Author: Emily Gautreaux

Three Louisiana Educators Receive Nationally-Acclaimed Milken Award

It was recently announced by the Louisiana Department of Education via this news release that educators from Ascension, West Baton Rouge, and Lafayette Parish have each received a $25,000 Milken Educator Award.

The $25,000 Milken Educator Award was awarded by Milken Educator Awards Founder Lowell Milken and Louisiana Superintendent of Education Dr. Cade Brumley to Ascension Public Schools first-grade teacher Elise Frederic, West Baton Rouge Schools fifth-grade teacher Dereka Duncan, and Lafayette Parish third-grade teacher Corrie Campbell. The issuing of these awards is often kept such a close-held secret that recipients do not know that they are in the running for the award until they are visited by the Superintendent and Milken himself.

By design, Milken Educator Awards are bestowed upon early-to-mid career educators for what these teachers have already achieved early on in their careers and “for the promise of what they will accomplish given the resources and opportunities inherent in the Award. In education circles, the Milken Educator Award is known as an immensely high honor, akin to the Academy Awards, as the honor is often referred to as the “Oscars of Teaching.” Being selected for such an award is meant to both “inspire and uplift with the unique stories of educators making a profound difference for students, colleagues, and communities.

Elise Frederic serves as an accomplished first-grade teacher at Lakeside Primary School in Prairieville, Louisiana, and she is described as continually helping “each child set daily goals and pair[ing] students strategically to address their specific needs. Her laser focus on literacy delivers in spades.” In the 2021-2022 School year, more than 90% of Frederic’s students had achieved mastery on district benchmark assessments in English and 70% had achieved mastery in Math.

Lowell Milken commented on Elise Frederic’s success by saying, “virtually all people can name at least one teacher who has had an extraordinary impact on their lives. Elise Frederic is that kind of foundational teacher whose care and compassion have helped shape young learners into future leaders. Equally impressive, Elise is an exceptional instructional role model for her peers in the school, district and broader community.”

Dereka Duncan is a well-regarded fifth-grade science teacher at Cohn Elementary School, and she has reportedly worked on “revamping the fifth grade reading curriculum to align with Louisiana ELA standards.” Because of this commitment, “Cohn has reached an all-time high progress index of 90%, resulting in an A on the growth index score for the first time.”

Superintendent Dr. Cade Brumley said the following about Dereka Duncan: “Students do more than learn science in Dereka Duncan’s class, they participate in experiences that allow them to see themselves as scientists, engineers, and researchers. She is the type of transformational educator who will help move our state forward.

Corrie Campbell passionately teaches both English Language Arts and Social Studies at Green T. Lindon Elementary School in Lafayette Parish. According to LDOE, at Campbell’s previous school in New Iberia Parish, “Campbell created a fourth-grade writing challenge based on the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Students examined characters’ reactions when their rights were threatened, then shared their work with peers for feedback. The writing unit served as an extended lead-up to the Newberry Award writing contest in fifth grade.”

Dr. Brumley commented by saying, “Corrie Campbell has a hands-on approach to teaching that’s resulted in remarkable student growth and achievement. Not only does she focus on reaching every child, but she also serves as a mentor to her colleagues.”

Nationwide, there were up to 40 elementary educators awarded a Milken Educator Award this season. The Milken Awards Initiative has awarded more than $73 million in individual awards and more than $140 million in funding since 1987.

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Inaugural King Cake Festival in Downtown Thibodaux Had Large Turnout

Thibodaux’s inaugural Bayou King Cake Festival had a large turnout as thousands went out to crown the best king cake, according to this article from HoumaToday.

The inaugural Bayou King Cake Festival was held in Downtown Thibodaux at the beginning of February, serving as a festive beginning to the Mardi Gras season. The event, which was hosted by the Lafourche Education Foundation,served as a way for locals to sample and rank a diverse array of locally baked King Cakes, enjoy the Krewe of King Cake Children’s Parade, and listen to live music from Nonc Nu & the Wild Matous.

In total, 28 bakeries competed in the King Cake contest portion of the festival, where visitors voted Slidell’s Sugar Love Bakery the best-in-show. For the past eight years, Sugar Love Bakery has had a ship along Englewood Drive in Slidell, but before that owner and baker Sierra Zerangue ran the business out of her mother’s kitchen for the initial six years.

Sugar Love Bakery was a popular shop at the festival, as they were offering visitors small portions of their “King Cake on a Stick,” which according to Zerangue is the company’s invention along with “King Cake Charcuterie.” This nontraditional charcuterie offering came in the form of a king cake with cups of all the available fillings for dunking.

