Welcome, everybody, to Mende magazine for this Friday, February 28th, 2025.
Have your host, James here, and I am joined right now by some wonderful people.
First up, we have Superintendents, those Scots, Rapids, Public Schools, Ronald A. Rasmussen
with us.
Ron, good to have you here.
Good afternoon, James.
Glad to be here.
It's the only time I get to say your full name is what I introduce here.
Yeah, I feel like I'm with my mom today.
We appreciate you being here, bud.
Thanks so much for the time.
We also want to introduce everybody else that's with us today, and I'll start right here with you, Chris.
Good morning.
I'm Christine Slattery, Principal at Think Academy.
Christine, thanks for being here.
Olivia Ashbeck.
Olivia, nice to meet you.
Thank you for being here.
Maddox Johnson.
Hey, Maddy.
Thanks for being here.
Kelsey Kofi.
Kelsey, good to see you.
Thanks a lot for being here.
More from you guys in a moment.
We do appreciate the time from you all.
I really appreciate Ron, the guests that you bring in when you join us and everything.
Our community gets a chance to really get an insight into our education system a little bit more.
What are kids doing a little bit more?
I know I have a number of friends and a number of people in the community I talk to.
They're in a similar boat as I am.
My kids are in their mid-twenties and everything, and been a little bit removed from this system.
So it really helps us have a little more understanding and empathy for, and just some really cool things going on in their education system.
So it's a lot of fun.
I appreciate that.
Yeah, we really appreciate coming in every month and just sharing all the excellence across the district and all the neat things occurring.
Christine, if you don't mind, I'd like to start with you.
I wanted to let the audience know a little bit about what more I think elementary is and what you guys are doing over there.
Sure.
Well, thank you for having us.
We're excited to be here.
So thank Academy services to communities or two cities, towns I should say.
So Vesper and Rudolph, and we're located in Rudolph.
Home of Rudolph, the Renault's reindeer.
We're very proud of that, as Rudolph is our mascot.
We have an incredible community, and I don't say that lightly.
We have incredible kids, and we have two of them with us today.
We have a really amazing and hardworking staff, and we have a really committed parent group.
So we have our parent teacher association, but we also, just in general, we have, if we ask for something, parents come, and they're always willing to be part of our community.
So I think that makes us really special.
We really value our community events.
So when we think about our veterans day and giving back to the community and recognizing what they do for Think Academy and the Rudolph Investor areas,
we, of course, have our run-run Rudolph, which makes us unique, because it's a 5K.
You're welcome to join in if you'd like to do that sometime, but we are really proud of that.
And that goes, what we raised from that goes back to our teachers.
So it's really important.
When you walk the halls of Think Academy, you feel joy.
And that's really important.
We start our day with where everybody's greeting kids.
So the kids are greeted multiple times by name before they even enter their classroom.
We start our day with a morning meeting.
So that consists of a greeting, a share, an activity, and then a morning message.
And that's really to build community in the classroom.
And it's also telling kids we see you, we hear you, we want you here.
And we all know sometimes you know our day start differently, but that kind of levels the playing field when we start in the building.
We're all hands on deck.
So everybody's here.
You know, it's like customer service.
We're here for the kids.
We're here for the families.
We work together.
If there's something we need to help with, everybody jumps in.
And sometimes we have so many people jumping in.
It's like, oh, we can have a few people step back.
And so that's really important.
We are preparing for Read Across America Week next week, which we're super excited about.
We celebrate reading all the time, but that's related to focus on celebrating reading.
Mr. Rasmussen is going to be one of our guest readers.
He's really excited to come in and do that as well as the Rural Fighter Department and one of the sheriffs who visits our school just to just to come by and say hi.
So that's really nice.
One thing we did earlier this month that was really cool is we had, so there's international play day, the first week of February.
So it's our third year where Mrs. Krieger headed this up for us.
We spend one day and we focus on the importance of play.
It's important for kids. It's important for us as adults.
And kids have choice in choosing the activities they do.
Every staff member, they put together an activity.
It might be more kinesthetic.
It might be a more art scene. It might be more musical.
Whatever it is, kids choose.
And we have four stations of play.
But it's really cool because we have to remember we're all kids at heart.
Well said. Very well said.
And thank you for that. I appreciate it. It's a great synopsis.
It's really good at this.
When it comes to the impact from your perspective that you've seen the think academy has had on this community, on the kids.
How important is it having this?
You know, just going forward.
The support of the community.
The support of the community.
And just to think academy in itself, having something like this for our kids.
So I so I think the school, well, I don't think I believe the school is a heart of a community.
So we need all of our stakeholders involved.
So whether it's well, of course, our students and our staff.
