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Coming up in Wisconsin, students attend a school
where the teachers are hundreds of miles away.
Abuse survivors pay the picture of emotional healing.
I felt terribly alone, so when I turned to my
painting, it was my companion.
And a young boy discovers a new goal in life.
What was your favorite part out there?
It's all ahead in Wisconsin.
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
Each week we bring you stories about life in our state.
Tonight we begin by introducing you to some students
who don't need to worry about catching the bus or
eating a cafeteria lunch.
In fact, these virtual school students don't even leave home
for their long distance lessons.
In Wisconsin reporter Art Hackett explains.
In a farmhouse just west of Oregon, Emily, Samantha,
and Cila Harms are starting their school day
the way they always have.
Getting books off the shelf and taking them to the kitchen
table where their mother Christy will teach them.
The family decided to homeschool when their first child, Emily,
was ready for kindergarten.
We just saw that the schools weren't academically, they
were okay, but morally there's just a lot of things
that we didn't agree with.
So from the start we decided to homeschool
our Emily at the time.
But as the children got older, Harms says she
encountered material she wasn't comfortable teaching.
Some subjects that I wasn't as knowledgeable in, like science.
I never liked science as a high school, I just
am not a science person.
So I wanted another curriculum where it actually explained
the science and I could understand it more too.
And the Harms wanted a testing program to
provide accountability.
It was easy for us to make a lesson plan from
whatever curriculum we were using, but to enforce
that it actually happened.
This school gives us that kind of accountability.
This school Harms refers to is a virtual school.
Christy Harms checks a website every morning
for the day's activities.
I log in all their assignments, their lesson
plans are on the computer.
So I can look and it gives you some coaching tips and
how to teach that lesson.
Harms is the learning coach in virtual school parlance.
She delivers the lessons, the computer, and some
accompanying workbooks suggest.
So even though the computers use to manage what's completed and
what's still left to be done, it's very much a book oriented
activity oriented learning center where the child is
not left alone, but there is an adult with them.
Linda Dawson is an assistant superintendent with the
Appleton area school district.
The virtual school is a public school located in what used
to be Appleton's high school.
It's paid for with state tax dollars funded through
the school aid formula.
Dawson says the district started exploring virtual
education to serve students who had trouble coping in
a traditional classroom or who had been expelled.
The district also has a number of home schoolers who ask
for help from time to time.
But there weren't enough students in the
Appleton district to make the school viable.
So taking advantage of the state open enrollment law,
the district opened the school up to students like the
Harms family 120 miles away.
Thus was born the Wisconsin Connections Academy.
And although it is a virtual school, the
academy does have teachers.
Lynn Rhodes is responsible for about 50 kindergarten
and first grade students.
Your mom said you're going to try to finish your block
core work before Christmas, so you're really moving
along quickly, aren't you?
Teachers keep track of students' progress and
grade mailed-in tests.
When students start reading books on their own,
teachers will discuss the books over the phone.
You're right, and he is one of the main characters
because she's the one that changes Helen and the whole
family's life in the end by teaching Helen sign language
and how it means different things so that they can
communicate back and forth now.
And sometimes teachers have to follow up on exams
which are supposed to be submitted but aren't.
I need to have the tests on my desk by Wednesday in order
for me to help you.
So that means you have today to finish
up whatever it is you need to finish up and then get that out
in the mail probably tonight.
If you can do that, is that sound like something you can do?
But if you eavesdrop on the conversations, there are
frequent references that sound out of place in a conversation
about a Wisconsin school dealing with Wisconsin students.
I'll put in a request to Baltimore to
get that out to you.
Baltimore is the headquarters of the Connections Academy, which
is the subsidiary of Sylvan Learning Systems, a for-profit
company that also operates franchise tutoring programs.
The Appleton School District contracts with Connections
Academy just as the school might buy textbooks and software
from a private business.
However, the Connections Academy provides virtually everything
the virtual school uses.
And the Connections Academy is drawing half of its students
from traditional public schools across the state.
Katie Jo Powell of the Dane County Town of Windsor
is a fourth grader at the Connections Academy.
