BSU 04-13-23

Foundational Roots

The

Did you miss it? Catch up on the news from April 8-11...

BallStateDailyNews.com

Cardinals win MIVA regular season crown

April 8: Ball State Men’s Volleyball (18-8, 11-3 MIVA) completed the feat by sweeping (25-17, 25-17, 25-22) conference rival Purdue Fort Wayne in its final regular season match. The Cardinals hold the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament and host No. 8 seed Quincy in their firstround matchup Saturday, April 15 at 6 p.m.

Six

dead

Massive industrial fire overtakes Richmond

April 11: Thick clouds of black smoke emerging from a fire in a facility storing plastics and other recyclables has resulted in citizens in Richmond, Indiana within 0.5 miles of the building being told to evacuate the area; those outside of that radius have been told to take shelter where they are, keeping windows and doors closed. The fire was said to have started after a tractor trailer nearby caught fire.

in Louisville bank shooting

April 10: In the 15th mass killing in the United States in 2023, two weeks after six were killed in an elementary school in Nashville, a Louisville Old National Bank employee shot and killed five citizens with a rifle in the workplace. Police arrived as shots were being fired, eventually killing the 25-year-old. The shooter livestreamed the attack on Instagram. Meta, Instagram’s parent company, quickly removed the video from the platform.

4-DAY WEATHER FORECAST

THURSDAY

MOSTLY SUNNY

Hi: 78º

Lo: 52º

The Ball State Daily News (USPS144-360), the Ball State student newspaper, publishes Thursdays during the academic year, except during semester and summer breaks. The Daily News is supported in part by an allocation from the General Fund of the university and is available free to students at various campus locations.

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VOL. 102 ISSUE:

EDITORIAL BOARD

29

Elissa Maudlin, Editor-in-chief

Evan Chandler, Print Managing Editor

Angelica Gonzalez Morales, Digital Managing Editor

Kyle Smedley, News Editor

Hannah Amos, Associate News

Editor

Daniel Kehn, Sports Editor

Corbin Hubert, Associate Sports

Editor

Lila Fierek, Lifestyles Editor and Copy Director

Mya Cataline, Associate Lifestyles

Editor

Grayson Joslin, Opinion Editor

KwaTashea Marfo, Associate

Opinion Editor

Amber Pietz, Photo Editor and Visual Editor

Jacy Bradley, Associate Photo Editor

Jacob Boissy, Video Editor Olivia Ground, Social Media Editor

Alex Bracken, Visual Editor

Josie Santiago, Visual Editor

Lisa Renze-Rhodes, Adviser

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CORRECTION

The Ball State Daily News is committed to providing accurate news to the community. In the event we need to correct inaccurate information, you will find that printed here.

To submit a correction, email editor@bsudailynews.com.

SATURDAY

SUNDAY

SUNNY Hi: 77º

FRIDAY SCATTERED SHOWERS Hi: 76º

Lo: 58º

Lo: 52º

PERIODS OF RAIN Hi: 56º

Lo: 41º

THIS WEEK: We will have mainly clear conditions in the 70s for the majority of the week. For Thursday, we could potentially be peaking to 80 degrees. Rain chances increase Saturday and Sunday. Sunday will be a transition day into cooler temperatures for the coming week.

Waking Up with Cardinal Weather is Ball State University’s first and only morning mobile show focused on getting your ready for the day through local news, weather and lifestyle trends. Waking Up with Cardinal Weather airs every Friday morning at 8 a.m. at @cardinalwx live on Facebook.

Hunter Luzadder, Weather forecaster, Benny Weather Group

LUKE SHARRETT, TNS, PHOTO COURTESY

Why it Matters

MuncieCommunitySchools

If you step into our newsroom, you might hear a single sentence: The Daily News writes stories other people aren’t telling.

This is a philosophy that shapes a lot of what we do with our content choices. We want to tell stories that may otherwise fly under the radar in the Ball State University and Muncie communities. One way we try to connect both of these worlds is through The Partnership Project.

The Partnership Project started because the editorial board of The Daily News decided to have special coverage on Muncie Community Schools (MCS) and about the work happening in MCS that isn’t being discussed. When Ball State took on a bigger role with MCS, our two worlds became interconnected to some degree. We wanted our coverage to reflect that.

Some people may say Ball State is disconnected from the Muncie community; it’s easy for a college campus to seem like its own universe that doesn’t reflect its surrounding areas.

The Daily News doesn’t want to be in a bubble, and that’s part of why the Partnership Project was born.

