Tag Archives: Region 6

La Crosse area high school students take career expo by storm

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La Crosse Tribune: More than 2,000 area high school juniors hit the La Crosse Center on Thursday for the annual Career Expo.

The students, who came from more than a dozen western Wisconsin and southeast Minnesota school districts, spent their morning alternating between a college fair and breakout sessions about different career fields.

Western was one of the sponsors of the expo, Director of Recruitment and K-12 Relations Deb Hether said. The expo gives students a chance to learn more about different career fields and options, and it connects students with recruiters from colleges and universities from all over the Midwest.

“It gives students a really great opportunity to learn about different careers,” she said. “They can explore and learn more about their interest areas.”

More than 100 college recruiters were at the expo, which is part of the Wisconsin Education Fair program that brings campus representatives to communities across the state. In another room at the center, students were able to choose among 17 career clusters, with breakout sessions in each field.

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91-year-old La Crosse woman gets high school diploma

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La Crosse Tribune: Wednesday was the happiest day in 91-year-old Mavis Kjos’ life, save her marriage to her late husband, Alf.

After more than 75 years, Mavis finally received the one thing she had always regretted not getting: a high school diploma. Surrounded by friends and relatives in her La Crosse home, Mavis received her diploma from Whitehall High School District, presented by retired Whitehall teacher and relative Dave Schaefer.

“Oh, gosh!” Mavis exclaimed as she received the diploma. “I’m so excited. This is the biggest thing that happened to me since I got married.”

Mavis dropped out of school after she completed eighth grade. Living on a farm in rural Osseo, Mavis was the second-youngest of nine children and took care of her mother in 1939 after she became bedridden by complications of diabetes.

By the time her mother had recovered, Mavis was too embarrassed to go back to school, as her friends were so far ahead of her. Then she met Alf, a talented La Crosse baseball player. World War II happened. She married Alf after his last tour of duty in 1946 and began raising a family.

But she never shook the fact that she wasn’t able to finish school. A bright young girl, Mavis attended two-room North Branch schoolhouse with four grades per room. At that time, students had to pass an examination to finish the eighth grade, and Mavis was one of only two girls to get a perfect score.

“All my life, the one thing I wished was to get my high school diploma,” Mavis said. “All my brothers and my sisters got to to go on to college.”

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Lincoln students benefit from ‘books on the bus’

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Jackson County Chronicle: Jason and Megan Rowekamp were intrigued when they saw another school district in Wisconsin launch a Books on the Bus program.

Designed to foster literacy and assist with sometimes long bus rides, the program seemed like it could be a good fit for the Alma Center-Humbird-Merrillan School District where their children attend and Jason serves as a school board member.

It also came at a time when the Rowekamps were looking for ways to honor their son, Charley, who died during childbirth in 2007. Jason took a year’s worth of school board salary – about $1,200 – and donated to the school district and asked administration if Books on the Bus could begin.

AC-H-M enthusiastically said yes, and students have had books on each of the district’s seven buses since this past winter.

“We thought it would be a good way to make a good impact for the kids – a good way to encourage reading for young children especially,” said Jason, first appointed to the school board in 2012 and has been re-elected twice since. “It’s our hope that it will keep building and (the district) will maintain the program.”

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Wausau students raise money to buy prosthetic arm for custodian

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WAOW.com: Students at Wausau East High are changing the life of one of the school custodians.

Chong Lee is a custodian at the school.

He lost his arm during the Vietnam War when he was just 5-years-old. Earlier this year, the Youth Culture Club began fundraising to buy him a prosthetic.

He’s been using it for months now, changing how he does even the most simple tasks.

“We saw a need, and Mr. Lee is a really wonderful man,” said George Hagge, the club’s faculty advisor.

It’s a cause the students feel close to.

“He’s worked countless hours, worked super hard and we thought about him and then we wanted to give back to him,” said Fong Moua, a Wausau East High School senior.

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Black River Falls educator receives top award

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Jackson County Chronicle:Art is expression for Lee Amborn.

He always was drawing as a kid, and that’s why it didn’t surprise his mother when he pursued becoming an art teacher, he said.