Her mother Joanne says until last year, Katie was enrolled in
her local public school system.
I felt that she was slowly getting lost in the system.
I started noticing it a little bit in second grade.
Here it's more hand-stung and my mom teaches me more
and more until I get it.
And at the regular school, they just do one problem on
the board and say, "Okay."
And then they just slam a book in your face
and say, "Then do it."
But not all families have been happy with the
Academy's curriculum.
Principal Nicole Schweitzer says about 30 of the schools,
264 original students had dropped out by the
end of the first semester.
In some cases, the curriculum is either too
rigid for the student or too rigid for the parent.
It's about 192 days of education, which typically
traditional public schools go 180 days and they maybe get
five days for field trips.
And I have a day off for the spring concert, half day
off for the winter concert.
Things like that.
We've got 192 solid educational days.
I mean, it's a trial and error.
We're seeing what works for us.
And I think overall, it's going really well.
How many would you have?
Good. The Academy's teachers say
they are happy they can reach students who otherwise
might be totally outside of the public school system.
But teachers being teachers, they miss the kids.
I love being in the classroom, and I love the kids, and
I'm missing some of that.
But I do see kids occasionally.
They'll come by and see us here, and I'll talk
to them on the phone.
But instead of face-to-face contact, a picture on
her cubicle wall will have to represent a
student 120 miles away.
The State Teachers Union believes the Appleton
Connections Academy violates Wisconsin's charter school laws,
because it accepts students from outside the Appleton district.
A district court judge ruled that the virtual school
is legal, but the union is appealing that decision.
Meanwhile, since Art First did that report, enrollment
at the Connections Academy has grown to 380 students,
and there's now a second virtual elementary school.
The Wisconsin Virtual Academy is run by the Northern
Ozzaki County School District.
Still to come, in Wisconsin.
A flight of fancy in an art exhibit that migrates
to Wasa each year.
That's ahead in Wisconsin.
October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
42 people in Wisconsin were killed by domestic
violence in the year 2001, the most recent year of
statistics compiled by the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
Our State also had more than 27,000 reported incidents
of domestic abuse during that same year's time.
In Wisconsin reporter Andy Soath has the story of one
woman who took the pain of her abusive experience
and turned it into a way to heal.
It's Dr.
Karen Menchis, final day of teaching at UW-Ashkash.
The last time future social workers and police officers
in her domestic violence class will present their projects.
And we created a child care package for police officers,
which includes a teddy bear.
I just thought it pretty much opened my eyes,
you know what I mean?
Dr. Menchis retiring to spend more time with
her passion and joy.
Painting. This painting just
gives me great joy.
The first thing I do in the morning is come in and see how
it looks after I painted to see how the colors have settled.
I just would smile and smile.
Smiling may be an unexpected reaction to these paintings.
In her very expressive way, Menchis telling her
own story of years spent victimized by abusive partners.
The more abusive the person is, the more you
try to police the person.
Because you don't want to get abused.
So you try to think of all kinds of different ways to take
care of that person's needs and then your needs are gone.
One of the things about painting is I can do
whatever I want here.
What she wants is to reclaim what had been a hidden
and for her shameful part of her personal history.
In my marriage, when I was thinking about leaving, there
were threats with knives.
And so there's this knife here and that was a
very scary time for me.
And these flowers are blooming here.
These were represented by my two daughters in me that
once I would get out of this relationship, hopefully I'd
be a good example for them.
And if I found my strength and my identity and learned to take
care of myself and be on my own, that maybe they would too.
She did find that strength and identity.
She found it by painting.
Starting with this very first work, Deep Down, Dark Pain.
I felt terribly alone.
So when I turned to my painting, it was always there.
It was there on a Friday night when everybody else
was out having a good time with other people.
It was there in the morning when I woke up.
It was my companion.
This is why the support you have as an abused woman or
anybody in their life going through any difficult time
is what really helps you get through.
And so if you don't have that, I think the creative process
is like that support person.
Convinced that art saved her life, Minch set out to bring it
to the lives of other victims.
