Today on Education Counts Michiana, Education for the visually impaired, Innovation Rally for small business ideas, New Buffalo High School Pottery, Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.

Education Counts Michiana is underwritten by Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

Investing in education and economic development for centuries, supporting the past, current, and future development of the Michiana region.

Community Foundation of Elkhart County Inspire Good.

Kosciusko County Community Foundation, Where Donor Dreams Shine.

The Dekko Foundation Community Foundation of Saint Joseph County Crossroads United Way, serving Elkhart, Lagrange, and Noble Counties.

United Way of Saint Joseph County.

Marshall County Community Foundation.

Ready to Grow St. Joe Early Childhood Coalition and a Gift by Elmer and Dolores Teppe.

Thank you.

Welcome to Education Counts Michiana.

I'm your host Sam Centellas.

Education Counts highlights programs and initiatives that are impacting how we teach, how we learn, and how we embrace education.

This program explores ideas in all education sectors.

Preschool through lifelong learning, K-12, post-high school and job advancement training with the philosophy that we should never stop seeking knowledge.

Find additional resources at WNIT.org And on the Education Counts Facebook page First up, access to learning.

Improving accessibility of education for all students is an important goal for schools.

For learners with visual impairments, students, teachers and families work together to create learning environments that foster curiosity and development.

Advances in Bluetooth and touch screen technology also play a role in making education more accessible for these students.

Segment produced by Nathan Krebs.

Hi everyone, My name is Willow Rayne Townsend, and I go to Roosevelt Steam Academy.

I'm in fifth grade in a high ability classroom with fifth and sixth graders.

She has been incredible at overcoming every obstacle that's come her way so far.

Obviously, you know, education is a tough sell for any kid.

They would much rather be playing outside or at home with their dolls.

But when you add the additional stress of having such a monumental difference as not having sight and needing every aspect of your education adapted for accessibility, it creates a whole new set of complications.

She uses the iPad.

She's been using an iPad since she was three when that's when we first introduced that to her.

And so we've just added tools over time.

She has her Braille note touch Plus, which is a computer kind of an Android based system that allows her to do all of the things that you and I could do on a regular laptop.

But it allows her to have the input with Braille, which is what she's already proficient.

And the bridge for education is with the Braille note Touch Plus and with the laptop, she's able to access it in a way that she's able to understand it, but she's able to share it out with the rest of the world.

I would say the number one resources are loving, caring and kind teachers, making sure that we have great teachers in place for our students and that those teachers have connections and relationships both with the student and with the parents.

And in Willow's case, it's kind of a double piece because she needs a high ability teacher just as much as she needs her her special education teacher.

So there's that connection.

How do we make sure that that the things that she's working through with her disability do not slow down her learning?

My teachers have been really helpful and they've a lot of them have tried to step in and learn Braille themselves, which I actually that that was very sweet.

And I will always appreciate those teachers who took the time to learn Braille.

And then to check your work, you just take 19 away.

Treating the the tools as being the things that are making her extraordinary or being blind to be able to do something a sighted person can do, doesn't make you extraordinary.

It's all about attitude.

I love learning.

It's very fun.

And I always want to figure out things like I like to research different things and it's fun.

She's always had just a hunger for knowledge that I think has really helped propel her forward in her education.

She has a drive of and a desire to be as independent as possible.

And so I think she appreciates what steps she's going to need to take developmentally with her education, not even just her academic education, but her Braille instruction, her orientation and mobility, because I think she understands, even at only ten years old, that those foundational skills are going to be so important for her in the future and her independence.

When you find yourself in a situation where you have to do things that are more or beyond where other people seem to be able to pick things up.

It's a challenge and perseverance becomes the key for student success when there is a challenge that somebody has to work through.

And I continue to look forward to see where she grows, because if I'm not calling her senator here in about 20, 30 years, I'll be shocked.

And so the struggles and the challenges are what help us to grow.

And that's what she's doing.

And she's she's going to change the world.

I think people should realize that it's okay if your child has special needs.

And if they are, it's okay because they're going to be a great child and everything's going to be okay.

