School news of the week: Showing spirit, literary makerspace, teacher of the year

Amazing things happen in our schools every day — if you know where to look! Do you know some school news others would love? Let us know at [email protected].

Ashley Kracke has been named the Dr. John W. Harris Teacher of the Year. She is a fifth grade teacher at R.F. Pettigrew Elementary in her 17th year as a teacher with the Sioux Falls School District. Along with the title, Kracke also walked away with a check for $4,000 from event sponsor Vern Eide Motorcars.

The Sioux Falls Public Schools Education Foundation continually gives away grants to teachers with winning applications — but we’re writers, so we had to highlight this one.

Sue Zueger from Memorial Middle School received $6,929.78 for her proposal, “It’s a Muse Thing: Improving Literacy in the Makerspace Environment.” It’s a Muse Thing is a literary makerspace open to students as an after-school club. They will work on self-selected writing projects, although the club adviser will provide a creative writing prompt every meeting to inspire new ideas and new pieces. Projects such as handmade magazines called zines, film shorts, comic strips and traditional genre-writing in poetry, microfiction, short stories and memoirs will be emphasized. The goal will be to produce and publish pieces that can be highlighted in a school-sponsored literary magazine linked to Memorial’s Blogspot. We can’t wait to see your work!

Fourth graders at John Harris Elementary met a special guest this week. Tiaan, from South Africa, and his wife, Sam, visited nephew Lincoln and his class. The students had to use maps and clues to figure out where in the world Tiaan is from. He brought South African currency, the rand, to pass around and taught the class about growing up in South Africa.

Almost 700 students participated in the annual Panther Party at Patrick Henry Middle School. As the school posted, “so fun to see kids being kids and staff having just as much fun!”

Between St. Patrick’s Day and basketball playoffs, we saw lots of school spirit this week. But we’re thinking the win here goes to Washington High School.

But speaking of spirit, these fifth graders from St. Mary Elementary took their Irish pride to the next level last week. The students held a parade through the school with Monsignor Steve Barnett and wore crazy hats he donated to them.

Now here’s a different kind of event courtesy of Beresford High School. The BHS Student Council organized the first Mr. BHS Pageant. Congratulations to sophomore Kohen Schurch: 2022 Mr. BHS and we’re told a talented Rubik’s Cube artist.

A select group of eighth graders were able to attend a Pizza, Pop and Power Tools event at CTE Academy designed to promote women working in the construction industry. Nice work from these Memorial Middle School girls!

And finally, we are starting to see the reading trees “growing” citywide as part of the monthlong Everybody Reads program in partnership with Siouxland Libraries. Here’s a look at Terry Redlin Elementary, Patrick Henry Middle School and Discovery Elementary.