But we need that. We need that trust and we need that collaboration with our community.
And that looks different depending on which role they play in our community and some play multiple roles.
You know, so I think it's just really important that we connect with them.
Because when we connect with them and we have our doors open where they can come in and see what's happening in our building.
It creates that trust and it creates that more than a community. It's a family atmosphere.
And this shows how good you are at this because that was a horrible question.
I did not word that well at all and you nailed it.
Nicely done.
You somehow knew what I was asking still.
That's how good you are at this.
Thank you.
Oh, that was nice of you. I appreciate that.
But you really did bring home what I wanted to hear.
And the importance of this in our communities and having this and how much better our kids are from benefiting from this.
There is no greater investment.
Any of us can make than these kids.
There's nothing better we can do.
There's no more natural resource we have that is greater than this.
And any time we're impacting that, any time we're helping with that or assisting in that in ways that we can go forward.
That's what think academies about.
That's a big part of what's going on over there.
And it's just really cool to hear and to see.
It's very encouraging.
I think that we get a little bogged down in this day and age by negativity.
And something we try to do here on our shows and just in general is there's a lot of positive stuff out there.
There's a lot of good things going on out there.
You guys help us bring light to that in these interviews.
You guys help us remind people of that.
And these kids remind us of that.
I'm spoiled.
I get to sit in this chair and get to talk to different groups all the time last week.
And I think Ron, you brought in the fact group and talking with those kids and the grassroots, the work that they're doing on that.
Just these different groups and organizations that exist at the school level that is very encouraging to me when it comes to young people and seeing this stuff.
And certainly very invigorating to me to see adults listening to kids.
You hit on this right away.
And any chance we have, we like to bring this up and come back to this one.
The older we get, the more we forget what it's like to be young.
That's nobody's fault.
That's just humanity in life and the way it works and stuff.
Talking to kids reminds you of this.
Talking to kids reminds you of what it was like to be a kid.
And I hope reminds people as well as, well, I remember what it was like being a kid.
I also have no idea what it's like to be a kid nowadays.
It's completely different in many ways.
Kids aren't at different.
But what they're dealing with and the different things going on in society nowadays are very different than when I was growing up in the 80s and late, not early 90s and everything.
So, you know, I mean, I've been that long ago.
I like to think it wasn't that long ago, but it was, I have to admit, it was, I'm old.
But it's a nice reminder of, hey, there's different stuff going on now.
These things are important and it all is a domino to leading to a better future for all of us.
And you do that with this pro, you do this academy and talking about this and the staff over there and the people working at this.
I appreciate that, Christine.
Thank you for sharing that with us.
I do would like to take a moment to talk a little bit about playworks and find out more about that.
And Kelsey, you've got a little bit of that for us, don't you?
Yes, so I help run playworks at our school.
It's something we're doing district-wide across all elementary schools.
Playworks is nationwide and then like the hub for Wisconsin is out of Milwaukee.
And what playworks is all about is it is a recess structure where there's planned games for students to play.
So, students can choose whatever game they want to play.
But there's different structures and that way all students feel included.
The goal in the belief of playworks is to bring out the power of play in every kid.
So, when they go out to recess, they've been taught the games, they know the rules, and they can pick whatever they want whether they're going to play.
There's tag games that we've introduced, basketball games, soccer games, the really popular game that playworks brought out, which is so fun from my childhood, is four square.
The kids didn't know what four square was.
And now that's one of our favorite games.
It's one of the most popular on the playground.
And then I think Academy, we are very passionate in our kickball and the football.
So, playworks has been great for the students because it teaches them to include everybody.
And then there's a deal wheel that they have.
So, if there's a disagreement, say during four square, we have a deal wheel.
So, maybe they're going to rock paper scissors, we call it Rochyan Bo.
To decide who's out.
They're going to talk it out, take turns.
There's just different problem solving strategies for the students to have.
I mentioned this before.
I moved around a lot as a kid and I had a very hard time making friends.
And when I first moved out here, it was a complete culture shock for me from where I came from.
The thing that helped me make friends, it helped me talk to kids even in everything with sports.
Like, I was really fast.
So, like, oh, I want him on my team.
They start remembering your name all of a sudden, everything.
But it just is an example of what's the lessons that we can learn and the different things that we can take from sports and activity.
And just, you know, being out there and doing stuff, the problem solving that can come from that.
That's a very unique part of this, but it's such a cool part of it, I think.
Yes. And then a really cool part too is, so, the value is in the focus there is leadership development.
So, we have junior coaches, a part of playworks.
And that's our fourth and fifth grade students. They can apply to be a junior coach.
And they get to go out for the first recess and they help lead the games.
They will plan, oh, I'm going to lead kickball today.
