Nebraska Public School Advantage News

Nebraska Public School Advantage News

Crazy Cool Classroom: Jaclyn Nielsen's Language Arts Lounge

Crazy Cool Classroom: Jaclyn Nielsen's Language Arts Lounge

August 27, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren Poke your head inside Jaclyn Nielsen’s eighth-grade language arts classroom, and survey what you see. There’s students lounging comfortably on bean bags and wobble chairs, actively engaging in curriculum discussion. Some attentively follow along while lightly bouncing up and down on a yoga ball. Others surround a neighboring stand-up desk and listen to Ms. Nielsen, who never...Read More

Custer Capable: Where Coming Home Counts

Custer Capable: Where Coming Home Counts

August 6, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren Investing in the Youth A handful of years ago, Custer Economic Development Corporation’s leadership team recognized a critical need to take a hard look at the county’s workforce. The group brainstormed ways to ensure a steady, reliable influx of workers into a county that produces 46 million bushels of corn annually, the most in Nebraska, and, in 2013, was home to 12 new...Read More

Crazy Cool Classroom: Mrs. Everett's Surf Shack set for Grand Opening!

Crazy Cool Classroom: Mrs. Everett's Surf Shack set for Grand Opening!

July 31, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren The year's first bell is about to ring, but who says summer needs to come to an end? Sure, August’s heat will soon give way to crisp fall days and, eventually, cold winter whiteouts. It sounds unlikely, but Julie Everett’s incoming class of Meadowlark Elementary fifth-graders might soon confuse Kearney, Nebraska for Oahu. Under bamboo shingles, hiding amongst a handful of...Read More

We're searching for the craziest, the coolest, the most imaginative classrooms!

We're searching for the craziest, the coolest, the most imaginative classrooms!

July 10, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren I stumbled upon this blog Click Here! while doing some intense Monday morning perusing of the interwebs, and it had me thinking back to some of the classrooms I sat in growing up. The science room with Styrofoam planets dangling from the ceiling, periodic table placemats and graduated cylinders (I had to Google to confirm what those things were called, science was never my thing...Read More

EMC holds Inaugural Safety Summit in Elkhorn

EMC holds Inaugural Safety Summit in Elkhorn

June 29, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren Several times throughout the school year, the Eastern Midlands Conference holds executive council meetings, drawing superintendents and principals from the eight member districts. When the council gathered early this spring, in the wake of the tragic Parkland, Florida school shooting, one thing was weighing heavily and collectively on their minds. “We felt like the need to build...Read More

Security sets table for success at SSC

Security sets table for success at SSC

June 1, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren Twelve years ago, South Sioux City received the Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant, vaulting the safety of students and staff to the front of the district’s list of priorities. In Rebecca Eckhardt’s 17 years with the district, which serves a community of about 13,000 nestled against the banks of the Missouri River in Northeast Nebraska, she has seen a steady commitment to...Read More

Spring 2018 in Review

Spring 2018 in Review

May 17, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren The spring semester ends, usually, on days like today. When students spill out of their schools for the last time, they’re splashed with sun and they trot across green grass into three months of swimming, baseball games, fireworks and freedom. Let’s not kid ourselves, good vibes flow more freely when it’s 80 degrees and there isn’t a gray cloud in sight. It’s easier to be...Read More

Wall to Wall: Plattsmouth's expansive career academy covers it all

Wall to Wall: Plattsmouth's expansive career academy covers it all

May 8, 2018
By TYLER DAHLGREN The desks were arranged in a rectangle, lining the walls of a Plattsmouth High School classroom that would soon be filled with discussion and collaboration, the makings of an emerging alliance between a school and its community. Student representatives of Plattsmouth’s Wall to Wall Career Academy held a prominent spot at the meeting. As Advisory Council Leaders (ACL), their...Read More

The Next Step: Plattsmouth's ShopKo shopping spree puts 75 kids in brand new kicks

The Next Step: Plattsmouth's ShopKo shopping spree puts 75 kids in brand new kicks

April 26, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren Duct tape is versatile. It can fix almost anything, just ask any self-proclaimed handyman. But duct tape being used to hold together a pair of worn and tattered children’s shoes? Well, social workers in Plattsmouth Community Schools were seeing it too often, and that’s where this story takes its first step. “It’s something that I think a lot of people take for granted, a pair of...Read More

Touring Nebraska's Unified District #1: Two decades of collaboration

Touring Nebraska's Unified District #1: Two decades of collaboration

April 12, 2018
By Tyler Dahlgren Each stop on the Unified District #1 tour comes with a sense of familiarity, though Orchard, Clearwater and Verdigre exist in their own buildings in their own charming northern Nebraska small towns. “Though we work together on curriculum, each school has kept its own identity,” said Unified District #1 Superintendent Dale Martin, a former principal at Orchard who has been with...Read More

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