Middle Schoolers Find Remarkable People

sixth-grade project indentifies outstanding Chippewa Valley residents

Alison Wagener, photos by Alison Wagener |

DeLong Middle School students Cody Welker, left, and Jonah Hanson conducted an interview for the Remarkable People project while teacher and project coordinator Bridget Smylie looked on.
DeLong Middle School students Cody Welker, left, and Jonah Hanson conducted an interview for the Remarkable People project while teacher and project coordinator Bridget Smylie looked on.

This spring, the sixth graders at DeLong Middle School were given a unique assignment: finding the remarkable in their own hometown. The Remarkable People of Eau Claire project started out as a brainstorm of several DeLong teachers looking for ways to get their students more involved in the community, but what resulted was a collaboration of more than 100 sixth graders, three UW-Eau Claire student photographers, and more than 50 remarkable Eau Claire residents working together to celebrate what’s great in the Chippewa Valley.

“It’s really opened my eyes to all the things that are really special about this community.” – Lily Anderson, UWEC student photographer, on the Remarkable People of Eau Claire project

The project seemed simple enough: assign sixth-graders to interview and profile people who have done outstanding things in the community, ask UW-Eau Claire student photographers to snap their portraits, and – voila! – a “Humans of New York”-style project featuring our own Eau Clairians. The finished product consisted of each remarkable person’s portrait and a defining quote from the interview alongside a short bio and quote picked by the sixth graders. The portraits were exhibited in DeLong on May 23, and in case you missed them, another gallery showing is in the works for later this year.

As part of the project, two DeLong sixth graders, Jonah Hanson and Cody Welker, interviewed retired health educator Tom Kidd. Kidd taught at DeLong for 20 years and in Osseo and Fall Creek for 13 years before becoming a motivational speaker. Through the screen of an iPad, the trio discussed everything from what inspired him to be inspirational to what it takes to teach middle schoolers about sex and drugs. Jonah and Cody wore buttoned-up shirts, and Kidd let them know he was impressed.

After the interview, Jonah and Cody revealed their process. The sixth-graders were assigned interviewees and were told what made them remarkable. From there, they researched their interviewees’ careers and formulated their own interview questions.

The hardest part? “Researching,” Cody said. “We had a lot of questions we had to figure out, and we had to research every one of them and get different answers.” Jonah added that wording the interview questions was especially tricky: “We had to try to make them so that he would say a story, almost.” But despite the difficulties, Jonah was optimistic about the outcome of the project. “I hope I get a good grade,” he said.

Lily Anderson is one of three UW-Eau Claire student photographers working on the project. She said shooting for Remarkable People of Eau Claire was a great opportunity not only to get experience in taking environmental portraits but also to get a sneak peek into just how many amazing things are happening in Eau Claire.

“It was really great,” Lily said, “because I’ve only been here about two years now, so I was not super familiar with Eau Claire.” She continued, adding, “It’s really opened my eyes to all the things that are really special about this community.”

Bridget Smylie, a sixth grade teacher at DeLong, said that opening eyes was the goal of the project. “We tried to tell them before they did their research that anybody, even your neighbor, is remarkable for some reason,” Bridget said.

And a handful of sixth-grade teachers developing a real-world assignment that gets kids thinking about their community, 100 sixth-graders interviewing the change-makers of Eau Claire, and three university students who lent a hand and gained some career skills? That sounds pretty remarkable to me. I hope they get their own portrait, too.