And so, then they'll like pull kids in to get them to play kickball and they'll help if there's any issues that come out of your out.
You're, or no, I was safe.
Yeah.
So, it's a really cool leadership ability and experience.
For our fifth graders to have.
And at that age, there's so little opportunities for that.
So, to give some of that to kids is really impactful.
And I imagine it makes quite an impact and it feels, how does it feel?
Alaska, I got people right in front of me, I can ask.
Olivia, I want to start with you. Olivia is a fifth grade junior coach, a part of playworks.
And Olivia, what does it mean to you to be able to be a coach as well as being a part of this?
It's an opportunity that you can go and help kids without having.
So, Olivia, I was curious what you enjoy about being a coach.
Helping the kids outside at recess.
Yeah, yeah, that's cool.
It's got to feel really good to be a part of that.
And I imagine that you enjoy that a lot.
Do you find your fellow students?
Do they work well with you?
Do you enjoy working with them as a coach?
They usually listen pretty well because they know that we're trying to help them
throughout recess to solve any disagreement when you get inside from class.
Thank you for sharing that.
Thank you.
Nice job, by the way.
And it did good with there.
Olivia, nice work.
I gave us some insight to stuff that we wouldn't know about otherwise if you weren't able to be here to share it.
So, I appreciate you doing that.
Maddie, I have a simpler question for you.
You're a fifth grade junior coach.
How are you enjoying that?
Do you like doing that?
Yeah.
It's like what Olivia said.
It can help with disagreements.
And you can help solve a problem if there's any.
And I imagine you're learning a bunch of stuff about being in a coach with that too.
Are you having fun with that?
Yeah.
Good.
Good.
I'm happy to hear that, you guys.
And some of the stuff that you're learning and you're experiencing right now, it's going to be a while,
but you're going to feel the dividends from this.
You're definitely going to be rewarded from this in many ways.
And your peers, your fellow students and everything, greatly appreciate the stuff that you're doing.
And I really appreciate you being here today.
Thanks so much for doing it.
It's pretty brave what you guys just did.
So thank you.
Nice work both of you.
I do wanted to ask Kelsey if there was anything else you wanted to mention about playworks that we could touch on for the audience
and let them know a little bit more about what this awesome thing that you guys are doing over there.
Absolutely.
So when we, with our base out of Madison for playworks, or not Madison, I'm sorry, Milwaukee,
we have a coach that will come in four times a year.
And they just come in, they bring so much excitement and they teach different games.
And they focus on different strategies and life skills for students to have both on the playground.
And then it translates back into the classroom.
So with their high energy, they get the kids out there, they get them wanting to play,
wanting to work together and building that teamwork.
So we just had a coach out about a month ago.
And she gave the kids some hard games to play that was really good for team building.
And it's awesome that they got to play that experience it.
And then it comes in and shows in the classroom too.
And they're doing partner work when we're trying to solve a really tricky math problem.
They're using some of those skills that they learned in playworks.
And then it's transferring back into the classroom.
It's pretty cool to be able to see that happening too.
And in real time, being able to see some of this and the development of that.
I, you were talking about this and just talking and hearing you girls talk about this too,
got me thinking about my daughter and when she first started to learn to read.
And she had a couple of days where she just didn't think like it was ever going to happen.
And then one day she's going through her school book and she's just sounding out these words
and sounding out another one, another one, another one.
And then all of a sudden she's flipping the page and she, you can't stop her.
And I'm just getting to see that happen.
Like the, hmm, there's no words for it or anything.
That kind of stuff going on is awesome.
But it's also really cool to see, I imagine, in being a part of.
That's great. Thank you for that.
Appreciate the time on these subjects and you guys being here today and bringing a little more light to it.
I didn't want to make some time for Ron because you had some updates and some other things
that we wanted to touch on before we let you go here.
Yeah, a little bit just about playworks as well.
So that's in all of our elementary buildings.
It's an exciting feature to allow students to learn leadership, collaboration, teamwork,
all those important soft social skills that is important for us to succeed in life.
So we're excited that we're able to bring that to all of our elementary buildings this year as well.
It really shows an attention to that.
And like this is something we want to get on right away.
We're not going to wait for this to be an issue or anything like that.
We're getting out of the early enough.
So that's really cool to see.
Yeah, and obviously we're an educational institution.
So obviously you want, you know, math, English, science, all studies.
But we know to succeed in life those, those citizenship skills, those soft skills are really important.
And as technology continues to invade our lives, the importance to have that one-on-one personal communication is really important.
So it's these programs that we don't get measured on.
They're not on our school report card.
But I think they're almost more important than some of the things we do teach because that's how we're going to succeed in society and in life.
