Tag Archives: Region 3

Southern Door County School District wins award for education innovation

photo of Southern Door's fab lab

Green Bay Press Gazette: Southern Door County School District has won the Education Innovation Award from the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance. The award honors the district’s work to advance technical education through collaborating with local manufacturers, according to the Southern Door County School District.

The district will receive the award Oct. 23 at the 7th Annual Excellence in Manufacturing/K-12 Partnership Awards in Green Bay sponsored by the Northeast Wisconsin Manufacturing Alliance.

“The technical education department at Southern Door has a long-standing tradition of excellence in preparing our youth for the trades, manufacturing, and engineering,” said Southern Door County School District Superintendent Patti Vickman.

Innovative programs, including a race car program and the high school Fab Lab, engage students “in new career pathways,” Vickman said.

Read the complete article.

Green Bay special education work program offers students real-world job skills

image of students working on car

WBAY.com: A proud day for six Green Bay special education students as they receive certificates for successfully completing a seven-week work experience program.

In a first-of-its-kind for the district, the students worked with employees at Dorsch Ford, learning about auto detailing.

“What I’ve really enjoyed is how they’ve been teaching us how to detail cars, how to do it safely with chemicals, shamming, drying, acid washes,” said Sam Birmingham, a senior at Green Bay East High School.

The work experience program also allows the students to practice real-world employee skills, making it easier to secure a job after graduation.

“The life skills and the soft skills we’re discussing is communication skills, how to interact appropriately in a workplace, how to communicate their wants and needs and how to best be in a team environment- that’s really what we’re teaching here that’s what it’s all about,” said Shane McDonough, work experience coordinator for Green Bay East High School.

Read the complete article (with video).

Green Bay summer school farm to school food program serves 2,000 students

photo of student

NBC26.com: Local farmers is involved in providing nutritious meals for kids.

Farmers at Ledgeview Gardens, know the importance of fresh vegetables, “there’s way too much processed foods, in McDonalds being eaten, it’s just too easy everybody’s in a hurry, everyone’s trying to get six difference afternoon activities, and a lot of times food is what gets pushed off,” said Darren Vollmar, farmer and general manager.

Vollmar, said students should be eating healthy and take time to enjoy different foods.

“To us it’s more important to have a little bit of a slow down, especially when it comes to your food,” said Vollmar.

That’s why six years ago, the Green Bay area public school district and Vollmar agreed to work together to provide schools locally grown produce.

“Now that we are doing it and seeing it, the students are loving it, and loving the produce they’re like oh my gosh we see them at the farmers market this is so cool and eat this at my park program it’s super exciting,” said Amanda Britanyak, the GBSD food service assistant director.

2,000 students are served a meal over the summer, and it’s spread over 36 parks.

Read the complete article on Green Bay’s summer farm to school program.

Kimberly, Green Bay East students take top honors at Center Stage musical theater awards

image of student musical

Post Crescent: A student from Kimberly High School and another from Green Bay East High School were the big winners Saturday at the second-ever Center Stage High School Musical Theater Awards at the Fox Cities Performing Arts Center.

Travis Vandenberg, a senior at Kimberly, won Best Actor and Paige Neumeyer, a senior at Green Bay East, won Best Actress. They’ll both travel to New York City in June to represent Center Stage at the National High School Musical Theatre Awards (aka the Jimmy Awards).

They will take part in intensive coaching and rehearsals before performing at the 25th annual show at the Minskoff Theatre. A panel of judges will then choose an actor and an actress to bestow with a Jimmy Award as the nation’s top performers.

Read the complete article.

Gresham top ‘Matific’ school in state, 15th nationwide

photo of Gresham math award ceremony

Shawano Leader: An educational celebration Friday at Gresham Community School was done by the numbers, with certificates and medals — and pizza.

Gresham had plenty to celebrate, as the small school beat out larger competitors like Stevens Point, D.C. Everest and Wisconsin Dells to be the top-ranked Wisconsin school in the Matific contest, an online program that makes solving math problems fun. If that wasn’t enough, the local school was ranked 15th in the nation out of 3,000 participating schools.

Sean Tiernan, a Matific representative from Greenville, Wisconsin, noted that Matific got its start eight years ago in Australia and Israel but didn’t become prevalent in the United States until three years ago. The program is designed to help bridge the historic gap between students learning math, he said.

“We’re in 47 different countries, and the program is in 30 different languages. It’s pretty interesting,” Tiernan said. “It’s to get kids to have a love for math,” as well as introduce students to Science, Technology, Engineering and Math, or STEM, programs.

Read the complete article on Gresham’s award.

