A South Milwaukee health teacher, Kimberly Jaeger, is growing and learning in her career by incorporating project-based learning in her classroom. Her work and research may pave the way for similar types of learning across Wisconsin.

In May, the Music Department will present something entirely new—the debut of a piece composed specifically for South Milwaukee.

That by itself would be interesting, but the two free shows will also incorporate visual art in the form of a gallery presentation and digital art played as an instrument during the piece's third movement.

It's a big idea that layers and builds on the artistic disciplines of chorus, orchestra, and visual art to create a grand performance that is a culminating experience of the year.

In this episode, we visit the Orchestra Pit for the musical Chicago (spoiler, they're not in a pit), we see the Tournament of Books at Blakewood Elementary School, and we check in on our NASA TechRise student engineers and their progress on their project destined for a NASA weather balloon.

Our middle school engineers are going to space... sort of. Their project is, for sure. In May, an instrument the students are working on to study the atmosphere will be launched on a NASA weather balloon. We're only one of 60 schools nationwide -- and the only one in Wisconsin -- to earn the right to participate in the NASA TechRise Program, and our middle schoolers are hard at work soldering and programming their device ahead of the May launch.

Giving back to something gives you a sense of ownership and helps build community. Here's how to give back in at least three ways.

We meet District Nurse Sarah Barrett and about all of the worries and responsibilities modern school nursing programs face. Also, since it’s peak season for respiratory viruses, we’re going to review when to keep your child home from school and when to send them in.

Today on the podcast we’re going to college in three interviews: First we’ll hear from two students and where they are on their college journey, then we’ll hear from a college official about the process of applying and a rough timeline for students and parents to follow, and finally I talk to a financial advisor and the author of a book on paying for college.

The ACT is a standardized test that colleges use for a range of decisions, and as we’ll hear, scholarship-granting organizations help determine who they want to award those scholarships to.

We’re talking about the ACT because it’s coming up in the spring and South Milwaukee High School has a new tool to help students prepare for the ACT and will begin dedicating some classroom time to preparing students for this important examination.

Recently, 8th grade health students explored and celebrated Red Ribbon Week - a time of year dedicated to learning about drugs and drug addiction. Some students made awareness posters, some tied ribbons around trees and poles outside the school, others made podcasts.

This episode is the first in an occasional series called Student Voices. We hear the two podcasts the students created and what they learned about drugs and drug addition.

Math is math, right? Yes.

However, how we teach it and understand how students learn it is constantly in flux. In this episode, we hear what the day-to-day math class looks like at each level, what the K-12 goals for math education are, and what parents can do, particularly at the elementary level, to build mathematical confidence in their children.