HAYWARD — A Hayward High School student has become the first to enroll in a dual enrollment technical diploma program offered by Wisconsin Indianhead Technical College (WITC) and the Hayward Community Schools, according to a story in the Sawyer County Record.

Austin Conner, a senior, is earning both college and high school credit.

“Soon, students at HHS will be making their course selections for next year.  Hopefully they will take advantage of the savings of earning college credit for free while in high school,” instructor Julie Thompson told the newspaper.

Read the full story.

MADISON — La Crosse fourth-graders who heard spring peepers chirp from a school pond asked Wisconsin legislators to make the tiny frog the state amphibian, WKBT-TV reported.

The quest to have the peeper represent the state tied the environmental curriculum with studying how proposals become laws, teacher Kris Franzini told the newspaper.

Kids said their nervousness quickly abated.

“When I started talking, I was nervous,” Ian Honaker said. “But after awhile, I wasn’t.”

WisconsinEye has video of the children testifying.

Read the full story and watch the video at the TV station’s website.

ALTOONA — Altoona football players are reading to third graders, who, as a reward for reading, will be able to toss a pie in a player’s face, WEAU 13 News reported.

“At that point we’re promoting reading and making reading a cool thing for kids to do because to get good at reading you have to practice,” Altoona Head Football Coach Chad Hanson told the TV station. “Each kid who reads 400 minutes will then get their name put in a hat, and then we draw one name and that name will get to throw a pie at the football player that their class adopted.”

Read the story and watch the video on the station’s website.

MILWAUKEE — A small Milwaukee Public Schools program is easing the transition of mostly refugee children whose families come from around the world, according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

The program teaches these children both content and the English language to prepare them for high school. 

“Education is a lifeline for these people,” Kalyani Rai, an associate professor of urban community development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee who works on refugee issues, told the newspaper. “They’ve lost everything. And now the education of the children is everything.”

Read the story on the newspaper’s website. 

GREEN BAY — Green Bay high schoolers are raising hundreds of perch for sale while using byproducts from the process to grow plants to eat, according to WFRV-TV.

“The trout back there, they were like this big,” Student Lab Assistant Ben Haines told the TV station, indicating a small fish with his fingers. “Now they’re probably like 14 inches or so.”

The fishes’ wastes nourishes edible plants.

“I can get from seed to market-sized lettuce and greens in six weeks,”  agriscience teacher Tom Sebranek said. “So we can cycle that throughout and actually feed our own schools fresh stuff that we wouldn’t have to worry about.”

Read the story and watch video at the station’s website. 

MILWAUKEE — Wisconsin high school students recently took part in an auto tech competition at a Milwaukee event aimed at spurring interest in automotive careers, CBS 58 reported.

Two of the six-member student teams won a chance to go to New York and represent Wisconsin in a national auto technology competition, according to the story.

Read the full story and watch the video here.

FOND DU LAC — Students at Fond du Lac High School contributed to the region’s annual sturgeon spearing season by working with skilled laborers to build two ice shanties, according to a story in the Fond du Lac Reporter.

They were part of the school’s ACE Academy, which stands for architecture, construction and engineering.

“This experience, including working alongside skilled labor, was invaluable for the students,” said Vern Widmer, building construction instructor at Fondy High.

To see the full story, including a video describing the experience, visit the Fond du Lac Reporter’s website.

UNION GROVE — A pair of Union Grove High School students served as midwives for a sow who gave birth to 12 piglets, according to a story in The Journal Times of Racine.

Sisters Amy and Allie Storm-Voltz attended the birth of Click the sow. They watched their school counselor, Katie Johnson, deliver the first three piglets, then handled the rest themselves.

“The third one was the biggest guy, so actually Mrs. Johnson went in there and pulled him out and then like 10 minutes apart they were shooting out,” Amy said.

For the full story, visit the newspaper’s website.

Elementary students at Rolling Hills Elementary School in Mukwonago got to experience the High Arctic through a virtual reality tour made by their art teacher, according to a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Art students in Julie Theim’s class have never been to the High Arctic of Svalbard, a remote, sparsely-populated Norwegian archipelago halfway between Norway and the North Pole.

But through Theim’s efforts to create a virtual reality tour, they’ve been able to spy a frolicking arctic fox on a hillside, view thousands of birds soaring above the Alkefjellet bird cliff and see brightly-colored houses in Longyearbyen.

“Kids are learning about all of these things and all of these places, but if you can actually story-tell with them and show them what you’ve seen, then the project you do and the learning that happens is more relevant and meaningful to them,” she said.

See the images and read the full story here.

(If you’re reminded of a 2019 Wisconsin School News story, it might be this one, a first-hand report of Oconto Falls teacher Kelly Koller’s Arctic expedition.)

LA CROSSE — As a celebration of Black History Month, La Crosse high school volunteers read books by black authors to elementary students, according to a story by WXOW-TV.

Central High School Senior Danessa Brocks read books celebrating black culture aloud to younger students who might not have otherwise seen themselves in predominantly white literature.

“I wish they did this when I was a kid because I would’ve learned way more about my culture,” Brocks said. “I missed out on a lot about me. I grew up in an area where not many kids were like me.”

“All kids in our schools should be able to see themselves in texts, characters and the community,” Hintgen Elementary School Principal Amy Oliver said. “This is just one small step for us to recognize and celebrate our African American community here in La Crosse and make sure that our students feel like they matter and that they belong.”

Read the full story here.