Why Wyandotte? Why would you want your children to go to school here? Why would you want to work here? Why should it be a source of pride to be a part of this school system?
You’d be hard pressed to find a school this size with as many elective options that you’d find here. That’s because from the top down, the vision for this district is to love the small town feel that the community has to offer while offering more opportunities for your child to find their “thing” than anyone else. A small town “feel” with large school opportunities.
This happens intentionally at every level. Last year we noticed a number of students around campus that didn’t really seem to have found where they fit in but we also noticed that each of them were gamers. They loved to play on their devices and we could see them huddled in their groups engaged in one form or another of gaming. We began an Esports program that is easily the most popular thing on campus with a long wait list.
It also happens at a grass roots level. We have been admiring the passion and success of the wrestling program we can see on Facebook that was begun at the elementary level among Wyandotte students. They’re fantastic. So when they came asking if this is something we’d consider adding at the middle and high school levels, we had already been discussing it. As an item on the minutes of the last school board meeting, we voted to add a wrestling program (and it’s not like the school board required a lot of convincing . . . they already wanted the same thing . . . let’s just say they were all “on board”).
So what does your child love? Band? Choir? Archery? Competitive Cheer? Cross Country? Academic Team? Trap Shooting? Robotics? Aviation? Business? Construction? Drones? Fashion Design? We have all of those and are still growing.
Academically, we genuinely want to make sure that every student is workplace ready or college prepared. We had the opportunity recently to have recruiters from Crossland Construction come and talk to students about apprenticeship opportunities that they can take advantage of. This was important to us because the trades should be emphasized just like college has been for decades. When you look around at our campus, you’ll see that our students are the ones building outdoor classrooms, greenhouses, and laying concrete. They’re making signs, plaques and awards, and starting their own businesses. They’re earning credentials that allow them to handle food professionally and certifications that let them professionally work in daycare centers.
For those that need a degree to fulfill their dream, our students can get up to 18 credit hours on campus with our instructors. Wyandotte students become doctors, construction superintendents, teachers, coaches, farmers, welders, and all around good people. Students can work on their pilots license (fixed wing, rotary wing, or drones) while taking aviation classes. There are lab sciences in chemistry and anatomy and physiology classes that will do an excellent job of preparing them for careers in health and medicine. It also just so happens that the tribe in this very town is offering more and more opportunities for our students to live and work right here with good paying jobs.
A big part of this also comes from the fact that we want to invest in the classrooms that our teachers are in. We want to invest in the great educators we have on staff. We recently went through the first round of a classroom grant process that awarded cutting edge materials to an elementary classroom; cutting edge lab equipment and materials to a high school chemistry lab; a next-level simulation for artificial insemination in the Ag classroom; a set of next-gen machines to grow the business department; and a software and tech that will aid in an upper division computers class that will utilize programming to “bring designs to life.” Students will have the opportunity to work with 3D printers, a Glowforge, sublimation printers, logo makers, drones, aviation simulation machines (thanks to an $85,000 donation from a generous patron), a greenhouse, and a dozen more great educational implements that allows our students to work with the materials of tomorrow.
Please don’t misunderstand: we are a work in progress and we lean into that. There’s a lot more work to do in each of these programs to be the best, but that’s the standard. The aviation program is growing and it will change the overall landscape of our campus. The sports programs are growing and thanks to some major investments by the Wyandotte Nation, our facilities will be second to none and allow us to keep games regardless of the weather situation that may arise. But we are working as hard as we can to make this the kind of place where our staff can have fun at work and love what they do. We want your child to love coming to school, and it means more than you can imagine when we can see that they have found their “thing”, their place, and have successfully navigated the major difficulty of school age children: figuring out who they are. For that, we have a full functional health clinic on campus and three different sources of mental health professionals that are here at all times.
So now, look at this graphic and tell us that there is another school this size that offers so much. We love this place and we’re proud of what it means to be from “the Dotte.” When we look around though and see a community that is so supportive, a tribe that is unbelievable and sets the standard for what it means to invest in their community, and parents that see the growth mentality that we try to model and come alongside to partner with us, we know that the future is indeed bright.
Why Wyandotte? Because it’s great to be a Bear!!!
Video designed by Communication Specialist Kaeliegh Morgan
Assisted by Communication Specialists Jasmin and Stefania Bravo