COLUMBUS — In today’s relentless news cycle, it’s easy to forget the stories that happened inside the classrooms where today’s youth are learning to become tomorrow’s leaders.
Dozens of students across Bartholomew, Brown, Jennings, Decatur and Jackson counties had a hand in designing and building a house for a local first-time homeowner through Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.’s C4 program.
Seventh and eighth graders at Northside Middle School were introduced to Mia, a 6-year-old English golden retriever who serves as a service dog for the school.
And lest we forget when, for the first time in Flat Rock-Hawcreek School Corp. history, a student was named to the Indiana All-State Band.
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Here is our take on the top stories that made our Classrooms page over the past 12 months.
1 Columbus North’s Class of 2019 Top 10 is all-female
For the first time in Columbus North High School’s 150-year history, 10 females took over the Class of 2019 Top 10 rankings.
The school announced its top 10 students in the Class of 2019 in February — Amanda Wissman, Claire Kim, Julia Iorio, Anna Holle, Juli Soda, Hannah Blair, Agustina Fainguersch, Alexandria Munnicha, Abbey Landini and Suzanna Ward.
Seniors are ranked by grade point average, meaning the top 10 students are those with the highest GPA — something these girls said they’ve worked hard to achieve throughout their entire school career.
“I know we were never 100% certain it was all girls, but we were rooting for it the whole time — all four years,” Iorio said. “I think it’s indicative of a changing world right now, and hopefully indicative of a future where we can continue to find success together, support one another and embody girl power.”
2 Hauser student named to All-State Band makes school history
A Hauser Jr./Sr. High School 2019 graduate became the first student in the school’s history to be selected for the Indiana All-State Band.
Emily Jones, a former clarinet player in the Hauser band, performed at the 59th annual All-State Festival in March at Purdue University.
Jones attended one of eight audition sites in 2018 where she was required to perform three music excerpts and demonstrate her sight reading skills.
The All-State Band was established in 1961 through the Indiana Band Masters Association. Auditions are open to Indiana students in their freshman through senior years.
Jones graduated from Hauser in May and attends Purdue University in West Lafayette.
3 C4 students partner with local organizations to design, build house
About 30 local students had a hand in building a 1,346-square-foot house through Bartholomew Consolidated School Corp.’s C4 program. The decades-old career-preparation program connects students from eight different school districts with real-world experiences through work-based learning.
Finding the empty lot at 1510 Pearl St. was a luck of the draw for C4 and Eric Frey, executive director of the Southern Indiana Housing Community Development Commission. The City of Columbus had taken ownership of the property as part of its blight elimination efforts.
The city donated the land to Frey and the commission in August 2018 as part of an effort to build affordable homes, which aligned with another pilot program aimed at helping individuals transfer into home ownership.
Around the same time, C4 construction teachers Mike Metz and Darin Johnson inquired with the city about opportunities to build a home.
The commission contracted with C4 to build the two-bedroom, one-bathroom single-story home at an affordable price in conjunction with Lincoln Central Neighborhood Housing Program, which worked to identify a homebuyer and plug them into a homeownership counseling workshop.
This is the 46th house C4 has built since the program was established with homes ranking from low-income housing to those valued at $500,000.
{&subleft}4. GalacTech finishes ninth at state robotics competition
Columbus GalacTech Team 4926 ranked No. 9 of 32 Indiana teams after its performance at two district competitions and the IndianaFIRST District Robotics Championship.
The state competition, on April 12 and 13, resulted in the team ending up two spots shy of a trip to the FIRST World Championship.
GalacTech is a local robotics team comprised of about 30 Columbus students. They had six weeks to design and build a fully functional robot that would go on to compete in two regional competitions before qualifying for the state championship.
The robotics team was recently named champion of the IndyRAGE competition, an off-season event that ties the FIRST robotics competition together with an event focused on girls in STEM, or science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
Columbus will also host one of five regional tournaments for the statewide robotics competition. High school robotics teams from across the state will compete against each other at Columbus North High School on March 19 to 21 for a chance to represent Indiana in national and international competitions.
{&subleft}5. Northside Middle School students share their school day with a therapy dog
A new girl walked through the doors of Northside Middle School earlier this year, and she’s attracted a lot of attention ever since her arrival.
Mia, pronounced m-ay-ah, is a 6-year-old English golden retriever who made her debut as Northside’s therapy dog in fall 2018.
Aware of the stress and anxiety that middle school students tend to face, Northside nurse Beth Ballard started to research the impact a therapy dog could have on students. Ballard visited a Chicago middle school in 2017 to learn how staff members there used a therapy dog to help students.
Mia was adopted by Ballard in December 2017 from the Northern Indiana Service Dogs organization.
”This was something really near and dear to my heart that — especially for these middle school kids and that anxiety — I wanted to take on,” Ballard said.
Since Mia’s arrival, students and faculty have visited Ballard’s office just to wrap their arms around Mia for comfort.
”Maybe they can tell her (Mia) things they don’t feel comfortable telling anyone else, and she can get them back to class way quicker than I can,” Ballard said. “If I can make a difference in one kid’s life, just a little bit of their life better, than I’ve done my job.”