After Sugar Love Bakery received 183 votes, they were awarded first prize; to which Zerangue said, “it’s amazing, it means a lot to a bakery or any small business.” Second place went to Cut Off’s Cajun Pecan House with 182 votes, and Spahr’s Restaurant finished in third place.

Deanna Lafont is the Executive Director of the Lafourche Education Foundation, and she estimated that since they sold over 2,000 tickets to festival goers in advance, ticket sales along with preorders and scholarships had generated about $50,000 in funds for the Foundation, which will be going towards teacher grants, some festival overhead, and future events.

She went on to comment, “when we were setting the event up, we sold about 700 tickets almost two days before, so we were hoping to get 1,000 people. I think it was just the right time, the right place, the right event, and the right weather. I’m still in shock about how successful the event was.”

The festival had a larger turnout than initially expected; this was due to the fact that festival organizers occupied a section of downtown Thibodaux that’s usually used by Big Boy’s Main Street Cook-Off. Since that festival usually attracts about 1,000 people, Lafont admitted that they’ll need to try and “emulate the Fraternal Order of Police Mudbug Boil-Off because it is a larger event.” This will mean that next year’s event will occupy a larger section of downtown Thibodaux, centered along LA. 1 and Bayou Lafourche, which initially seemed unnecessary for an inaugural event.

Reportedly hundreds of festival goers had stood in line at the two entrances, filling up over two blocks waiting for their king cake samples. Due to the higher-than-expected turnout, many booths and shops were out of king cakes early on. For instance, the Culinary Department of the Lafourche Career Magnet Center saw Kalena Dehart and her coworkers down to seven king cakes from the dozen they brought to the festival within the first hour.

The event was kicked off officially at 1:30 pm with a parade of 15 children-toting wagons and five marching bands marching from the old Capital One building on West 2nd Street to St. Phillip Street and back. Next year, Lafont hopes to organize more events for the children festival goers outside of the parade, saying: “we had the children’s parade, but we’re really talking about having a kids’ area. I would love to see a kids’ king cake baking contest.”

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Crispy and Spicy Maple Wasabi Wing Recipe

Have you ever wanted to create a unique and delicious dish in the comfort of your own home, but thought it was too difficult or time-consuming? Well, fear not! This maple-wasabi wing recipe from Epicurious is proof that you can make an extraordinary meal with only the ingredients found in your average refrigerator. Get ready for some serious flavor explosions – we’ll be combining sticky, spicy, sweet, and salty flavors together in this incredibly tasty recipe.

Ingredients for wing recipe

Directions for wing recipe

  1. In order to start this recipe for delicious maple-wasabi chicken wings, you’ll want to prepare your oven byplacing racks in the upper and lower thirds of your oven. Preheat the oven to 450°F and line two large rimmed baking sheets with aluminum foil and place a wire rack in each one. You should then spray both wire racks withnonstick vegetable oil spray.
  2. Take your chicken wings, separate the flats from the drumettes, and remove the wing tips. Place them on a stack of paper towels and dry them with an extra layer or two of paper towels. Place the wings into a large bowl.
  3. Sprinkle your baking powder, salt, and freshly ground white paper over the wings evenly and toss them in order to coat them entirely. After your flats and drumettes with an even coat, allow the wings to sit at room temperature for one hour prior to baking. Alternatively, you can let them chill uncovered for up to 12 hours, but you should still let them sit at room temperature for 1 hour prior to baking.
  4. Once your oven is properly preheated, you’ll divide the wings between your two prepared racks while taking care to not overcrowd either rack with too many wings. Bake the wings for 25 minutes in total. Halfway through, turn your wings over and rotate the baking sheets top to bottom and front to back so that the wings cook evenly. You should then continue to bake the wings until they have a golden brown coloration, are crispy, and are cooked through, meaning that an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the wing while avoiding bone should register at 165°F (or 10-15 minutes).
  5. For your wing sauce, you will want to whisk either your peeled and finely grated piece of ginger or your ginger paste, your one-third cup of pure maple syrup, your 3 tablespoons of soy sauce, and 2 teaspoons of sesame chili oil into a small saucepan in order to combine them. Bring this to a simmer over medium-low heat, while whisking occasionally.
  6. Cook the wing sauce, while occasionally whisking until the sauce is reduced by about half and is thick enough to fully coat a submerged spoon. This should take approximately 8-10 minutes. Once finished, remove the sauce from the heat and add your tablespoon of chilled, unsalted butter. Whisk the butter into the sauce until it’s fully incorporated and your sauce is smooth and glossy.
  7. Once you’re ready to drench your wings in sauce, you’ll whisk your 2 teaspoons of wasabi paste into the sauce. At this point, taste the sauce and add up to another teaspoon of wasabi paste until it’s at your desired spice level. Transfer your wings to a large metal bowl, pour your sauce over the wigs, and toss them until they’re all evenly coated.
  8. Arrange the wings on a platter, sprinkle toasted sesame seeds over them, and enjoy!

