District in Pictures

Congratulations to the April Teacher Spotlight Award winner, Bethany Horschler. This monthly award is sponsored by First Bank and News Channel 6 KAUZ and recognizes a teacher who goes above and beyond in the classroom. Ms. Horschler teaches Pre-K at Booker T. Washington Elementary. Thank you to our PIE partners River Bend Nature Center, Star Brite Cleaners, Frank & Joe's Coffee House and Market Street United for providing gifts to our monthly winners!

This week, Chris Widner, Air Tractor Inc Aero-Space Manufacturing Planner, dropped by to speak with WFHS business track students. Air Tractor in Olney, Texas, primarily a builder of crop dusters and firefighting airplanes, amongst other plane models and services, supports agriculture on a global scale. Widner implements fabrication, assembly, and installation manufacturing plans by coordinating with suppliers, engineering, and manufacturing teams. Students learned about manufacturing process flow, forecasting parts inventory for planes built annually, and addressing producibility issues and production and postproduction problems. Students gained insight into how global issues can disrupt manufacturing and how costs, labor, and quality play a big part in production. Air Tractor offers internships for college students seeking a career in the aerospace or business industries and offers summer work programs for high school students.

The Rider Guard finished off their last winterguard season by becoming a medalist at the North Texas Colorguard Association State Championships. "We are very proud of the guard for sending the program out on grand fashion," said Rider Band Director Loy Studer. Directors of the Rider Guard are Jessica Studer and Lilly Studer. NTCA is comprised of over 700 competing groups

This week's Teacher Tuesday spotlight is on Ainsley Henderson, 2nd Grade Teacher at Zundy Elementary.

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Congratulations to Rider High School student Aiden Moses for placing 1st in the Region 9 Citizen Bee! He will represent Rider and Region 9 at the state level at the end of April.

This week, Hirschi Information Technology students participated in a field study, building units from MaxIQ STEM kits, to collect data for research towards the Sustainable Development Goals #3 Good Health and Well Being, #7 Affordable Clean Energy, and #17 Life on Land. The data collected is useful to students globally to understand micro-climates and how much sunlight impacts air temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure. MaxIQ's goal is to map local environmental data across various degrees of totality, along the path of the solar eclipse. These results will be presented on World Earth Day, April 22, and to the UN. MaxIQ said, “The configured kits will post their data to the Kibana dashboard, for all participants to download and analyze, compare notes and data sets, and prepare for presentations at space and environment conferences. We are encouraging university and college students to base their research projects on this data.” Students will collect data several days before, during, and after the solar eclipse on April 8. MaxIQ provided the kits as part of students' "Your Place in Space Challenge" winnings and invited them to participate in the Solar Eclipse data collection challenge.

On Friday, March 29, which also marked Vietnam Veterans Day, WFISD students enjoyed a day off from school. Several WFISD JROTC students spent their morning out of school helping clean Lake Wichita Veterans Memorial Plaza and getting the monument and its surrounding area ready for the Vietnam Veterans Day ceremony that afternoon. "We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the JROTC students who generously volunteered their time on a brisk and blustery morning to ensure the site was in pristine condition," said Sonja Gandy, representative from the Major Francis Grice Chapter of the NSDAR. "Both our chapter and the veterans we honor were profoundly thankful for their dedication. Truly, they are an exceptional group of young individuals!"

The Sheppard Teachers truly outdid themselves in crafting an engaging and positive learning atmosphere for students during the "STAAR Blitz" review period ahead of the upcoming STAAR exams. They ingeniously selected "Sleigh The STAAR" as the theme, bringing a touch of Christmas in April through festive decorations. This unique approach has sparked excitement among students, who are now highly motivated and putting in great effort. Their hard work is encouraged with Christmas-themed rewards, including the opportunity to enjoy a Christmas movie accompanied by popcorn at the Sheppard Movie Theatre once testing concludes. "We believe that all students need a positive purpose to do their best on their tests," said Sheppard Elementary principal Cindy Waddell.

Jefferson Elementary recently celebrated its Spring Book Fair and Literacy Night, both of which were tremendously successful! The staff and students enjoyed dressing up as their favorite book characters for Literacy Night, adding a fun twist to the event. During each Book Fair, there's always some excitement as students sift through the teacher buckets to discover which books have been selected for their Classroom Wish Lists. The Jefferson community showed their generosity, once again, with families donating a total of 49 books to enhance their teachers' classroom libraries!

Dr. Lin Wang, MSU Texas Assistant Professor of Economics, spoke with business students at Rider, Wichita Falls High School, and Hirschi High School this week. Wang walked students through the many accounting career choices available, for example, from a tax auditor to working with the FBI. Students learned about financial concepts used in making managerial or investing decisions. After watching a video from Mark Cuban and Warren Buffet reiterating the importance of taking accounting courses, students learned how crucial it is for all people to speak the language of accounting. (Information about Dr. Lin Wang provided by msutexas.edu.)

On Wednesday, Rider honored its thirteen dedicated paraprofessionals on campus with a celebration! Each one received gifts in appreciation for their hard work and dedication. Featured in the photo are Rider paraprofessionals Mr. Foster, Mrs. Fraire, and Mrs. Spaulding.

It has been a busy week at Memorial High School and Legacy High School. On Monday, trucks began delivering boxes upon boxes of new furniture to Memorial High School. Furniture will continue to be delivered throughout the month of April as workers assemble the furniture inside and move it to its designated classroom. Meanwhile at Legacy High School, the administrative team walked the building this week to begin assigning teacher classrooms and preparing for the school opening.

Thursday marked the occasion of School Librarian Day! The staff at Rider High School made sure their librarian, Sydney Woolsey, felt the love! "Mrs. Woolsey is awesome," said Rider secretary Jessica Garcia. "She crosses paths with every student on campus and is always willing to help them when needed! We are truly fortunate to have such a dedicated and passionate librarian at Rider high school."

District in Pictures is a weekly publication developed by the WFISD Community Relations department. If you have events, recognitions or classroom activities taking place on your campus that you would like us to feature, please let us know by completing the form at the following link: www.wfisd.net/dip. We would love to include you in our weekly district news.