Some parents are scared about that.

And I want to just say that they shouldn't be scared and they should be happy for their child is their special needs or not.

And I feel like people should just remember that even though someone has a condition, that doesn't mean they're disabled.

We can still do a lot of things.

My name is Nathan, and I produced this segment on education for the visually impaired.

And what drew me to the segment was that it's just not something we normally think about in terms of how education works on a day to day basis for students with visual impairments.

And so why I think it's so important to share this story is really the community involvement.

Students, parents, faculty, they all have a voice in making education so great for these students, and it's something just really powerful to share through this program.

And that's really what I learned from this.

It's that everyone is invested in education and that's why I think it's so perfect to share through this program, because it really does matter.

Learn more at WNIT.org A museum of learning.

The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art at the University of Notre Dame provides new opportunities to explore art and culture throughout history.

The museum is free and open to the public, and it places accessibility at the heart of its mission to share knowledge through art.

The museum's extensive collections and education programs help stimulate thinking and creativity.

Videographer Kristen Franklin, Editor Greg Banks.

The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art which was formerly the Snite Museum of Art, We've moved to a new building on the edge of campus, so we're much more accessible.

A parking lot is actually in view of the building, which is incredible.

And we moved over a thousand works of art to be here.

Some old favorites, some new, new faces, new acquisitions, and some stuff brought out of storage in this new space.

The new Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, one of our real beliefs is that this is your museum, and so we want people to come to the museum and feel like they're having the experience that makes sense for them.

And so this extends to our programing as well, which, you know, we have programs for children as young as four all the way through to adults.

And really our focus is having people make connections both with them and the works of art, but also with each other in the museum.

So it's really about creating relationships, creating conversations, and really getting people to feel that this is a space for them.

We hold belonging and hospitality as our two pillars of our programs.

We try to weave those into all of the experiences and programs that we carry.

So on school group visits, you might see that through student centered dialogue and conversation amongst each other, but also with works of art.

Another thing that you can expect on tour group visits is slow looking, so time to kind of develop those social emotional learning skills and sit with silence and begin to observe works of art that they may not have seen before, that they might not have prior knowledge about, but just to kind of sit with in a meditative way.

And then another thing, so in addition to slow looking dialog, discussion, conversation, we also have hands on art making exploration.

So that takes place in our third level studio facilities, which is a new feature of the building.

We didn't quite have those facilities at the Snite.

Students get to basically try out new techniques, mediums that they got to learn about in the galleries, then take on the role of artist themselves in doing so.

And that's a space where we we definitely value process over product.

So students are always successful and love getting to try new things in a new space.

We have actually eight works of art that were commissioned specifically for the new museum, and some of them are actually part of the physical building itself.

You're greeted when you come into the building with works of art on the exterior.

You come in to the atrium and you're immediately greeted by artwork on the walls, on the floor.

And then there's obviously all of the artworks that we have in our different galleries and we have amazing gallery spaces that are set up to tell stories, to make connections and really feel like there's a conversation taking place between the artworks and the visitors that both are bringing something to that conversation.

Art has benefits for all ages, but it's especially beneficial to get into it when you're young just because it provides like an outlet for expressing yourself.

And it's a great way to learn good communication skills where you're sort of entering into the the mindset of other people.

You're able to observe what other people are trying to express.

You're able to engage in critical thinking skills, visual and verbal literacy.

So those sorts of skills are really important for being a person and also important for not only engaging in what other artworks that other people have made, but making your own artwork to express yourself.

Art provides that outlet of just like a place where they can be themselves and be accepted for who they are.

There's no standards in art per se.

There's no social eye per se, in the same way that social media may be that outlet provides.

So art is just a place to be your authentic self and present yourself as you are.

There's been a lot of studies recently on the effect of art on mental health and even on physical health.

So for all of us at any age, the arts, whether that's the visual arts, music, dance, theater, really serve a purpose and keeping us well as a whole being.

So that's something we firmly believe here, is that art is integral to people's lives.

It's not an extra or something that can easily be taken or left.

