Inside the large facility, students from four school districts work with technology such as drones, robots, autonomous vehicles, CNC routers and mills, laser engravers, 3D printers, a plasma cutter and more.
Familiar traditional technical education classes are also offered in the lab.
“There's nothing like it in the country,” said Whitehall School District Superintendent Mike Beighley.
The lab is the result of a years-long partnership between the members of the Trempealeau Valley Consortium, which includes the school districts of Whitehall, Arcadia, Independence and Blair-Taylor, the Ron and Joyce Wanek Foundation and Ashley Furniture.
The work that the entities have done together, Beighley said, “started out as a question about what we needed to do to better prepare kids for the future that they were going to live in.”
MOVING UP
The partnership first created a mobile skills lab inside an expandable trailer that was moved between the school districts.
The districts quickly outgrew that arrangement.
“The programs grew at the same time that there were more and more needs for those types of skills,” Beighley said.
When a building across from Whitehall School District became available, the group wasted little time.
“So we jumped on that opportunity. Our local folks supported through a special annual meeting the purchase of that facility,” Beighley said.
The school district paid for renovations, and the equipment was donated by the Ron and Joyce Wanek Foundation.
Other districts do not pay to use the lab, but they share the cost for one of the instructors.
“We learned that we were providing some well intended but significant artificial limits to our kids, so one of the things that we've done with this is try to blow the limits up,” Beighley said.
Beighley said they then began looking at what the students’ capabilities really were.
“We're finding out just how limiting we really were. I think the kids have taken the opportunities, and they've really engaged in all of that work more so than we even thought,” he said.
APPLICABLE SKILLS
Participating students from each of the districts travel to the lab each day, where they are able to utilize technology and gain skills for future careers.
Whitehall senior Caydan Johnston said he’s looking to go into a career that involves 3D printing.
He said the lab “strengthened my inspiration” to pursue a technical career. He’s also learned problem solving skills, such as figuring out how to fix issues with drones by either testing solutions or by researching fixes on the lab’s computers.
“I think (the lab) gives the kids around here more opportunities than most other schools do,” Johnston said.
Though it’s only the lab’s first year in use, students from the districts have already enrolled more than 500 times in courses there.
The numbers far exceed the partnership’s original estimate of 150 course enrollments, according to Beighley.
“It's literally pretty much a flow of kids all day, every day,” Beighley said.
The School District of Arcadia has already seen the impact.
"Through the Trempealeau Valley Cooperative, several of our students have been able to take courses at Whitehall’s Emerging Tech Lab, expanding their skills in areas such as mechatronics, engineering design, computer programming, industrial control systems, robotics and drones," stated Wyatt Anderson, Arcadia High School principal. "These courses offer real-world applications and industry-relevant experiences that go beyond the traditional classroom, giving our students a competitive edge as they explore careers in technology and engineering."
The students gain skills that can help them in a variety of careers.
“What we have really targeted over there are skill sets that provide kids the opportunity to really transcend all careers," Beighley said. “We're targeting true future-ready skills. If you drive a Tesla nowadays, we have the mirror of that over there. It's in a small micro version, but it has all of the same technology."
OPPORTUNITIES FOR RURAL STUDENTS
Beighley said students learn about technology they may not otherwise be exposed to.
“I think often we don't know what we don't know. So I think our job is to expose kids to what the future is going to look like, and our rural kids tend to see what their parents do, what their aunts and uncles do, maybe what their grandparents did," he said. “The career sets that are coming, the skill sets that are going to be required to be able to perform those career sets are again like nothing we've ever seen."
Beighley said the lab offers a personalized approach that is "self-driven, self-paced."
Students will spend some time with one of the lab's three teachers before then going to work on projects.
At any one time, eight to 10 classes could be going on that are supervised by two of the teachers who are focused on the emerging technology side of the lab.
"A lot of it is competency based, so no longer seat-time based. That's one of the limits that we've moved to try to get away from," Beighley said.
Competency-based courses could put participating students ahead of others to achieve a four-year degree at nearby UW-Stout.
The college now offers a degree program in which the requirements, except for the last 32 credits, are competency-based certificates.
"That's a good number of which can be earned right over at our emerging tech lab," Beighley said. He also noted those requirements could be achieved at colleges such as Western or Chippewa Valley technical colleges.
“It's really a game-changing scenario that really is meant to kind of redefine and re-establish what skill sets kids are going to need and then really target them, and then allow them to ... both accept and take responsibility for their own learning," he said.
ENDLESS LEARNING
Beighley noted the learning style at the lab helps students adjust to the quickly changing modern workforce.
“The future is going to require much more entrepreneurship, much more creativity, much more willingness to, again, relearn things," he said.
The lab's personalized instruction format is also inspiring new techniques to be used in other parts of the Whitehall School District.
“We have pilots going for personalized instruction in the regular ed setting in every grade, 4K through high school, science and math," Beighley said. “We're really trying to take that same approach and bring it over on this side in the core subject areas to better prepare our kids, but also free them up for electives that targets those skill developments and also the social, emotional things."
The new ways of learning are helping students.
“It's really a unique environment. We've seen engagement go up. We've seen kids who may have been a little bit more reluctant in the traditional setting, really engage," Beighley said.
As for the future, the lab will continue to transform.
“I think making sure that we stay current is our biggest goal, that the technology that we are providing and the curriculum that goes with it is cutting edge and truly forward thinking," Beighley said. “We don't want to get outdated and that's going to be difficult. But the advisory board we have put together has people from all over the state, every level of education, a lot of industry experts, so I'm pretty confident that we will be able to stay ahead of things.”
He said the project has received great support from the community and from the Ron and Joyce Wanek Foundation and Ashley Furniture.
Already, people from other districts have visited to learn about it.
Winona Area Public Schools recently took a look inside the unique facility. The lab was also made to be easily replicable if other districts express interest.
“We would do the heavy lifting, figure out how this all works, and then share it openly. ... I believe Mr. Ron Wanek said it best in one of our first conversations — this was about making sure that our kids remained globally competitive," Beighley said. “I think that when that becomes your target, it's about what's doing right for our kids not being right. So I think it's easy to stay really reflective and understand what we need to do.”
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