“I think it’s the ability to express yourself on paper or on canvas – or whatever the particular medium was, but to express yourself in ways that you can’t do verbally or with the written word,” said Amborn, who will retire this spring after a 14-year career teaching art in the Black River Falls School District. “For me, it was always easier to do that with a picture.

“For me, (expression) just happened to be in art – drawing, painting, coloring. As I got older, I got more into it and enjoyed it more and I found more of the ability to express myself through art, and I just thought, you know, it might be kind of neat to help others find that ability also.”

Amborn is closing out his teaching career as Wisconsin’s top middle school art teacher for 2016 after receiving the Middle School Art Educator of the Year award from the Wisconsin Art Education Association.

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Month of the Military Child: Tomah and Sparta school districts hold recognition luncheon

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The Tomah Journal: April is the Month of the Military Child.

To celebrate military children and recognize the challenges they face and sacrifices they have made, the Tomah Area School District and the Sparta Area School District co-sponsored a luncheon Thursday at Fort McCoy.

John Hendricks, SASD superintendent, said the luncheon is a way to show appreciation and understanding for families of military personnel.

“We just can’t do enough to recognize how special these students are,” he said. “This is just a little opportunity to do that … to hear from students, to understand them better. It’s an opportunity to meet parents and recognize the sacrifices that they make.”

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BRF High School developing high-tech engineering lab

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Jackson County Chronicle: Brett Geisler didn’t know how to use three-dimensional printers until Black River Falls High School acquired the technology.

Geisler, a junior, took a 3-D design class last semester, but his interest in the printers — which make tangible objects from digital files — took off as he developed the skills to use them as a hobby.

“I kind of thought they were cool, but I didn’t know how to operate them,” Geisler said of when the school first had them available.

“Overall, I learned what I was able to do with it, and I took it to a different level.”

The printing technology is one of several upgrades the school is in the process of making to its technology education department to develop an engineering lab that will increase academic opportunities and students’ interest in the engineering field.

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West Salem, Bangor teams win at Odyssey of the Mind state event

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Coulee News: West Salem and Bangor students will participate in the Odyssey of the Mind international competition this May in Ames, Iowa, after teams from both schools took first in their divisions in the state competition last weekend.

Odyssey of the Mind is an organization that offers students opportunities for creative problem solving in a competitive environment. Teams are given a specific problem to prepare for, which often requires a significant amount of time and creative problem solving.

Some problems require problems require teams to find solutions through engineering, and others require teams to solve them using a thematic performance.

At the state competition, 16 teams from West Salem and seven from Bangor competed against schools from all over the state.

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Learning in the great outdoors

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The Tomah Journal: Maple syrup is a specialty product in Wisconsin, and it’s one that can be made by students in the Tomah Area School District.

Tomah High School students got the opportunity to show fourth-grade students from LaGrange Elementary School Monday how to collect and make maple syrup at the Wolf Den located in the TASD school forest.

Krissy Gerke, fourth-grade teacher at LaGrange, has always wanted to find a way to utilize the Wolf Den and that learning about maple syrup with THS agriculture teacher Nelda Bailey’s forestry and wildlife natural resource class was a great way to use the facility and teach students about a Wisconsin product.

“I know a lot of what they do in the high school in their forestry classes would kind of piggy-back with our Wisconsin topics that we discuss in fourth grade,” Gerke said. “So she said that in the spring they would be making maple syrup, so I kind of invited the fourth-graders to come out and partake in the events.”

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West Salem robotics team recognized by school board

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Lacrosse Tribune: West Salem High School’s FIRST robotics team received high praise from the West Salem School Board at Monday night’s meeting, where team members presented their robot.

The team recently competed at a regional tournament in Duluth, Minnesota, where they ranked forty-third out of more than 120 other teams at the competition.

This year’s robot was built entirely from scratch, rather than relying on the prefabricated components supplied by the competition organizers to aid rookie teams.

“This year we went with a custom chassis,” said team member Ted Tiber, one of the students who helped design and build the robot.

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