So for for many folks and this is for young kids as well, all the way to adults, is that that the arts are a way to find oneself, but also to learn about others and experience things that maybe you can experience in your daily life.

We often talk about you can travel the world in an art museum.

You can travel back in time.

in an art museum, you can come to the present and see things around you in new ways through artists eyes.

So really, you know, being in the art museum is not just about our history and about about kind of how things were made, but it's really about who we are as humans and how we can look to the past and the future and the present and find our place within that.

Learn more at WNIT.org Bright Ideas.

The Innovation Rally at Notre Dame's IDEA Center embraces the spirit of entrepreneurship through community.

The program provides opportunities for local entrepreneurs to pitch their business ideas to community members.

In addition, networking is encouraged, which helps create professional and personal connections.

So I thought I'd just share my path being a little unusual for entrepreneurs.

And so it really started as a recognition that our community has a huge number of amazing entrepreneurs, and we didn't really have a place for them to convene to get to know each other.

People who are building great things, oftentimes it can be a lonely road.

They they get so excited about their idea.

They spend most of their time building a thing, and they don't realize that there is great support available to them, both from their colleagues, from people in the community and from the university.

So our rallies and a lot of the events that we hold are really focused around making a space where people can get to know each other and find out how to get help.

We found through the research it's really important to have these random collisions of investors, founders, supporters, everybody working together to try to ignite an economic transformation in our region through entrepreneurship.

So it's really just a chance to get our founders on stage to be able to present to different investors.

It gives our alumni a chance to provide career advice for our students.

It gives our faculty and community members an opportunity to see what's, what's in store for the next generation of startups in our region.

In 40 years, there's not been a change to the DUI investigative process That is, until now, NYGT RYDR is a high, higher accuracy, highly defensible, One of the things we love to highlight are the new startups that are coming out.

So we get the privilege of working with dozens and dozens of startups, and a number of them come from the university, from all sorts of cool faculty technologies.

Some of them are from our students, and a number of them now are also coming wonderfully from our community.

So just today we highlighted a local entrepreneur who's building an amazing technology that's allowing for law enforcement to improve the process of figuring out if someone is is driving intoxicated and is taking that technology and the safety that it brings to the road, not just to the local community, but is actually building it into a large angel and venture backed business that can go national.

So right here in South Bend, Indiana, we're making roads safer over the whole world.

And we get to share that story here at the rally by giving them a space to to share that.

In terms of speakers, today we have Audrey Backman, who shared her journey from engineer here at Notre Dame all the way through working at a bio medicine company, a large organization, and then finally heading into the startup world.

So it's it's really important, I think, for students to be able to just see what potential career paths they could have within the startup and entrepreneurship and innovation world.

People are just hungry and clamoring to have these interactions and to help each other out.

I mean, that's what the community needs for, right?

We're supposed to be supporting each other, all working together to have a common goal, helping our region to become a force for good.

The entrepreneur brings the fire in the belly, the person starting the company, sitting around their kitchen table, working at nine, ten, 11:00 at night.

They're the hero.

Our purpose is to help them succeed.

We bring all sorts of resources to bear.

We bring mentorship, we bring access to the different resources of the university.

We help to introduce them to investors.

And our goal really is to say, at the end of the day, someone who has a great idea and the only thing holding them back from that great idea being a great company was access to resources, we were able to serve them well by allowing them to find those resources and find the success that they're capable of.

Find out more about the program at WNIT.org Beyond the Classroom.

The Pottery Club at New Buffalo High School is a unique way for students to build skills, become mentors, and give back to their community.

The club offers workshops for students to learn how to throw bowls on the pottery wheel.

More experienced students have the opportunity to teach and mentor others, including their parents.

The club also held a marathon bowl throwing session called Pottery Madness, a community service program that contributes to the Empty Bowls fundraiser.

I feel like there's a decent amount of jobs out there that you can have to work with your hands and get a little dirty sometimes.

And this is the best way to do it and also have fun.

So the pottery club got started a few years ago, and the whole idea of it was that I wanted an opportunity for all students to experience clay after school, even if they weren't in art class.

