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Thursday, July 5, 2018 • Vol. 134, No. 1 • Oregon, WI • ConnectOregonWI.com • $1.25
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Groenier dies at 78
Oregon School District
Village Trustee remembered for commitment to Oregon BILL LIVICK Unified Newspaper Group
Photo by Alexander Cramer
Jeff Vande Zande drills holes in new playground equipment with the help of Lee Recreation employee Nate Bowe, red shirt, and volunteer Jim Murphy at Brooklyn Elementary School on June 28.
Putting the pieces together ALEXANDER CRAMER Unified Newspaper Group
Volunteers worked with employees from Lee Recreation to assemble a new playground over three days, completing their work ahead of schedule on Thursday, June 28, and
saving tens of thousands of dollars in installation costs. Employees from the equipment’s distributor used a giant auger mounted to a skid steer to drill holes in the ground for the various pieces of equipment, some of which are quite large. The “play web” that stands about 15 feet high is actually only a medium, a Lee Recreation employee said. The large sizes takes three
cherry pickers and a dozen workers to install. The Brooklyn PTO thanked all the volunteers on their Facebook page and cautioned parents that there is still a lot of work to be done before the playground is safe to play on, and they will announce when it opens in a few weeks. Contact Alexander Cramer at alexander.cramer@wcinet.com.
OHS hosts national STEAM workshop SCOTT DE LARUELLE Unified Newspaper Group
Just because they’re teachers doesn’t mean they have nothing left to learn. That was the case last week, when a handful of Oregon School District educators participated in a national conference on Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math – STEAM – facilitated by two of their peers. After a week of close collaboration, including “dry runs” of projects, the teachers left the workshop with new ideas and enthusiasm for ways to bring STEAM education to their classrooms.
OHS science teachers Lindsay Wells and Jon Fishwild ran the five-day workshop June 25-29 through the Knowles Te a c h e r I n i t i a t i v e , a national organization that focuses on teacher professional development. The two attended a facilitator training workshop last year, and when the opportunity arose to hold a workshop in Oregon, district officials jumped at the chance, Wells said. “(District director of curriculum and instruction) Leslie (Bergstrom) recognized the opportunity this was for collaboration across disciplines and grade levels, which is so
exciting,” Wells said. The workshop, which took place in the Oregon High School STEAM lab, focused on providing teachers with the tools and experiences to “increase their capacity to develop curriculum that uses engineering design as a lens to teaching science and math content,” Fishwild wrote to the Observer in an email. A dozen educators participated; about half from Oregon, about half from elsewhere – as far away as Arkansas and Arizona. Bergstrom credited Wells and Fishwild as “excellent examples” of the “internal expertise and collaborative spirit on which we rely”
in providing professional development opportunities for teachers. “We believe that we have a high-level of internal capacity on STEAM and multiple other subjects and learning strategies,” she wrote the Observer in an email. “Thus, most of our professional learning is facilitated by our OSD colleagues.”
Hands-on learning Some of the more interesting activities were “peer engineering challenges,” where teams tried out STEAM activities, including Fishwild’s favorite,
Turn to STEAM/Page 9
Turn to Groenier/Page 3
International dairyman OHS agriculture apprentice shows animals in D.R. ALEXANDER CRAMER Unified Newspaper Group
Cole Xander is used to showing all sorts of animals: cattle, poultry, even ducks. But following the auctioneer’s instructions was slightly more difficult when he was showing a Wisconsin Brown Swiss heifer at a fair in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, in March. “I was walking around in the ring and the auctioneer was speaking all Spanish,” Xander recalled. The then-senior at Oregon High School went through his normal routine – setting up the heifer’s back feet, keeping her head up and moving around the ring – and eventually the auctioneer started to give
Xander instructional asides in English. Even though it was “pretty nerve-wracking,” Xander – and the heifer – did well enough to secure a new home for the Swiss with a Dominican family. Xander was there to help his boss Bryan Voegeli sell the heifer at auction, which Voegeli had sent down ahead of time after raising it on his farm in Monticello. Xander worked at Voegeli Farm through his senior year at OHS as an agriculture apprentice through a school-to-work program. This meant that instead of showing up when school started, he got the first two hours off. He wasn’t slacking: his work on the farm started long before he would normally be staring at the blackboard in a math class. Xander said his advisor, Jillian Beatty, was
Turn to Xander/Page 11
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Volunteers build new playground at Brooklyn
Longtime resident and Village of Oregon Trustee Darlene Groenier died Friday, June 22, two nights before s h e wa s t o serve as parade marshal in the annual Sum- Groenier mer Fest celebration. Although she didn’t get a chance to serve in that role, Groenier did much in the 41 years she lived here to contribute to the community.
The Oregon Area Chamber of Commerce had chosen her to be the parade marshal this year with good reason, said chamber executive director Judy Knutson. “She was a big leader in the community with a big heart,” Knutson said. Village President Steve Staton agreed. “What really stands out about Darlene is she was very dedicated to the community – not only through her service on the Village Board but also lots of other organizations,” he said. “In Darlene’s heart and mind, community came first.” Groenier, who battled cancer for more than three years, was born and raised in Mount Horeb. She had lived in Oregon with her husband, Jim, since 1977. They raised four boys – Scott, Jeff, Mitch and Mike