She led classes here at the Christine Anne Center,
a domestic violence shelter in Ashkosh.
Jennifer Grant was in the first class.
Honor returned visit to the shelter.
She showed us the basement room where it met.
When I came to the very, very, very first class of
art that Dr.
Minch did with us, I think I was filled
with a lot of anxiety.
I came in.
I believe that I was very quiet,
very kind of in a corner.
I didn't really want to be there.
So, and I'm so glad I did.
Jennifer is one of the people that has a lot
of creative abilities.
She's not afraid to express herself creatively, which is
really that courage you have.
The fact that she can talk here is part of that.
I think it gave us the ability to all find our little niche
and how to express ourselves.
She expressed herself starting from that first class,
creating this self-portrait called, "Who am I?"
And self-expression continues to be a part of Jennifer's life.
Without Dr.
Minch, I would not be painting today.
I would not be drawing.
I would not be writing.
I probably, I know I would still be in fear.
Living in fear is what these self-portraits represent.
But doing the portrait can be a path out of fear.
So we did self-portraits.
And in those self-portraits, most of them are very pale.
They're crying.
You can tell they're very unsure of themselves.
And over time, they just, they got bolder.
And for those who I think really wanted to move
forward in their lives, I think the art helped
them. It was amazing to me.
Karen Manch and other survivors of domestic abuse
displayed their paintings of pain and healing earlier
this year at Anina Museum.
Our next story takes us to Central Wisconsin for a very
different style of artwork.
Every year, birds of a feather flock together in wasa
for an exhibit that leaves the imagination soaring.
[Music]
It's fall, migration time, the annual event
of birds on the wing.
There are birds on the wing of a different sort at the Lee Yawke
Woods and Art Museum in wasa.
It's the museum's annual Birds in Art Show, a
juried international art exhibition that brings the
besting birds to Wisconsin.
Birds of every stride and every hue, museum
curator Andy McGiven.
In this exhibition, we have 124 works and we have 112
artists within the exhibition.
112 artists from around the world, Ireland,
South Africa, France.
Artists from around the world, birds from around
the world, Costa Rica, England, and Point South.
It is as though a global artistic aviary landed on
the walls here in wasa.
So how did it end up here, this international show that is
unlike any other in the world?
It began really on a lark.
The founders of the museum, John and Alice Forrester,
decided to open the museum to house the collection, a glass
and porcelain collection.
And they thought they'd throw in a temporary exhibition and
they thought, well what's good?
We're going to open in the fall.
What's a good exhibition?
Wow, I got all this migration.
Why don't we do birds?
They did birds and it was a brilliant success.
The exhibition was initially going to be a one-time
exhibition to open the museum and it was so popular
that we decided we'd turn it into an annual event.
So every year, for 28 years, a flock of art birds congregates
at Lea York University.
There is something about birds as subject matter.
Well, if you think about birds, they're elusive and
yet everybody sees them.
You never get close enough to really touch them.
A lot of times you need binoculars to study them.
And here we can walk right up to them and study detail,
postures, things that you may never notice and artists
have been studying for years.
Through the artist's eye, three different takes on feathers,
a black-build magpie in Rocky Mountain National Park,
a snowy owl in mid-flight, a tail feather from a ring-neck
pheasant painted on basswood.
Birds in all their detail, birds in their landscape,
appeals Paragren Falcon in pursuit of horned puffins
in the illusion islands.
Woodstorks shadowed by an elephant in Africa.
Rock doves making the scene at a movie marquee in Oklahoma.
Some of the artists are painters and they'll paint a
bird once while those artists will get into the exhibition.
Others are bird fanatics and they live birds.
They eat and breathe birds and they know everything there
is to know about them within their corner of the world.
Of course, it is how they express their world
that makes the art.
Compare artist Robert Flynn's untitled peep series.
With the Trump Law, fool the eye style, featured in Harle
Mosse's "The Taste of Grapes."
There is a taste of something special here in Warsaw.
The exhibit and the museum, I think, is a real plus
for the community in terms of museums or cities
this size, 35,000, 40,000.
