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.

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.