Tag Archives: Region 12

McFarland educator named middle school teacher of the year

McFarland educatorWisconsin State Journal:  A guidance counselor at Indian Mound Middle School in McFarland has been named the Wisconsin middle school teacher of the year.

Jill Runde was honored in a surprise ceremony at the school, with state superintendent of schools Tony Evers making the announcement in an all-school assembly.

Runde gets $3,000 from the Herb Kohl Educational Foundation, along with a plaque.

Runde began counseling at McFarland High School in 2002 and went to Indian Mound Middle School five years later.

According to a news release from the Department of Public Instruction, Runde has used improvisational skits by students at the high school to make them aware of such topics as bullying, stereotyping, teen suicide, puberty and drugs and alcohol, and also set up an ambassador student liaison group at the middle school to give support to students.

“The McFarland community is a much better place for children, thanks to someone as dedicated as Jill,” said McFarland Youth Center president Shawn Miller, in supporting her nomination as teacher of the year.

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Sun Prairie among best communities in music education

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The Star: The Sun Prairie Area School District has been named among the best communities for music education.

The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) Foundation recognized 527 school districts and 92 schools across the nation for their outstanding music education programs. Each year, the NAMM Foundation selects school districts to be recognized as among the best communities for music education (BCME).

Now in its 18th year, the awards program recognizes outstanding efforts by teachers, administrators, parents, students and community leaders who have made music education part of the curriculum. The districts NAMM recognizes set the bar in offering student access to comprehensive music education.

Selections are based on survey results in cooperation with researchers at The Music Research Institute at the University of Kansas.

The designation takes on added significance this year with new research showing strong ties between active participation in school music education programs and overall student success for student ages K-12. A recent study of students in the Chicago Public Schools by researchers at Northwestern University, detailed in Neuroscientist and Education Week, builds on previous findings that participation in music education programs helps improves brain function, discipline and language development.

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Madison 7th-grader wins state Google honors

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Wisconsin State Journal: Thirteen-year-old Alyssa Anderson isn’t quite sure where she’ll be at noon on Friday, since Madison students have no school that day.

But wherever she is, she’ll probably be Googling.

Alyssa, a seventh-grader at Wright Middle School, is Wisconsin’s finalist in this year’s Doodle 4 Google competition, a nationwide design contest run by the search-engine giant since 2008.

The national winner, to be announced online around noon Friday along with four runners-up, will receive a $30,000 college scholarship, a $50,000 technology award for their school, a trip to Google headquarters in California and other prizes.

“It’s been amazing. Everyone has been encouraging me and telling me they’re rooting for me,” Alyssa said of the process of entering and advancing in the contest. “We’re just keeping our fingers crossed.”

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Sun Prairie students jump start their careers as youth apprentices

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The Star: The halls of Sun Prairie High School are home to engineers, accountants, biotechnology researchers, nurses, automotive technicians, pharmacy technicians, plumbers, welders, and construction workers. The people in these professions are students too, part of the high school’s Youth Apprenticeship Program.

The program gives juniors and seniors real-world work experience in a career field of their choice, supplementing paid work experience with related classes in addition to their high school coursework.

Hiba Hashim, a senior, works as a pharmacy technician at UW Health at the American Center through the program. Hashim said she had always been interested in the medical field, and her interest in pharmacy sparked after she took a biotechnology class last year. When the class ended, she met with SPHS school to career counselor Nancy Everson, who worked throughout the summer to find Hashim a position in which she could experience working in a hospital setting.

Working constantly with patients and insurance companies at the pharmacy, Hashim said she has developed better communication skills that will help in her goal of becoming a doctor. Hashim has applied to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to major in nursing, and may continue working at the American Center Pharmacy once she moves on to college.

“When I first started out, I always thought that the pharmacy was a really isolated place because you’re always in the back with medicines,” Hashim said. “But, now that I actually work in a hospital, I realize just how much pharmacists have an impact on patient care.”

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Watertown Unified School District opens on-site clinic

Watertown Daily Times: The Watertown Unified School District held an open house for its on-site clinic on Wednesday at the Educational Service Center.

The 1,200-square-foot medical clinic offers acute care services, preventative care and disease management for school district employees, families and retirees over the age of two on the district’s health insurance plan. The clinic is staffed by Julie Thomas, physicians assistant and Cheryl Rohde, medical assistant. Both worked in emergency rooms before taking jobs with Healthstat at the clinic. Healthstat operates the clinic for the district.

Rohde who does the administrative and clerical tasks at the clinic as well as measuring vitals and administering medications and injections said appointment generally take about 15 minutes and people are in and out quick.

An on-site clinic option offers the potential for the district to generate cost savings through improved wellness and reduced health care costs. The clinic should save the district about $1.3 million over the next three years.

Doug Linse, Director of Business Services said the clinic has been a useful tool for staff.

“The accessibility and efficiency of it and the way people can leave work,” he said.

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DeForest Middle School students give life to robot Dash

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DeForest Times-Tribune: The technological advancements that can be found in today’s classrooms were on full display last week for the DeForest Area School Board.