We've got a really nice museum and you don't see
this very often in many communities this size.
Warsaw's International Migration of Art Birds,
an annual flocking of a very wonderful kind.
We move now from central Wisconsin to Milwaukee.
With winter just around the corner, hockey
leagues are firing up.
Hockey can be a real bone jarring teeth rattling
experience, but the young players in one Milwaukee
league don't let those challenges deter them from
achieving their goals.
In Wisconsin reporter Jerry Huffman has the story.
Alex Carey, the young man in the wheelchair,
is breaking the barrier.
With a gentle push from his mom, Alex was about to
add hockey player to his list of accomplishments.
There are a lot of firsts you notice at your first
wheelchair hockey game.
First, no one really just watches at these games,
but if you're there, you're going to help.
Then there are the others who don't want to help or need
it. Most of the young people glide effortlessly onto the ice.
Focus on their abilities, not their disabilities
the organizers tell me.
So much of their wives are wrapped up in what they
can't do.
On the ice, it's all about what they can do.
Take the case of Tony Sylvester, he's the young man in the
high school letterman's jacket, who can tell you about
fighting for your rights.
Tony's wheelchair basketball team made the national
finals, but some school officials originally told
him he wouldn't get a letter since the basketball team
wasn't part of the school.
Guess who won that argument?
I don't think they would have never gave it to me in the
first place, and I think we decided to fight for what
I wanted and everything.
So you stood up for yourself, didn't you?
Yeah. Yeah, I did.
Meanwhile, young Alex is learning some of the do's
and don'ts about hockey.
He's out there and he looks like he's having a lot of fun.
I don't think he knows where the
puck is, but he's doing great.
Chris Kerry is Alex's mom.
He used to be such a shy kid and really nervous to
try new things and nervous about being different
from all the other kids.
And here he's just one of them.
And like I said, the older kids kind of take them under
their wing and show them the ropes and they're so cool.
Then there's something else you notice that these games that
doesn't always happen at others.
It's the sound of kids and often their parents having fun.
That was close.
Nice pass.
Laughter as a father and son play as one.
Individually they face the world of obstacles.
Together, on the ice, they can do anything.
This really isn't any different than any other
father-son activity.
Not to me.
Actually, I can participate more.
It's more fun than my other two sons when they play sports
I only could watch them.
Go! Yeah, they're cool.
They're cool.
Another player, Becca Murray, is in the seventh grade.
She finds an energy on the ice that may someday lead to
her career helping other kids.
They're fun to work with and they're energetic.
I like working with energetic stuff like ice hockey.
And maybe sometimes you understand how tough
it is to be a kid?
Yeah. Ironically, the only crash of
the evening was one of the able-bodied kids who helps out.
She had a bit of trouble keeping both her wits
and wheels about her.
In the end, this evening was about focusing on
the good things in life.
If you want me to come, I can help push you
around if you like.
[Cheering]
We're celebrating a moment when anything is possible.
[Cheering]
These young people already know how thin that line
is between can and can't.
But they also know a wheelchair can't stop them
from making a difference.
I just want to work with other kids and get them where
I was and see how it was.
When I was a little kid and then seeing what I was
going through when I was a little kid and taking all
the fears out of camp, not being with your mom or dad,
going to camp and having all the fears and trying to
work with the little kids.
They make sure they don't have the fear anymore.
Alex is packing home.
Oh, Alex, go!
Yeah, baby.
Remember, Alex, what was your favorite part out there?
He's not afraid anymore.
Just one night in the net and one more hurdle
passed for a young man learning what he can do.
The beginning of hockey season isn't the only sign
that Winters approaching.
Earlier this week, volunteers left Wisconsin to lead a
flock of whooping cranes to a winter nesting
ground in Florida.
The volunteers fly an ultralight plane and the
cranes follow behind.
This is the third year that the planes and the cranes
are making the 1200 mile trip south.
We leave you tonight with a look at one of their
earlier practice runs.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
Good night.
[Music]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the people of
a lion's energy who bring safe, reliable and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly,
a lion's energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]