Welcome, everybody, to Midday Magazine for this Friday, March 21st, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here, and welcoming into the studio, some of our favorite
people.
We've got Wisconsin Rabbit Superintendent, Ronald Rasmussen, and with us, Ron, good to see you.
Good afternoon, James.
Good to see you.
Oh, I got to figure out who your designer is, man.
Every time you come in here, you're dressed at the 9s, and I feel like I'm under dress,
though.
It's beautiful.
I love that seat.
Well, thank you.
We also want to welcome in some of our friends from How with us.
We have Steve Thayer, and with us, How Principal, Steve.
Good to see you again.
Hey, good to see you, too, James.
And Mail Miller is with us.
Mail, thanks for being here.
Good afternoon.
Appreciate the time from both of you.
We're going to be focusing a bit on how we'll wrap up with some Wisconsin Rabbit schools,
a bit of an update from that.
But right now, we're going to focus on How and some great things going on over there at How
and one of the things that we wanted to touch on today was the Aviation Club.
I purposely looked a little bit into this, but I wanted to learn from you to what the
Aviation Club is.
What can you tell us about this?
So while I am a reading teacher, Aviation and teaching is a passion, but Aviation has
always been a passion since I was a little girl, and I've always wanted to become a pilot.
I took the Aviation class at Lincoln High School way back when, and I just decided this
year I wanted to bring a little bit of that passion to my students and give this a go.
And I thought initially, okay, I'm going to go with 15 students because I wasn't sure
how many kids would actually be interested in in Aviation Club, and the response was
overwhelming.
So I actually took on more students than I was planning, and I had to cap it at 25.
So we have a waiting list of kids, and we meet once a month, and just really share little
snippets of Aviation.
We've talked about fundamentals of flight, weather, aviation, alphabet, just all sorts
of things.
It's been really cool.
When it comes to any topic, but especially a topic like this, when we're talking about
kids, one of the first things that pops in my mind, and I imagine many people is this,
we just never know what might get sparked for these kids when it comes to any topic, especially
something like this.
And there is virtually no industry that couldn't use more good young people interested in it
involved in it and everything.
So that's from arithmetic to history to anything.
When it comes to a topic like this, I dare say there is a real fun element.
To this for adults and kids, and a learning part of this for both as well, is that the
case now?
Absolutely.
Of course I'm geeking out over it, but the excitement that I've seen, and it's for third
through fifth graders.
So the excitement I've seen from these third through fifth graders has been phenomenal.
They are just totally into it.
They're looking forward to it.
They'll see me in the hall and say, see what Aviation Club tonight, they love it.
Even last night was our most recent one, and we just, we made kites, and we talked about
how kites fly, and we went outside to fly them.
And the kids were just saying, thank you Mrs. Miller for letting us do this.
This is so much fun.
And it just, there's so much joy.
It's so, it's so neat to see.
I will admit, I've always found flight aviation very interesting.
I find the whole subject matter kind of cool, and I love flying.
I've let enjoyed that a lot in my life.
I've even thought about similar to you, the idea of piloting and stuff and some of those
things at some point in life.
But I'll also be honest with everybody, I've just, I was, I'm still this kid that I was
in fourth grade or fifth grade or sixth grade.
I love learning.
I especially love learning about topics that I know nothing about, or don't really have
anything to do with my career or my work or anything like that.
I learn every day about writing or acting or radio or something like that.
Learning about aviation or something.
That's not really in my wheelhouse, and it's why I love to learn these things.
I think we forget sometimes how much not only kids thrive on that and love that, how
necessary it is for them.
It's a different way to use your brain.
Really?
Yes, yes.
As important as it is to learn your arithmetic and math and all these other topics, this stuff
is just as important in many ways to keep that brain really fresh and moving and interested.
Have you found that the kids, even the, you know, the kids signing up for this obviously
want to know about aviation, but as their excitement, just being even more than you could
have imagined.
It sounds like the turnout was bigger than you imagined.
I'm curious of how their reactions to learning about some of these things and everything,
how that's gone for them.
They've had some pretty impressive reactions, and I've actually been amazed at how much
they do know and how much they're absorbing, and I've even had parents message me and say,
this is all that they talk about, and they're just, they're sharing everything that you
did, and they're so excited.
So that's just been, I don't know, it's just been so rewarding, honestly.
And I wish, look, in hindsight, I do wish that we would have done it a little, a little
more often, maybe two times a month instead of one, but again, I didn't know how it was
going to go.
So first round with it.
But yeah, it's just, it's just fascinating and needing to see them.
Do you have some things coming up that you're looking forward to, some projects on the
way?
Yes.