That’s because students from DeForest Area Middle School appeared before the board—with a robot they themselves programmed and named Dash—to show off the roughly 24 hours of work invested to take part in a global competition sponsored by the company Wonder Workshop.

“I call it a celebration because my students have spent many hours planning, preparing, programming for this competition,” said fifth grade science teacher Jeff Stern. “And I’m proud to say even though we weren’t a finalist, we were an honorable mention for having completed the project.”

Students told the school board how they met before school began each morning for nearly two months preparing for the competition, which had a theme this year of programming Dash to serve as a hypothetical animal protector.

“Each mission was saving animals or pushing something away from the animals,” explained one student. “One [task] was pushing cups, which represented fire, away from the animals to save them.”

More than 5,700 student teams took part in the Wonder Workshop competition from locales across the globes, all using the same robot.

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Program helps Beloit students get a clean start for building life skills

Beloit Daily News: There will be lots of love in the loads laundered by caring and helpful students at Beloit Memorial High School (BMHS).

Students with intellectual disabilities at the school are launching Loads to Success, a volunteer-run free laundry service for economically disadvantaged students. The project starts next week.

Although free laundry programs for students have been making national news, BMHS will be the first one to be entirely run by students with intellectual disabilities, according to Lori Lange, special educator.

Star students such as Miracle Pritchard, Minerva Baylon, Kirstin Foulker, Wyatt Walker and Daniel Harp are treating Loads to Success like a business. Each load will be tagged, inventoried and moved through an assembly line. Students will greet their “customers” with a smile, separate lights and darks, dry, fold and assist in efficient delivery.

The students have been brainstorming their business practices for months with Lange, along with special education teachers Cody Klintworth and Alexis Haenel.

“Our greatest fear is the red sock,” Lange joked.

Lange said the students volunteering to do the laundering will be gaining a sense of pride and independence as they help their cohorts in need regain their dignity. Students without washing facilities at home will discreetly drop off their laundry at the school’s back doors. Once the program gets rolling, disadvantaged students will be given a laundry bag and identification tag.

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Fort Atkinson High School AP computer science students saluted

Daily Union: Fifteen students from Fort Atkinson High School were announced Thursday night as recipients of the Ed Karrels Advanced Placement Computer Science Scholarship.

The students were recognized during the School District of Fort Atkinson Board of Education’s regular monthly meeting.

The $1,000 scholarships — administered by the Fort Atkinson Community Foundation — are awarded to each and every student who passes the Computer Science Advanced Placement class at Fort Atkinson High School and the Computer Science AP test with a score of 3, 4 or 5 no later than three months after passing the class, along with plans to continue his or her education either at a college or technical school.

“The highlights for this year are that we had the highest pass rate for the AP Computer Science exam ever at Fort Atkinson High School with 94 percent, and the greatest number of students, 15, passing the AP Computer Science exam ever at Fort Atkinson High School,” computer science teacher Dean Johnson remarked. “Even though (historically) we’ve had a very successful pass rate, this year (fellow teacher) Aaron (Chamberlain) knocked it out of the park.”

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Lake Mills Elementary School Achieves LEED® Platinum Certification

Eppstein Uhen Architects: Lake Mills Elementary School has achieved LEED Platinum certification from the United States Green Building Council (USGBC). Eppstein Uhen Architects (EUA) designed the 600-student, two-story building on the existing site. The district’s goal was to make sure the facility would ensure sustainable design and include energy efficient options. This goal matches the passion of EUA’s Learning Environment team of creating innovative, modern learning environments for today’s students. To reach this goal, the project participated as a beta test for the new LEED v4 pilot program. As the first school to earn Platinum under this new rating system, Lake Mills Elementary School can claim to be the greenest school in the nation.

Lake Mills hired EUA in the fall of 2011 to assist with pre-referendum planning and design services to address their aging, overcrowded elementary school. To foster community engagement, EUA recommended working with a community-based committee to determine needs as part of a long-term facilities plan. Based on the feedback, Lake Mills decided to pursue replacing the existing elementary school and the $18.7 million referendum was passed in November 2012.

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Waunakee School District pegged for $25k Fab Lab grant

The Waunakee Tribune: Jeff Willauer, technology education instructor at Waunakee High waunakee_fab_labSchool, calls it a “yes” place.

As he sees it, the district’s Fab Lab, or innovation center, is where students’ ideas take shape, evolving from theory to palpable product.

That happened just last week as engineering students sought a 3-D printer that could produce flexible materials. Using a variety of different parts, they built that printer themselves and produced their first sample.

The Wisconsin Economic Development Commission has recognized the lab’s ability to foster innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and is awarding the Waunakee Community School District a Wisconsin’s Fabrication Laboratories (Fab Labs) Grant.

The district has been planning its Fab Lab for the past several months, and the school board recently approved hiring a director for it. That planning, along with the school board support, made Waunakee more likely to receive the $25,000 in state funds.

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