We want to talk about what’s going on in Muncie. We want to tell great stories from MCS. We want to open the doors for better connection between Ball State and the communities that surround it.

This Partnership Project edition of our newspaper features the communities from outside the Ball State bubble. We hope telling stories like these will connect us all.

Four years after we started The Partnership Project, our motivation for telling Muncie Community Schools’ stories are stronger than ever.

Summits for Success

Muncie Community School’s Academic Innovation Summit brings national education leaders to Muncie.

Grayson Joslin

Opinion Editor

Chuck Reynolds grew up in Muncie, but he didn’t go to Muncie Central High School.

He went to Muncie Southside when it was still a high school. A graduate of the class of 1993, he was the assistant superintendent of Richmond Community Schools when he got an offer to become the associate superintendent of Muncie Community Schools (MCS) in March 2019.

Before becoming the assistant superintendent in Richmond, Indiana, Reynolds was the band director at Muncie Southside and ascended to assistant principal, then principal of the school.

“Muncie changed my life,” Reynolds said. “I wanted to give back to Muncie to help kids like me and to help provide a good education, so they could make better choices for themselves.”

Another person who wanted to help kids in MCS was Lee Ann Kwiatkowski. When the proposal for Ball State University to take over MCS was approved, Kwiatkowski was working for the governor’s office as a senior education advisor.

In July 2019, Kwiatkowski, nicknamed “Dr. K” by those in the community, was appointed to be the director of public education and chief executive officer of MCS. Since her ascension to the position, she has worked with Ball State to form a partnership.

Kwiatkowski said it had been years since staff members had opportunities for professional growth and development.

“So we thought, let’s create a conference that is equal to any at national scale,” she said. “Let’s just bring that right here to Muncie.”

available to educators at the conference.

Kwiatkowski noted some of the presenters at the summit are Ball State faculty; a request for proposals are sent to faculty, which are then considered by the executive team that helps run the summit.

“We make sure everything’s aligned to our strategic plan,” Kwiatkowski said. “We just don’t want random topics. We want it to be connected to the work that we’re doing.”

Reynolds said the summit is a “unique” concept, compared to how other school systems do professional development. Other schools will set days aside in their schedule to have professional development days or will let out school early for professional development.

One facet of this partnership is the Academic Innovation Summit, a day-long conference where speakers from across Ball State and the country come to speak to MCS educators to help promote student success. The idea came from the Academic Innovation Council, formed at the onset of the partnership between Ball State and MCS.

MCS then partnered with the Ball Brothers Foundation and the George and Frances Ball Foundation to organize the Academic Innovation Summit. Reynolds said the conference is organized like a national conference, with breakout sessions and nationally-renowned speakers giving presentations. On average, around 75 to 110 breakout sessions are

The MCS Strategic Plan consists of “pillars” that guide MCS and its direction: high quality prekindergarten education, recruitment, development and retention of educational leaders, student-centered teaching and learning, and social and emotional learning with family and community engagement. Reynolds notes most of the presentations are focused on the last two pillars.

I wanted to give back to Muncie to help kids like me and to help provide a good education, so they could make better choices for themselves.”

- CHUCK REYNOLDS, Associate superintendent of Muncie Community Schools

Former Northside Middle School Principal Eric Grim presents during the 2021 BSU-MCS Academic Innovation Summit Sept. 17, 2021 in Muncie, Ind. The summit brings teachers across all schools from MCS to a day dedicated to professional development. BALL STATE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY MEDIA REPOSITORY, PHOTO PROVIDED

SUMMIT

Continued from Page 04

“A foundation for our pillars is meeting [the] diverse needs of our students with a multicultural approach to instruction,” he said.

Last year’s keynote speaker for the Academic Leadership Summit was Geoffrey Canada, president of Harlem’s Children’s Zone. Canada was “one of the first,” according to Kwiatkowski, to embed many community groups with schools, a cornerstone of the Ball State-MCS partnership.

Reynolds called Canada’s keynote presentation “truly outstanding,” noting how Canada “really took advantage of his educational opportunities to change his trajectory on his life.”

Kwiatkowski said MCS teachers enjoyed being able to collaborate together and work across different schools in the corporation during the summit. One of these teachers who shared a positive view of the summit is Tori Johnson.

Johnson, a fourth-grade teacher at Grissom Elementary School, is in her first year at Muncie Community Schools; she said she saw positive development with MCS and decided to “take the leap.”