So we have two more official club meetings, and then we are actually going to the EAA Youth
Education Center in Ashkosh at the end of May.
So we were awarded a bit of a scholarship to be able to attend.
So we're very excited for that, and I picked out some sessions for them, and it will be
a whole day excursion, and they're looking forward to it.
My, my brother works with the, the Wisconsin herd now, but before that, he worked at EAA,
and was a, for years, worked there, and this was their Super Bowl, preparing for the big
EAA event and everything.
And I could, I could text him right now, and I guarantee you, Nick, what was your favorite
thing about this?
The kids.
Like every time they look so forward to kids showing up to these things, to everything
what we were talking about before about, you know, it's not to say that this industry
isn't healthy and doesn't have good people in it, but we could always use younger minds
and younger people to care more about this stuff, and getting interested in this and finding
maybe a new career path or something like that, very similar to a young male bite-up or
something like that and everything.
I just, next question I have for you, and Steve, and that's the importance of just having
like, when we were all kids, there was a lot of good clubs, and schools were doing a great
job of having a lot of these things, but I feel like nowadays, the more I talk to you guys
and more Ron and comes in with different, different principles and everything, it's become
much more important to have variety of groups.
While we still have our traditional groups and everything, having something like this, having
more unique groups and everything, you just, we don't know what is going to catch a kid.
It's a little bit like, you know, I know for my kids, I'd spend all this time focusing
on what to get them for Christmas or Hanukkah or something, I get it for them, and what
do they do?
They play with the box more than anything else or something like that and everything.
We could think we know, but we don't know, they know, so we really need them to tell
us, and the only way they do, they can oftentimes is by signing up for these clubs.
Absolutely.
I will add something that's been really rewarding for me too, is seeing the amount of girls
that have signed up, because we think a aviation is typically a male-dominated field, and
so it's really neat to be able to see the girls interested and excited.
Last month we even had a parent of one of our students who is a master sergeant in the
Air Force, and she's Lucruci from the F-35 out of Madison, so she came to share about
what she does, and we practice taking airplanes apart, little toy airplanes, practice taking
them apart, putting them back together, practicing marshaling or parking each other, and that
was really neat.
It was really neat to see a role model such as that come in to share with our boys and
girls.
I appreciate the note about having young girls apart of this club and them being turned
on to this and getting to know more about this subject matter and everything.
Any chance that we have for this in society, in any group, in organization, having more
representation on both sides of this and everything is so important going forward, and I think
very encouraging going forward when you think about this and how much more this is becoming
more and more of a common thing, and maybe in 5-10 years, if we're having this conversation,
it's not even surprising, you know, and that's what we're looking for.
The dream of the goal.
To normalize this kind of stuff and make it much more real and evident.
That's a great part of it, but there's something that I hadn't thought about right away with
this where you bring somebody like that in, and yes, it's encouraging to maybe get them
interested in this as a career path or something like that.
Or maybe the military as a career path, because that's another thing that we could always
use more and more people involved and wanting to be a part of and everything.
So there's a beautiful win-win kind of situation with something like that, a big tip of the
hat for them showing up and coming down for that, that's very cool.
Steve, I mentioned the importance of having, you know, variety of clubs.
Have you seen that as a principle that how much more important it is and helpful it
is in getting more and more kids involved where almost every kid of a grade class is in
some type of club?
Absolutely.
And James, when Mel approached me at the beginning of the year about this, it's always a conversation
that we have, especially at the elementary level, because having clubs and activities is
so challenging, right?
Because you're dealing, it's not like at the secondary level where you have kids who
could, you know, you could be confident that they could walk, you know, several miles home
or they can drive themselves home at the end of the night.
You're really reliant on that transportation piece is really a challenge.
And so any time that we can have a club is just a win.
And this, especially, we've been talking about it so far, this whole segment is, it's
about sparking that dream.
And it's giving kids something tangible where they can say, wow, this really could be me,
right?
And we're bringing in guests who live in our own backyard, so to speak, of it's like,
wow, there are people that live here that could, that do this.
Maybe I could do that too, and it's not just the flight aspect.
It's, you know, there's communication parts to aviation that need to be tackled and challenged.
There are mechanics that need to be excellent in using that hands-on learning.
And so it's all for me, it's all about sparking that dream and giving kids that, holy cow,
this actually could be me.
Like, it's more than just making paper airplanes and throwing them at my buddies in class
and hope the teacher doesn't see, right?
It's something, it's, it can be, it can be a real dream and it could be me.
One of the other parts of this that I appreciate before you go on to a couple of other things
going on at how is the empathy that this can create for other positions, other jobs,
other walks of life.
