Raised speaking Laotian at home in Madison, Boomsma feels her own years as a bilingual speaker learning with English-speaking children — experiences that were both positive and negative — inspired her to think about educating student teachers.
She explains that teachers are tasked with creating an environment where they are welcoming but don’t play favorites, and where they are cognizant of how classroom experiences affect relationships students have with their peers, friends and even family.
She said students from immigrant families have an opportunity to be bilingual and to stay connected with their cultural roots. Positive experiences at school can help make that possible.
“The parents (of recent immigrants) may not teach their children their own language because they don’t want them to struggle in school,” said Boomsma. “But people like me, we want to hold onto our culture.”
Boomsma wants to train student teachers in best teaching practices in order to help emergent bilingual students in pre-kindergarten through middle school. She plans to study curriculum and instruction in graduate school and then do a doctoral study in order to become a college professor in a school of education.
Living as a nontraditional student both requires and teaches discipline.
“You definitely can’t procrastinate,” she said. “Commuting to campus, managing children and being a caregiver are all things in my life outside of school.”
She commuted twice-weekly to UW-Whitewater before classes transitioned to remote learning in spring 2020. Her husband Jake is still working. She cares for older family members, including her father, who is recovering after receiving a kidney transplant. She reports he is doing well and enjoying time with his grandson, Deakin.
For the busy parent, caregiver and scholar, education is a people business that starts with kindness.
“You don’t know the battles people are going through,” she said. “You cannot change people but you can change your own opinions. If students are having a hard time at home, you can try to see it from their perspective.”
“I think after the pandemic, people will have a greater appreciation for teachers.”