Before coming to MCS, Johnson worked in Richmond where students were let out at 1:20 p.m. every Tuesday for professional development. These development sessions were led by internal figures.

She noted how different MCS’ summit was to what she experienced working in Richmond; she liked how she was able to “pick and choose” what types of sessions she could go to.

This academic year, Johnson uses i-Ready, a collection of online educational materials, to help her students. She didn’t use i-Ready during her time at Richmond Community Schools, making an i-Ready session headed by experts at the MCS summit helpful to teachers like Johnson.

“It was a really good time to build a positive culture within our building,” Johnson said.

Johnson was also inspired by Canada’s keynote speech; she described the culture of Grissom as “very diverse,” so bringing in someone who could understand the culture of not only Grissom but the entirety of MCS was important to her.

“I really appreciated the fact that we had someone that I felt like understood us,” she said.

Johnson also pointed out after the summit, she came back to her classroom with a different outlook on the behaviors happening in her classroom. She is working on building more empathic and caring relationships with her students and to “add more tools in her toolbox.”

There is more professional development even after the summit; Johnson said there has been “extended learning” where people come into the schools and continue further development on topics presented at the summit.

“I truly did not feel like that summit wasted my time,” Johnson said. “I felt like we were there for a purpose. We had an agenda.”

Kwiatkowski said one of the biggest problems facing MCS is student achievement, partly due to COVID-19. She hopes the Academic Innovation Summits will continue in the future.

“Part of what the legislation wanted us to do was to become innovative, and so we’re trying to find ways that we may try to do some things that others haven’t thought of yet,” Kwiatkowski said.

Reynolds said he would be willing to show other school corporations how MCS set up the summit, so other schools could do something similar.

Johnson is looking forward to the next summit later this year, and she too hopes other schools will implement this concept for their professional development.

“I think it’d be more beneficial to implement something like this,” she said. “It was a great experience. It’s always nice when all educators [are] there for the same purpose and [have] the same goal in mind.”

Contact Grayson Joslin with comments at Grayson.joslin@bsu.edu or on Twitter @ GraysonMJoslin.

I felt like we were there for a purpose. We had an agenda.”

- TORI JOHNSON, Fourth-grade teacher at Grissom Elementary School

Muncie Community School educators sit and listen to a presentation during the 2021 BSU-MCS Academic Innovation Summit Sept. 17, 2021 in Muncie, Ind. The summit was an idea suggested by the Academic Innovation Council. BALL STATE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY MEDIA REPOSITORY, PHOTO PROVIDED

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Abigail Denault Reporter

Ball State University professors and Muncie Community Schools (MCS) administration are seeking to change what civics means to students throughout Muncie and beyond.

In 2022, Ball State was one of six grantees that received the American History and Civics-National Activities Grants, according to the United States Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. The university received a little more than $1.3 million to be funded over the course of three years for their Civic Renewal through Education for Agency, Tolerance and Engagement (CREATE) project. The grant is one of two Indiana-related grants with the other belonging to Purdue University’s PROJECT RISE.

According to the abstract of the project submitted to the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, “CREATE will impact roughly 5,215 students and 335 teachers…We selected MCS as the target

population to engage underserved populations with a scalable model for civic renewal and exposure to opportunities for public service.”

The project is also meant to assist MCS to create a curriculum in order to fulfill the new requirements of Indiana Code Title 20, Article 30, Chapter 5 on a required one-semester civics class for students in sixth-eighth grade starting in the 2023-24 school year. The creation of the law places Indiana alongside six other states that have a middle school course solely devoted to civics education.

David Roof, co-principal investigator of the project and associate professor of educational studies, shared how the law was part of a national effort.

“A lot of students around the country right now only get one civics-related class, and it’s often the last year, often the last semester of high school before people graduate,” Roof said. “Civics has been really lacking in schools. There’s a wide, bipartisan agreement that there’s a need to reinstitute civics.”

Roof is not alone in working on the project. He is joined by his co-principal investigator Anand

Better

Creating Better Citizens

Marri, interim provost and executive vice president for academic affairs and professor of educational studies, as well as Ball State professors from a variety of areas including journalism, educational psychology and multicultural education, according to the Aug. 25, 2022 press release on the project.

Since that announcement, the team has also grown to include Donna Browne, who became the CREATE project director in January, according to the February 2023 newsletter of the project.

Now, the project is nearly seven months in and has already begun to set roots with an online repository for teachers on the CREATE project website, along with professional development seminars in partnership with the Indiana Bar Foundation for teachers to prepare to implement civics into their courses. The project has been partnering with the Indiana Bar Foundation for many of these events.