Right now, we see this with the news quite a bit where we kind of jump on things and, oh,
something's going wrong with our planes and just immediately, like, boom, boom, boom,
and yelling and yelling and all this stuff, I take any opportunity I can to remind adults
the kids are, the brains are sponges and they're taking all this in and they see how we treat
other adults and the more we act like adults, the more likely they are to act like adults
as they get older.
So that part of this is just another, it's not certainly the main point of this or anything,
but I do look for any kind of silver linings with these kind of things and there's one that's
right there for you that really does create that without even necessarily trying to create
that.
And it's part of the other reason, as a side note, why I appreciate having all of you
in and getting a chance to talk with you and people in the education system, where this
is also another important factor of reminding people that we have human beings doing these
jobs, neighbors, friends, family members and everything doing these jobs and we're all trying
to do the best we can and all have the same goal of having a better future for our kids.
Absolutely.
I just want to add, after that, about sparking that, sparking that interest in what's occurring.
So the cool thing melts that she learned in this spark when she was a student at Lincoln,
she took the aviation class.
That aviation class is still part of the curriculum as part of our career in technical education
curriculum and that spark just continues.
So I'm full deep into this and Mr. Thayer knows this because my son is going to school next
year, graduating from Lincoln, going for commercial aviation because of the aviation class.
So we look at those afterings and it's been fun for me as a parent, seeing it from this
side of the connections of that person graduated from Lincoln, that person graduated from
Port, they're now pilots as well and that web of people from our local area who are now
connecting is pretty awesome and we have an excellent airport training out there with
wings to facilitate that for people in our community who are interested in that.
And you talk about joining clubs and organizations and that's what we hope sparks those passions
for students in the future that they find something that I envision myself doing this.
For 30 years down the road and so it takes people like Mel to say, hey, I'm interested in
this.
I think other kids are interested in this and so I commend her for proposing the idea
because that's a lot of kids that are going to have a future and just aviation as Mr. Thayer
said, the math, the engineering, the traffic control, I mean, it's such a growing industry
because people like to travel.
Yeah.
We'll just bring break next week.
There'll be lots of people traveling.
There'll be a lot of people here.
And it is still just a plug and it is still the safest way to travel.
It's awesome to see that spark that Mel is doing at how and that we have in a variety of
buildings depending upon the activity and the interests of people as well.
So it's pretty awesome.
Thank you for sharing that.
Shout out to your son.
That's awesome.
That's congrats to him and this really ties into a big thing that we wanted to talk about
too with all of this is not only encouraging kids supporting kids but the work being done
by our educators, Mel, so much of this doesn't happen without you just reaching out and
wanting to get this ball rolling and everything.
I appreciate that and I know so many of our parents and our kids out there too.
We don't get to take the little winds very often.
I hope you take the pad on the back and the wind on this one.
Do you have something else?
Well, I just want to thank some people.
So first of all, our EAA chapter and just a quick plug there.
May 3rd are putting on a little Young Eagles workshop at the airport for kids ages
eight or 17.
So look on our look on EAA chapter seven oh six for more information.
But our EAA chapter has been so instrumental they've I've asked for snack fairies.
So a different member every month has signed up to provide the snack for our students because
they are just really hungry after school.
So that's been really appreciated.
And then just different donors through creating donors choose projects.
I wouldn't have been able to do it necessarily without that just getting different materials
and books and and things to to provide support and activities for the club.
Thank you, Mel.
I appreciate it.
I appreciate the time and what you're doing for our kids out there in our system.
Steve, I did want to take a moment to touch on a couple of other things going on over
at how I want to remind everybody to put on their calendar April 11th.
That is the house school carnival.
It's always a big event.
A fun one over there.
Yeah.
Yes.
And we love having it and James, I'd be remiss to not say a huge thank you to our PTC,
our parent teacher community.
They're so active in our school and they have been able to provide monthly parent engagement
and family engagement activities just last week.
We were able to or was it last week?
We were able to host local legend Tom P's and we had him at school and he came and did
an all school assembly for us and the kids just loved it.
And then he came back that night too and we had our how families come in and we had
a whole bleacher full of families that were just able to sing and dance and have fun with
one another.
It was so much fun.
Oh, it was a blast.
It was a blast.
And then the 11th were having our carnival and it takes so much work to put on an event
like this and to have volunteers, common staff, food tents and game tents and prize
areas.
And this year, PTC has actually convinced me as well to have a pie the principal food.
And so, yeah, no one really knows this yet.
Mel's over here.
You guys can't see her on that.
On the airways.
She's pumping her fins.
She's ready to go, right?
And so we're going to just fun things like that where we can get families together and
just enjoy time with one another and to be truthful.
