GREENDALE — Inspired by a poignant photo in a lesson on the Holocaust, students at Greendale Middle School are giving back by joining a shoe drive, according to a story by Fox 6 news. 

“Other people needed them more than me,” Ali Hammad, an eighth-grade student at the school, said of the shoes.

The students were inspired to dig through their closets after a presentation about the holocaust. One image stood out.

“Just seeing a picture of the concentration camp with hundreds of thousands of shoes from kids sizes to adults, and that just really showed how many people died,” Hammad said.

The presentation is called the “Holocaust Shoe Project.” It teaches about the severity of the holocaust while calling on students to give back.

“We want to shine a light on something terrible that happened in the past, but also what are the things we can do today to help people,” said Erin McCarthy, a social studies teacher.

Read the full article and watch the video here.

JEFFERSON — Jefferson High School’s automotive program is making state headlines with a page-and-a-half feature in the current issue of Transportation Today Wisconsin, according to a story in the Watertown Daily Times. 

The article highlights the Jefferson’s role as one of only 19 school districts statewide to offer ASE (Automotive Service Excellence) certification programs. Student Korbin Simdon said the high school auto students fill out work and repair orders just as commercial shops do. He said he uses the lessons he has received in the classroom on the job every day.

Simdon also expressed great enthusiasm for the new SkillsUSA project, re-engineering and racing a Formula race car.

“I’ve never had a chance to work on a formula car before,” Simdon said.

Read the full story here.

Students at Clark Street Community School, a public charter school in the Middleton-Cross Plains School District, enlisted music to assist the memories of older adults, according to a story in the Wisconsin State Journal. It was part of a music and memory seminar — a nine-week class, which ended last week.

As part of the seminar, the students interviewed some residents at Heritage Senior Living and at Sage Meadow senior living community in Middleton, to learn about their tastes in music so they could put songs on a player for them.

Clark Street junior Binta Jammeh said she has family members with dementia so she is glad she can use what she learned in school to help others.

“It’s really cool to see their smiles when they hear the music,” junior Chloe Gallenbeck said.

Read the full story at the Wisconsin State Journal.

Students at McFarland High School have started a student-run manufacturing business by creating and selling products they make in their school, the television station WMTV-15 reports.      

Students coordinate each element of the business, including information technology, shipping, marketing, wood shop, metals and embroidery.

“It’s a legitimate business that’s basically a capstone class for a lot of the courses we have here,” teacher Steve Pennekamp said in the story. “We’re a student-run business. We pay taxes like any other business.”

Visit the station’s website to read the full story.

An Appleton high schooler created a board game teaching financial literacy to people with a disability after a family friend was taken advantage of, Green Bay’s WFRV-TV reports.

The teen, Paige Givens, created the “SuperConsumers” game after the friend, who has an intellectual disability, was robbed. Givens has presented the game to five schools, eight classes and two SOAR Fox Cities events.

Read the full story here.

Wausau FFA students recruited a live turkey to raise money to buy hundreds of turkeys and hams for families in need this holiday season, television stations WAOW and WSAW reported.

Classes raised money to buy a square. Then they brought in a live turkey which picked one of the squares. The class that picked the square got a prize. On Sunday, the school district will hand out 450 turkeys and 120 hams to people in need.

Read the full story here.

Two Wausau West High School students teamed up and won 3rd place at the 2019 National Future Farmers of America Agriscience Fair in Indianapolis, reports the Wausau television station WAOW.

Lexi Voight and Trinity Foster researched the flammability of different popular types Christmas trees and how to prevent them from going up in flames.

“If you water your tree it will be less flammable, but there wasn’t much out there already about specific species,” said Lexi Voight of FFA Wausau.

The duo worked on their research for over two years, testing top purchased Christmas tree species locally.

The pair experimented on the Balsam Fir, Blue spruce, Fraser Fir, and White Pine, finding which are better at retaining water, making them less likely to start on fire.

“Water your trees, because they will be less flammable. If you don’t water your tree they will dry out. Also, Balsam is the safest tree, so if that’s what your looking for to have in your house, pick Balsam,” said Trinity Foster, secretary for FFA on Wausau’s westside.

Read the full story here.

An elementary school in Jefferson is using a new app to move storytime outside of the classroom, the Daily Jefferson County Union reports. 

West Elementary School students can take advantage of this opportunity through a new Facebook feature being debuted this fall through the Jefferson school’s Facebook page.

The new Facebook “Bedtime Stories” program is an outgrowth of the school’s Literacy Committee, which formed a couple of years ago and which has been meeting regularly ever since to come up with new 

events and efforts aimed at increasing students’ literacy and making reading fun.

One of the most important factors in a youngster’s future literacy is being read to as a small child, especially when that reading time is celebrated as a fun ritual.

The Literacy Committee includes principal Mike Howard and other staff representatives from a variety of grades and areas, including one specializing in English Language Learners.

The group has set its purpose as instilling a love of reading in students, with the vision of making West into a “community of readers.”

Starting last week, the school has invited one staff member per week to share a favorite bedtime story.

Read the full story here.

Students in Kenosha County’s Wheatland Center School took top honors at an engineering challenge in Milwaukee Nov. 11, the news website westofthei.com reported.

In their third year competing in the Fluid Power Challenge at the Milwaukee School of Engineering, students from the the school’s PATHS Academy outperformed 26 other teams to win the Overall Champion Award.

Wheatland students left for Milwaukee early on Nov. 11 amidst the falling snow and came back with the coveted hardware.

Students from all over Milwaukee participated in the event held at the Milwaukee School of Engineering. Each group had 5 weeks to design a machine that uses hydraulic and pneumatic power that can rotate, lift, and grab an object and move it on a challenge board in order to score points.

“It was easier this year because I knew what to expect, but it was still challenging to build an efficient machine to accomplish the task,” said WCS student Mason Biehn.

Continue reading the full story at westofthei.com.