By Tyler Dahlgren Moments after claiming the D7 district championship in the pole vault and punching his ticket to the Nebraska Track & Field Championships, Bertrand senior Arik Ackerman was poised to give an interview when he abruptly cut off the first question and countered with one of his own. “Do you mind if I go and get Owen? I want him to be a part of this, too.” With a shake of the...Read More
By Tyler Dahlgren Murray Street runs east to west across the northern edge of Shickley, bordering Westside Park on one side of the small Nebraska town and dividing the community school and its Early Learning Facility on the other. Though split by a street, the two facilities are a lot closer than a stone’s throw, both physically and metaphorically. “We’re all one,” said infant teacher Sue Loseke...Read More
By Tyler Dahlgren The celebration was already overdue, so the organizers behind the ribbon-cutting and open-house for ESU 13’s Panhandle Beginnings Day Treatment made sure the ceremony wasn’t subdued. Housed in the Carpenter Center, a facility tucked between Scottsbluff and Gering, Panhandle Beginnings and its therapeutic treatment services are available to youth with behavioral or mental health...Read More
By Tyler Dahlgren Part One: The Facility On a Monday morning in April, I walked across the South Central Unified School District #5 parking lot, through a light snow and into the district’s Nebraska Center for Advanced Professional Studies (NCAPS) facility. Intent on telling the story of how this dazzling place came to be, I looked around and asked myself a question I imagine most students who...Read More
By Tyler Dahlgren The front doors of Trego-Dugan Aviation swing open, letting in a gust of a pleasant, early-spring Grand Island wind before closing behind a man wearing khaki slacks, a black and red Cornhuskers leather jacket and at least two forms of identification swinging from the lanyard around his neck. T.J. Norris juggles a fascinating combination of job titles. Part teacher, part flight...Read More
By Tyler Dahlgren If Sir Francis Bacon’s famous 400-year-old proverb that “Knowledge is Power” is, in fact, accurate, then Plainview Elementary is becoming one mighty place. Since purchasing the IXL program and implementing individualized skill plans at the beginning of this school year, Plainview Elementary students have answered more than half a million questions correctly. That’s not a typo...Read More
*This is the third installment in the three-part "Silver Linings Series". This discussion occurred on November 9 for an article titled “Silver Linings (Without the Playbook),” which ran in the winter edition of the NCSA Today Magazine. Q: Think back to March 2020, when the pandemic broke and schools were forced to close overnight. Walk me through that initial experience. What did you learn about...Read More
By Tyler Dahlgren The Eagle Eye News production team sat still, focused on their respective tasks when the countdown started at five and, among growing excitement, worked its way towards one. As silence swept the Shoemaker Elementary library, anchors Julissa Ramos and Dimitri Kerkman took simultaneous deep breaths, stared calmly into the cameras and, when given the signal by the directors,...Read More
By Tyler Dahlgren The play was zany enough to leave any spectator speechless, involving a missed shot, a fortuitous bounce off an opponent’s head, and the unlikeliest pair of points a basketball team will ever come by. Luckily for those tuning in on the Milford Striv channel, the broadcast team of eighth-grader Braden Soester and sixth-grader Zephyr Mowinkel aren’t known to mince words while in...Read More
By Tyler Dahlgren In typical years, Aurora holds a career day in October, sending its seniors off on college visits and job shadows while inviting representatives from area industries into the high school to talk with the underclassmen. With this year being far from typical, and with the career day bumped to the back of the pandemic’s long line of postponements, high school principal Doug Kittle...Read More