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Project that will Revitalize Louisiana’s Second-Largest Swamp Moves Forward

A project to revitalize a large portion of Louisiana’s second-largest swamp is moving forward after decades of discussion, according to this detailed article from Nola.com. Maurepas Swamp is the sheer picturesque definition of what the ideal Louisiana swamp looks like. It covers a vast area between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, and according to project manager Brad Miller, “it’s been dying for almost a century now, and the thing with swamps is, it happens really, really slow.”

Thankfully, the project that will account for the revitalization of Maurepas Swamp is expected to begin in the next few months. The project will reportedly involve the injection of freshwater from the Mississippi River into the swamp for sustainability. The aim of the project is to improve the region, which is expected to benefit approximately 45,000 acres, while also reviving an ecosystem that used to be a bountiful and prime spot for wildlife.

Projects of this type and sort are quite important for Louisiana, as they are capable and able of knocking down storm surges during hurricane season. Gary Shaffer is a professor at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, and he said the following when speaking on the subject: “if you’re interested in hurricane protection, that’s the way to go – to build swamp.” Shaffer has studied the area affected by the project, and he has advocated for the revitalization project for over 20 years.

Essentially, this project is something of a river diversion, but in essence, it differs greatly from the planned large-scale diversions that are aimed at rebuilding coastal land, as this one will be relatively small, capable of channeling 2,000 cubic feet per second. Additionally, a new two-mile channel that will be constructed near Garyville will direct the water into the Hope Canal, then into an outfall area in the swamp located north of Interstate 10. Overall, this construction is expected to take about four years and will be done in conjunction with the nearby levee project,  known as the West Shore Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Protection System.

This project is expected to reconnect Maurepas Swamp to the Mississippi River and the nutrients it once provided. Now, the levees hold the river in place instead of allowing its waters to overflow and its course to meander, which is what happened earlier in history. This traditional method was vital to keeping the region from flooding, but it badly damaged the wetlands and coastal marsh. A coastal scientist with the National Wildlife Federation, Alish Renfro said, “this is a huge deal. It’s 20 years in the making to actually get us here.”

Construction on the project is expected to begin in Summer 2023 at a total cost estimate of approximately $300 million, but as Miller and Shaffer can attest, it was tough for the project to move forward for quite some time until intervention by the Army Corps of Engineers.

As it was, last month, the Army Corps of Engineers had announced that they will allow the project to revitalize Maurepas Swamp to move forward if it also serves as mitigation for the environmental damage that has been caused by the construction of a major levee project in the nearby area, otherwise known as the West Shore Lake Pontchartrain Hurricane Protection System. This also allowed for Louisiana’s 35% share cost of the levee project bill to be lowered.

Additionally, the revitalization project’s momentum was also aided by settlement money related to the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010, as this settlement amount will reportedly pay for about two-thirds of the samp project with the state of Louisiana covering the remainder.

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Louisiana Teacher Retention on the Rise According to Louisiana Educator Workforce Report

It was recently revealed by the 2021-2022 Educator Workforce Snapshot that more teachers in Louisiana are choosing to remain in the education profession and that the percentage of certified educators is trending upwards, according to this news release from the Louisiana Department of Education.  Teacher retention has been a topic of conversation for quite some time so this report is promising for the state’s education system.

The LDOE recently released the 2021-2022 Educator Workforce Snapshot, which is a statistical snapshot that provides an overview of “workforce data” for Louisiana’s 1394 traditional public schools. The snapshot was obtained using data from the End-of-Year (EOY) data from the recently concluded 2021-2022 school year. LDOE describes the purpose of the data “is to communicate annual workforce data and trends to stakeholders and to support decision making for statewide improvements regarding recruitment and retention.”

The Educator Workforce Snapshot provided a wide array of updates and data on both teachers and students in the 2021-2022 school year, but the following were pointed out as being the main highlights of the report: Louisiana’s overall teacher retention, certified teacher percentage, and diversity of teacher workforce had increases two points a piece. Overall teacher retention is now at 86%, whereas first-year teacher retention has increased five points to 83%. The percentage of Louisiana teachers who are certified had increased to 69% of all teachers, and the diversity rate of the state’s teacher workforce has increased to 29%.