So we're excited to have the junior coaches because they're excited that they can work with their younger classmates as well.
So it's exciting for us to continue in this direction in the district.
You had an update on how that we were going to touch on.
Yes. So we've getting a lot of questions regarding the demolition of the manual church property.
So we just recently got the gas shut off to the building.
And we're probably looking over.
Our spring break is when that property will come down.
And I know it's sad.
It's been a structure within our community for a long time.
Yes.
But we're excited for the manual.
Parish to have their new facility and then to move forward with some renovations and some safety improvements really for parent and student drop off and pick up at how that we hope to implement for Nick's school year with that property.
But that will probably be happening over over spring break is when that will occur so the end of March.
I appreciate the update on that.
Yeah.
I just want to give a shout out to our Deca kids at LHS over 30 of them qualified for the International Conference in Orlando in April.
They shoot for that.
I think maybe more for the Orlando vacation than anything else that they might get.
A little colony, a little colony.
Yeah, excited.
So, but just once again, just how active our students are involved.
Two months ago, I think we had our interact kids here.
They hosted a unit youth unity summit.
They had over 300 students from across other schools in the state this past Tuesday.
I'm just really looking at once again, teamwork, collaboration, how to get along.
And just those importance of diversity as well.
And so we're excited about that.
And then for our community, our parents, the school district will be having a parent survey that will be sent out to our parents sometime in April.
There'll be a lot of further communication regarding in school newsletters, et cetera, to our parents.
But just as it heads up, just really of our operation beliefs and their importance of their school buildings themselves.
Yeah, and take the time for those surveys.
Take a time. They don't take too long.
And they're so worthwhile.
Well, the amount of time you spend on that, you get in return because that information is vital to making decisions and understanding what the community needs.
Yeah, and that's really important for us as we begin to plan the district's future.
And we move forward.
And speaking of moving forward, a little bittersweet moment.
So today is Marine Hodgson's last day employed by WRPS.
She's served as executive assistant to the superintendent and the board secretary for many, many years.
And I just want to give a shout out to Marine.
I know she's had an impact for a lot of people in our community.
And she's been the contact for pretty much everybody in the WRPS for 20 plus years.
You imagine how many people Marine knows.
Yeah.
And she is the kindest soul ever.
And so we just want to thank Marine for her years of dedicated service to WRPS, but also to the Wisconsin Rapids community and the connections that she's done.
So we wish Marine great retirement.
And it's well deserved.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, you talk about people that have made an impact in this community.
There is another one of them and done some great work in this community.
I greatly appreciate somebody like her.
She gives us an opportunity to really shout out all of you in the education system.
And I'm including you kids too.
Everybody that is, again, putting into the greatest thing we can in our future and you kids.
And Marine people like that help us do that.
Big shout out to her.
Enjoy your retirement.
Take a break.
Take a break Marine.
She didn't take a break.
You all maybe take a break this weekend or something when you get a chance because you worked really hard today in this interview.
And you did a great job.
I appreciate you.
I would like to very much not only thank you Ron and all the time.
Love hanging out with you.
Love talking to you, man.
Thank you so much for the work you do.
And certainly, Christine, want to thank you for the time today.
Thank you for being here.
I've got to have you back more often, I think.
Talk a little bit more to think Academy.
I think that's a good idea.
We'll work on that.
I'm always happy to come.
Kelsey, nice work.
Really nice work.
Almost too good.
Don't take my job.
I need this job, Kelsey.
But nice work.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah, thank you.
Actually, all right.
We might get your information.
That might happen.
But all you guys, I appreciate you.
But I want to send a special shout out to Olivia and Maddie.
You guys nailed this interview.
Did a great job.
I really think you should be proud of this.
You did good work.
And now you've got a little bit of experience to put on the resume and radio.
You could say, I worked in radio a little bit now.
You know, you can have some fun with that.
But thank you both for being here.
And what you're doing with your classmates in the school and with play works.
I appreciate you.
Nice work, guys.
Thank you, everybody, for the time.
Ron, if people have follow-up questions, they would like no more.
Reach out to you.
How can they do that?
Yep.
You can contact me at Central Office.
715-424-6701 or via my email.
Thanks, Ron.
And thank you all again.
Appreciate the time.
Thank you.
And I, of course, want to take a moment to thank our scheduler.
The heart of WFHR Pam Hilke and the amazing scheduling she does week in a week out.
Thank you to her and thank you to all of our guests throughout the week.
Be sure to spread the word about our shows.
You can catch all of the podcasts at civicmedia.us slash shows.
Share them on your social media or just in a round.
And of course, be here next week from 4-5 on 97-5 FM, WFHR, where we are locally grown radio.
