Students Put Design Thinking to Use with Voters
To learn about an upcoming school bond proposal, high school business students are zeroing in on their neighbors by using the Design Thinking process.
Challenged to work on something real in their own community, students in teacher Jon Bushen's Business...
Wyoming Bond Vote Would Upgrade 50-Year-old Facilities
Voters will consider a bond proposal Tuesday, Nov. 7 that, without raising property owners' current tax rate, would fund $79.5 million in district-wide improvements. This includes $40 million in high school renovations. If passed, the proposal would extend the...
When Monsters Call and Teachers Read, Students Listen
The shared love of a book was on display in English teacher Shantel VanderGalien's eighth-grade honors class as she read aloud from "A Monster Calls." Creating a monster voice with a plummy British accent, VanderGalien revealed her theatrical side.
The...
‘I Get How Hard It Is’
Teresa Dood, Parkview Elementary's Kent School Services Network coordinator, brings an awareness that is deep and real to her job linking families with resources.
For her, navigating complicated systems and overcoming seemingly impossible barriers is personal.
From her school office, Dood...
Students Learn From the Fruits of Their Labors
Five young apple trees grow outside West Elementary School. They are the beginnings of the Beverly Bryan Community Orchard, which could someday flourish with pear, plum and chestnut trees, blueberry and raspberry bushes, and feature benches and mulch for...
Sharing Her Music to Feed Body and Soul
Playing piano moves Becca Hanson's soul. That's why she makes it about something bigger than herself. She likes to share that feeling – indulgent, she calls it – with others.
She's that kind of leader: a poised, soft-spoken doer who...
Superintendents Support Students In the Face of DACA Decision
As a mother and grandmother, Teresa Weatherall Neal knows well the value of family. And as superintendent of nearly 17,000 Grand Rapids Public Schools students, she thinks about the families they all come from.
So Neal’s reaction to President Trump’s...
Teachers Train Together to Help Close the Gap
A fence illustration is often used to show the difference between equality and equity.
Two pictures each show three children, one tall, one short and one in between, trying to peer over a fence. In one picture, they are treated...
Buck Creek Hunter, Master Ear Wiggler, Life-long Wolf
School: West Elementary
Other positions you have held in education (title, school, district, state):
Sixth-and-seventh-grade social studies teacher at Jackson Park Junior High School
9th and 10th-grade social studies teacher at Wyoming Park and Rogers High schools
Assistant principal at...
Teachers Stock Up on Class Supplies, with Help
Wyoming's Parkview Elementary School teachers demonstrated their love for new school supplies at the Teacher Resource Store, where they left with cartloads of notebooks, pencils, folders, paper and the promise to "pay it forward."
"Oh my gosh! Look at how...
First Day Festival
The entire staff of educators started the school year with a morning of celebration last Monday at Grand Rapids First Church, in Wyoming.
The fanfare included greetings from Wyoming High School cheerleaders, and a mini-concert from the marching band, which...
Six Teachers Seek National Board Credentials
Big names in teaching in Kent County – Michigan Teachers of the Year for 2016-2017 and 2017-2018 – have joined forces to share the best ways to engage students and get them to achieve at high levels.
A cohort of...
‘Make a Place Better Than When You Got There’
It's not so much that Wyoming High School graduate Mirnes Kukic is bound for Harvard University as it is the personal qualities that surface as you chat to discover that he loves to fish, counts his grandfather as mentor,...
For Immigrant Families, ‘There’s a Lot of Fear’
Kent School Services Network coordinator Erika VanDyke wasn't sure what the turnout would be for a recent Know Your Rights event for immigrants at West Elementary School. Staff had purposely not asked people to register, and they advertised it...
Shooting for the Top
Donnie Alford owns his past with a perspective on where he comes from, where he is today and why it all matters that seems mature beyond his 18 years. The Wyoming High School senior, who graduated June 1, tells...
A Year in America, and Then Some
In his year of study at Wyoming High School, Triet Vu learned a lot of things about America and its education system that were much different from his home in Vietnam: the easier curriculum, the pervasive technology, the intensely...
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