With this upward trend in teacher retention across the state for both new and veteran teachers, State Superintendent of Education Dr. Cade Brumley commented by saying, “this is an enlightening report that shows Louisiana’s comprehensive recruitment and retention plan is working. Even with this early progress, we must remain laser-focused. Every educator deserves quality pay, strong leadership, and to be valued as professionals. This encouraging data is early proof of what can happen when you listen to teachers and create an environment where their voice matters.”

Additionally, the 2021-2022 Educator Workforce Snapshot also revealed that the average teacher salary in Louisiana has increased by $1,268 to $52,174. Along with compensation information for teachers, assistant principals, and principals, the Snapshot also had demographic information pertaining to ethnicity and gender listed for teachers as well as students. The certification date for teachers was further classified by whether or not the certified or uncertified teachers were teaching in a subject with a high-stakes state assessment, in a school evaluated with a high or low letter grade, and by subject area.

Louisiana has put a lot of effort towards its comprehensive recruitment and retention in recent history. Firstly, the past year saw a pay increase for teachers and support staff, as teachers saw a $1,500 pay increase approved and support staff saw a $750 increase in salary. Additionally, veteran teachers applying to be a Mentor Teacher for the school year were given a $2000 stipend for their additional responsibility.

Other actions taken to increase teacher recruitment and retention were that LDOE had recently collaborated on new legislation that allows for professionals with a master’s degree in any field to be able to enter the classroom as a teacher. Also, the 2022 Regular Legislative Session established the Geaux Teach Fund, which allocated $5 million for the purpose of awarding scholarships to high school students who are a part of a teacher preparation program.

Also, LDOE created the first Superintendent’s Teacher Advisory Council, which saw 22 educators chosen from nearly 900 applications to serve on the inaugural council. The council will consist of a cohort of educators who will meet with Dr. Brumley once a quarter to share their feedback on current education initiatives and to offer insight on how Louisiana can help to improve student outcomes.

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Delicious Recipe for Louisiana Shrimp and Crab Stew

Wintertime means that it’s the perfect time of the year to whip up some classic Louisiana recipes. So, if you’re in the mood for a hearty, rich, and delicious shrimp and crab stew, then look no further than this recipe from Louisiana Cookin’.

Ingredients for Shrimp and Crab Stew 

Directions for Shrimp and Crab Stew

  1. You’ll want to begin this recipe by scalding your dozen blue crabs with hot water in order to stun them. You’ll then remove the back from each crab (which is the top shell) so that you can clean out the gills (also affectionately referred to as “dead man fingers”), lungs, and the center of each crab. Afterward, crack the crabs in half and remove the claws, placing them aside for a future seafood stock. You’ll also want to peel and devein your shrimp for this recipe. You can also put the shrimp heads and shells along with your crab claws for a future homemade seafood stock.
  2. Next, in the large heavy stockpot, you’ll want to combine your vegetable oil and flour over medium heat. Begin stirring slowly to make a dark brown roux, and continue stirring for about 15-20 minutes. Once your roux is of a dark brown coloration all over, you’ll add your celery, bell peppers, and onion (also known as the holy trinity in South Louisiana cooking circles). You’ll cook the vegetables in the roux until the vegetables are soft, which should take about 5 minutes if you are stirring frequently.
  3. After the vegetables are soft, add your bay leaves, salt, cayenne pepper, and seafood stock to your stockpot. Stir all of the ingredients in order to combine them, and bring the mixture to a rolling boil over high heat. Once the stew ingredients and base are boiling, reduce the heat to medium-low, add in your crabs, and let them simmer for approximately 20 minutes.
  4. Next, add your crabmeat and shrimp, and continue to cook for another 10 minutes. Remove the stockpot from the heat, add your parsley, and serve the dish hot. Enjoy!

Notes for Shrimp and Crab Stew:

  • To make cooking easier and more humane, place your live crabs in the freezer for about 15 minutes before preparing them. Fill your largest stock pot with heavily salted water and add 3 bay leaves, a tablespoon or so of black peppercorns, and a teaspoon of paprika. Bring the water to a boil and then, using a pair of tongs, grasp each crab from behind so you don’t get pinched. Depending on the pot’s size and the number of crabs being cooked, you may want to cook one at a time. Lower each crab into the boiling water with its legs facing down and allow it to cook for roughly 15 minutes (when it floats to the top give an extra two to three minutes). To cool off after cooking, prepare an ice bath by filling a large bowl with cold water and ice cubes then drop in each crab briefly before beginning the cleaning process.
  • Crab and shrimp stews definitely pair nicely alongside some homemade potato salad, french bread, or rice.

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