With more than 9,000 attendees, the Ohio School Board Association’s Capital Conference is a highly anticipated event for educators across the state. One of the highlights of the three-day event is the Student Achievement Fair. Each year, 100 booths display innovative learning opportunities from schools throughout Ohio. This year, Lakota Local Schools held five of them.

The longstanding tradition behind Lakota’s annual food drive helped the district bring home a win in the second annual “Stuff the Bus” crosstown competition against neighboring school districts Middletown and Hamilton. But the real winners were all three communities that collectively brought in more than 15,000 pounds in donations for their respective relief organizations, a total determined thanks to the support of Planes Moving & Storage.

If you stop into Brittany Schafer’s fifth-grade speech therapy session, you’d be surprised at how engaged her students are – and at how much she can cover in just 30 minutes. New resources are changing the look of traditional speech therapy sessions. While Schafer still uses flash cards, worksheet exercises and games like Apples to Apples, Lakota teachers now have access to new digital resources that can transform the way they teach and the way students learn.

Now that they’ve studied some of his 400-plus political cartoons, students in Marian Weber’s American Literature class at Lakota West will likely never look at a Dr. Seuss book the same. “We’ve all read his children’s books, but I never realized there were deeper meanings beyond all the rhymes,” said West junior Sergio Negroe, noting his surprise at finding out Dr. Seuss’s first career as a controversial political cartoonist later used children’s books to subliminally apologize for his former missteps.

As we begin to count down the days to Thanksgiving break, Lakota is asking staff, students, parents and residents to look back over the last year and let us know who or what makes you thankful for your Lakota experience. Post your photos that best capture the people, places, programs or things that make Lakota a better place.

“In real life, you aren’t just sitting down practicing sign language. You are doing what we are doing right here, having a conversation,” said West ASL II student Riley Sutherland. In true #WEareLakota and #WEareInThisTogether fashion, Lakota East and West ASL students came together this week for Halloween-themed Lab Days.

Did you know that bees are attracted to caffeine and can be trained to sniff out bombs? Or that they are confused by noises coming from cell phones? These are just some of the facts fifth-graders at Independence Elementary School learned during their project based learning (PBL) assignment “Save the Bees.” During her unit on ecosystems, teacher Laura Brown thought it would a great opportunity to try PBL for the first time.

From our district-wide "Stuff the Bus" food drive to "Hawks for a Cure" to Stockings for Soldiers, this month has been all about making a difference and helping others in our community. It's why we dedicated this month's social media challenge to celebrating "National Make a Difference Day" and now, this month's “Words of Wisdom” video to the importance of helping others.

Join Superintendent Matthew Miller as he shares just some of the highlights and happenings throughout Lakota Local Schools during the month of October.