DC Everest student literary magazine, Point of Convergence, wins top national award

DC Everest lit mag cover image

Wausau Daily Herald: A D.C. Everest student publication, Point of Convergence, was named the Most Outstanding High School Literary Magazine for 2017 by the American Scholastic Press Association.

Point of Convergence also earned ASPA’s 2017 First Place with Special Merit award. The publication was recognized with ASPA first-place awards in 2015 and 2016 as well. Also in 2016, Point of Convergence earned an award from the National Council of Teachers of English.

Point of Convergence features poetry, fiction and nonfiction writing, and the cover is selected from student photography or artwork. It is an authentic start-to-finish publication opportunity for D.C. Everest students. They write, read, edit, design, market and sell the publication.

Students celebrated the premiere of their fall issue Jan. 18 with live readings from newly published authors, student musical performances and a student art exhibit.

Read more about D.C. Everest’s literary magazine.

New club connects Eau Claire students with their Hmong heritage and language

EC Hmong

Wisconsin State Journal: True Vue grew up speaking two languages: Hmong at home and English at school. After arriving in Wisconsin from Thailand at 1 year old, however, she had no one to teach her how to read and write in her native language.

That she had to do for herself. The child who was born in a refugee camp taught herself the Hmong written language by concentrating intently on hymns as they were sang at weekly services.

Hmong students at Locust Lane Elementary School won’t have to resort to those self-teaching methods today.

Early last month, Vue, her sister Tia Lor and English language teacher Karla Lien started a language club at the elementary school geared toward fourth- and fifth-grade students who speak at least some Hmong at home but do not know how to read or write the language. The club’s creation preceded the Eau Claire school district’s announcement last week that it will include a “Hmong History and Culture” course at the high school level next fall.

Read more about Hmong cultural club.

Student journalists inform public through Pulaski News

Pulaski

NBC26.com: The longest running school newspaper in the country is in Pulaski. Future journalists gather in one classroom to learn the basics.

“We get to share our writing with the entire community,” said Senior Jaclyn Willems.

The Pulaski News newspaper is run by the school but is available to the entire community. Instructor Emily Alger-Feser, a Pulaski High School alum, said it’s great to be back.

“Pulaski is built up of pride and tradition, that’s two words we use a lot. Now being able to help them, this is an awesome group of people. It just kind of feels great to be back here again and doing something not just for the school and district, but for the whole community.”

Read the complete article on the Pulaski student newspaper.

State’s smallest and most isolated school district overcomes its challenges and limitations

Washington Island

Madison.com: There are no plastic trays, pans of lasagna, a salad bar or even crates filled with cartons of chocolate milk.

Most days, students in the Washington Island School District are on their own for lunch. If they want something hot, they bring a Thermos or use one of the eight microwave ovens in the school’s multipurpose room to heat up leftovers or other concoctions from home.

The closest the school comes to a lunch program is once every other Wednesday. That’s when the student council, as a fundraiser, makes a $4 meal that can include homemade spaghetti, pizza or hot dogs.

“It’s a big hit with the parents because that’s the one day they don’t have to put a brown bag together,” Superintendent Mati Palm-Leis said of the Student Council lunches. “One of the things that’s important to me is that we emulate a school experience that’s similar to other schools.”

But with just 72 students, virtually no funding from the state and its isolated location off the tip of the Door County Peninsula, the state’s smallest prekindergarten through 12th grade district is unlike any other in Wisconsin.

The district, with only one regular school bus and an annual budget of $1.5 million, still faces the same challenges as others around the state. The issues include teacher recruitment, health insurance and transportation costs, taxes, funding special-education programs, finding substitute teachers and convincing residents to run for the School Board.

Read the complete article on the Washington Island School District.

Washington Island School offers unique learning environment

Washington Island

The Country Today: Students at Washington Island School are surrounded by knowledgeable teachers, caring support staff and state-of-the-art technology.

Oh, and they’re surrounded by one other thing — water.

Washington Island School, the state’s smallest K-12 institution with 69 total students, stands apart both literally and figuratively as Wisconsin’s only island school.

“Being on an island, you can definitely say we’re a very close-knit community,” teacher/​athletics director Michael Gillespie said. “When we say ‘everybody knows everybody,’ that’s definitely true here.”

The island and its roughly 700 residents are located about six miles northeast of the Door County peninsula mainland. All students and school employees live on the island, which connects with the mainland via the year-round Washington Island Ferry Line service.

The island town was established in 1850, and one of the town board’s first acts was to establish a log school near Washington Harbor (now Schoolhouse Beach). The 35-square-mile island later maintained four schools simultaneously until they were consolidated into one school about six decades ago. The current school building, which opened in 1986, houses all grades under one roof — with separate wings for a high school, middle school and elementary school.

Read the complete article.