It's getting away from a screen and connecting as humans and seeing the humanity in it and
just having a great time.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
It's going to be a blast.
I do want to remind people that we'll be reminding people about that event as we get closer
to it and everything.
And I shout out to Tom.
Tom's joined us on the air here before and everything.
And I knew that Tom was at Howe because we have a little one that goes to Howe over
here and she came into the studios and was singing his songs and reminding me.
I know his whole routine.
She told me the whole thing.
She did it twice.
She was really into it.
He's does a great job.
That's fun to hear.
We also want to remind everybody about some construction work that's going to be going
on with an old church over there.
Yeah.
So, and Ron, filling the gaps if I miss anything, but you know, we've had such a great
partnership with Emmanuel Lutheran Church for so many years.
And this next step that we're taking in this process is the school district has acquired
the property over there for the main purpose of being able to keep a safe parking space
for our staff.
And then we're going to develop that and I'll touch on that a little bit more.
The deconstruction process of the church has already begun.
We've taken care of all the asbestos pavement and getting things ready for that building
to come down.
And we understand it's sad to see such a mainstay in our community like that go, but we're
really hoping to treat the property with the respect and the dignity that it deserves
and to use it very in a positive way moving forward for our families.
So if you're driving down eighth street here this next week, you'll see, especially on
Monday and Tuesday in earnest, that building is going to start to come down.
Ron did a great job of rearranging that deconstruction schedule so that way we could do it over
spring break.
As much as our students and staff really want to be there to see that deconstruction
happen, we knew that what a lot of learning wouldn't happen while that was taking place.
So we moved that to our spring break week and a lot of that demolition is going to be
happening this week, but we're really excited to take that space and we want to get some
improved parking for our staff and for our visitors to the school.
And then we want to improve our drop off and pick up procedures by using this to make
it more safe for all of our families and our kiddos.
It is a huge recurring nightmare of mine that we have a student dart out between cars
that pick up to go see mom or dad across the street and eighth street is busy.
And so we don't want any of those accidents.
And so we're hoping to utilize most importantly for student safety and parent safety to rework
that space to better facilitate that pick up and drop off.
And one of our goals in this really is we want to be good neighbors in this whole thing.
One of the things that I went to Ron right away and thankfully he agreed with me is we
didn't want to just take the church down and just pave the whole thing and turn it into
a big concrete jungle.
That's not, no one wants to live there and be near that.
And so we want to make sure that we're being really good neighbors and we're going to
take some of it and convert it into some green space and add some green space over there
because we don't need the whole lot anymore.
Our school staff is much smaller than the worship family that used to meet there at
a manual.
And so we can reduce some of that and create some more green space and creating a place
that people can feel comfortable walking through and enjoying as they're walking to and from
their homes even in the summer.
I appreciate the updates, Steve.
Thank you for that.
Ron, I know you had an update for us as well.
Yeah, just quickly at the end here, we celebrated Read Across America across all our elementary
buildings in the last month.
So that was fun.
Outreading buildings.
I had lots of students hand me books about snow because they wanted snow days.
So that was nice.
I want to give a shout out to Maggie Kuzlowski who is just a national semi-finalist and
FCC LA, a student of the year.
We talk about the importance of clubs and activities and that's just another one within
our family and consumer sciences.
During break is next week, so obviously everybody is looking forward to that.
The spring election is on April 1st, in addition to the state elections, we do have a school
board election.
We have four people running for two spots.
There is a job fair at Lincoln High School sponsored by the school district in the heart
of Wisconsin, April 2nd, from 2 to 5 pm.
And then lastly, I encourage all our parents, the week of April 14th, they'll be a survey
coming out from school perceptions, answering questions about the school district and we
really encourage all our parents to complete that survey to give us feedback on our operations.
Appreciate all the updates, Ron.
If people have follow-up questions, they want to know more, reach out to you.
How can they do that?
Contact me at Central Office, 715-424-6701.
And remember, you can find out more about how and so many of our other great schools at
WRPS.org, WRPS.org, it's our Wisconsin's Rapids Public Schools District.
You can find all the information about things we've talked about here and plenty of other
great things going on in our area.
Encourage you to reach out, volunteer with any of our schools, any opportunity you can.
It'll be some of the best time of your day.
Encourage you to be up to date on that as well.
And we'll be talking with Ron again real soon and plenty of others.
Thanks so much, you guys for joining us today.
This is a lot of fun.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, a more midday magazine coming up for you next week and do want to send a special
shout out to the heart of WFHR Pam Hilke and the amazing scheduling she does week
and a week out.
We appreciate you, Pam.
Stay tuned for more here at 975FM1320AMWFHR, locally grown radio.