I think it's a pretty unique opportunity because normally there's a cost barrier to being involved in ceramics if you go to an art center and sign up for classes, but here it's available to all students.

To really just experience it and get exposure to the medium.

Tonight's event, Pottery Madness.

This is like a celebration.

It's a pottery party.

So we are celebrating the members and all of their hard work.

So it'll be marathon style where students are creating bowls and all of them are donated.

And then the parents come - open house.

They'll be games, challenges, activities, music, food.

And it's just a night to hang out together in the pottery studio, creating bowls that will be donated to Empty Bowls.

Yeah, I think it's a really unique integration of art.

You know, you have this idea of making your own personal piece that you feel sort of invested in and then other people purchase it and then they get to either use it or then they're donated and go to this incredible effort of feeding people who maybe are disenfranchized or don't have enough for themselves.

I'm my own member of pottery club, but I do a lot of mentoring as well.

I help other people with their projects and do some of my own projects.

I'm also like a returning member and I TA the workshops that we had last year.

I have a lot more experience, so I'm a lot better able to mentor people and I think we also have a lot of new involvement because of myself and other people talking about it and just having a good time in pottery club.

So I think I've definitely developed better skills for explaining the processes and helping people instead of just doing it myself.

But it's definitely been, as I learned, I can help other people learn.

So if somebody's struggling, I will just either explain it to them or kind of coach them, or I'll jump in for a second.

I think this is really important and has been for Giada's development because they actually are very interested in going into the sciences, and in college, that would likely be their route.

But here they had an opportunity to explore a different side of their creativity and brain and that diversity of just culture and get into the arts in a way that they may not have elsewhere.

I really have seen them grow in their leadership and their comfort in mentoring and teaching.

They do an excellent job with that.

I feel like it's helping me learn by like, letting me figure out my own way of doing things while also doing the best way I can do things, which is like working with my hands.

When we came in last year to participate in Empty Bowls, he definitely jumped right in.

He had no problem talking about how to use the glazes, how to make corrections.

If we weren't doing very well with our pinch pots.

He he jumped right in.

But he was very respectful in all of that, too.

So it was an opportunity to show that side of things.

I appreciate that he's able to teach me a few things, and he is, he's actually the expert.

Today I looked over a few times to watch to see what he was doing.

And so I appreciate that he's been able to carry forward what he's, what he's done.

We're sort of like a tight knit family here.

And the connection with the adults was really to show the community what the average day is like in pottery club.

What's it like to be in the classroom so they get to be a kid again and experience what that might be like without the commitment of signing on to a whole year's worth of classes somewhere.

They just get a one night little snippet of what it's like to learn something new, struggle through it, and then have some success along the way.

I would just say that this group is unique, I have a lot of fun with them.

I'm really proud of their progress and the commitment from some of my members that have come in day after day.

It's great because anyone can drop in in the high school and just experience it for a day, or you can keep coming back and start getting on the wheel, working through it, end up finding that you're falling in love with clay.

I'm really, really excited to be coming back again, seeing a lot of my friends and working with clay and just having fun and doing pottery with them.

I really like it.

I like working with different age groups.

I like working with like freshmen or like older adults who just wanted to come try it.

I think it's a fun experience no matter where your skill level is, and it's been rewarding for me to be able to participate in it for a while.

Check out WNIT.org for more information on all these stories.

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The success of every student matters.

Education Counts Michiana is underwritten by Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.

Investing in education and economic development for centuries, supporting the past, current, and future development of the Michiana region.

Community Foundation of Elkhart County Inspire Good.

Kosciusko County Community Foundation, Where Donor Dreams Shine.

The Dekko Foundation Community Foundation of Saint Joseph County Crossroads United Way, serving Elkhart, Lagrange, and Noble Counties.

United Way of Saint Joseph County.

Marshall County Community Foundation.

Ready to Grow St. Joe Early Childhood Coalition and a Gift by Elmer and Dolores Teppe.

Thank you.

This WNIT local production has been made possible in part by viewers like you.

Thank you.