Teacher Spotlight: Ms. Rushing
Ms. Rushing is both Lacrosse and Wanatah schools’ art teacher. As such, she teaches all art from kindergarten through twelfth grade. These classes include digital art, art history, two-dimensional, and three-dimensional art at the high school level. She doesn’t have a favorite class to teach, but she really enjoys her seventh grade art class. She says that that particular class allows the kids “a lot of time to explore, and decide if art is really for them.”
A few things that she wants the kids who take her classes to learn is how to be excited about art and tap into their creative roots. She hopes that when they research artists and figures that they can understand they’re not gods or immortals, but regular people like the rest of us. Ms. Rushing hopes that, through her classes, students can learn that it is okay to be imperfect, and that there is always room for improvement. Even the greatest artists in the world started out with stick figures.
An artist should draw everything around them, and what Ms. Rushing loves to draw most is people. She enjoys drawing them realistically, as figure studies or portraiture, or just drawing them in a cartoony style for her own amusement. She believes that art as a whole has the power to bring people together, in a celebration of creativity and the human spirit. This way of thinking really shines through in her teaching, where she makes a habit of getting each student engaged and motivated. She can always find something to complement in a person’s art, as well as something they could improve on.
Like she says, “art is about improvement!”
A Month of Kindness At Lacrosse
The Lacrosse Honor society was presented with a task at the very beginning of November. Find an activity that would last the entire month, and also teach or motivate the students to understand an important lesson. The theme they ultimately settled on was named “The Kindness Challenge.” Each week would include several activities to get the kids working together and learning more about the classmates they might not have previously seen.
The first week focused on the differences within all of us.
“Our differences should not be what divide us,” one of the members said, “but what bring us together.”
They presented to the class a few short videos about not judging on appearances, but that phrase remained the motif of the week.
The next week was all about recognizing your actions. Students were asked to write something that they had heard said about themselves. Over the course of the week, these phrases were changed into things that could be taken as positives. Things like being dumb or worthless became the facts that everyone learns at their own pace, and no person on earth is purposeless. While the week was mainly focused on how you can affect others, it also touched on how the things you think can affect yourself. Students were encouraged to try to think positively about their own lives, and understand that they all have worth as humans.
The last week before break spoke about teamwork. Students were shown a few videos from Kid President and did some activities. One of these activities involved creating a “human knot,” which is where each person in a circle grabs hands with another person in the middle, creating a knot. The objective from there is then to untangle the knot and become a circle of people joined hand to hand. Although some groups struggled, the joy they felt when they all figured it out together was immense.
Veteran’s Day At Wanatah
Every year, Wanatah holds a Veteran’s Day celebration. The day includes a reading of the presidential declaration of Veteran’s Day, as well as the raising of the flags, a short presentation from the American Legion, and a few shows of admiration from the classes. The high schoolers are invited and even encouraged to attend the show, as well as the entire town of Wanatah.
The presentation begins with the local American legion presenting the flags. Then it is the high school and middle school combined choirs’ turn to sing the national anthem, as well as a few other patriotic songs. The kindergarten class then leads the entire gymnasium in the Pledge of Allegiance, and the first grade reads out a poem in which each first letter of the lines spells out “THANK YOU FOR OUR FREEDOM.” The second graders gave a rousing performance of “This Land Is Our Land.” The third graders had worked in groups to create posters, each detailing one of the United States’ landmarks, such as the Liberty Bell and the bald eagle.
The fourth grade class upheld the long tradition of their flag routine to music,going up and down aisles until they met in front of the stage in groups of two, four, six, eight, and eventually splitting up and coming to meet altogether in a straight line, waving the American flag high and proud.
Something new was also added this year. At the end of the program, veterans from all throughout the town were asked to line up at the door. Each student was asked to shake their hand and thank them for their service. This made exiting the school take a little bit more time, but each student was able to individually connect with and understand the people that had defended their country.
Student Spotlight: Hannah Leffew
Hannah Leffew is currently a junior at Lacrosse who is avidly interested in helping other people. She is involved in numerous groups, including the Honor Society, Academic Super Bowl, Volleyball, the Student Council, as well as the Principal’s Advisory Committee. She started an Animal Food Drive last year, and has continued it again this year. She always makes an earnest effort to do her best at everything she attempts, and is overall an upstanding person with a kind heart.