Roof said he has already seen the influence of the CREATE project. He mentioned getting emails from teachers around the state as many work to meet the new civics requirement.

Co-principal investigator of the CREATE project Anand Marri poses for a photo in his office in the Ball State Administration Building April 3. AMBER PIETZ, DN

This is an opportunity to build up on that momentum and improve civic education across subject areas beyond just civic education in social studies, now it’s across all areas.”

- ANAND MARRI, Co-principal investigator on the CREATE project

“I know a teacher in West Lafayette emailed me and said, ‘We have this new class requirement, but we don’t know what to do. Can you share anything?’” Roof said about one email. “Long term, we really want to be there to support and [be] really focused on Muncie but also providing resources statewide for teachers.”

The resources in question are part of the Ball State team’s mission as they, alongside MCS teachers, formulate a curriculum to meet the requirement and beyond.

Marri provides insight on the curriculum. He has been conducting research on the development of actively-engaged, democratic citizens since he was in graduate school in 1999. He said the research has shown a better understanding of economic factors makes you a better citizen.

“For example, in Indiana, we do a lot on solar farms or windmills,” Marri said. “So what are the incentives that people are paying landowners to put that there? What are the costs that are involved, and how does that affect me? How does that affect the electricity rates? There’s a variety of ways that this bill allows for researchers like me to get kids to think about civic engagement.”

Marri’s additional experience as a former high school social studies teacher in California also showed him firsthand the disparities of civic engagement the grant will help to alleviate. He said he noticed how students from lower and moderateincome families, as well as those of color and nonnative English speaking backgrounds, had fewer civic engagement opportunities. Civic engagement is a core part of the CREATE project as it seeks to

build opportunities for students to become better citizens from K-12.

“Muncie Community Schools have a lot of challenges, but there’s also a lot of opportunities,” Marri said. “A lot of the teachers and the students are civically engaged. They care about their community, they care about Delaware County and they care about Indiana. And so this is an opportunity to build up on that momentum and improve civic education across subject areas beyond just civic education in social studies, now it’s across all areas.”

The project will implement all aspects of civics, which is often confused for being only related to government. Julie Snider, a social studies teacher and department chair at Muncie Central High School, recalled how many have used the words interchangeably when referring to her classes, including her own mother.

“When I first started teaching government, I remember my mom saying, ‘Oh, you’re gonna be teaching civics,’” Snider said, recalling how she was confused by her mother’s words. “And she said, ‘Well, that’s what they always called it when I was a kid.’ And that was kind of the first time I started looking into what that meant. I thought, ‘That doesn’t go with my government curriculum, that would be something I would have to teach alongside it.’”

Civics are related to being a citizen, which reach into many areas of life from media to science, music to sustainability.

The topics can be covered across many areas and seek to find ways to work with teachers rather than against them; one way they do that is through the

implement the curriculum.

“We’ve had a good response,” Snider said. “But we have full plates all the time, especially subjects where they have testing and things like that. Sometimes, they tend to say, ‘I can’t handle more.’ My job has been trying to show them: ‘It’s everything you’re already doing but just doing it in a different way. Giving your kids a choice … have a discussion in your class, talk with them about how to talk and how to disagree with someone in a way that’s civil.’”

Snider also talked about the new civics requirement and how it will be implemented in schools, including those beyond MCS.

“What I hope doesn’t happen is that everybody just expects that sixth-grade teacher to teach those kids civics, and nobody has to do anything else because that won’t work,” Snider said. “That’s like saying the only time we’re ever gonna talk about government is when they’re seniors. No, we’re a

Currently, the part of the project that will help MCS sixth-grade teachers meet the new 2023-24 requirement will be tested in around four months at the start of the next school year. Northside Middle School principal Ben Williams is hopeful for its success.

As part of the efforts to help students understand civics in real time, Williams has had trips with student leaders to places such as the Indiana Statehouse.

“[They were able to] sit and learn about those processes and history,” Williams said, “understanding that the current laws that are being debated and some of the topics that are being contested directly affect their lives today.”

The trip was just one of many. Williams shared future hopes of more field trips and projects to get students more civically engaged. Back at the high school level, Snider has been sending her students to local council meetings.

Presidential buttons are pressed into a frame in Julie Snider’s classroom April 6. AMBER PIETZ, DN

Co-principal investigator of the project and associate professor of educational studies David Roof poses for a portrait inside his office March 30 at the Teacher’s College building. AMBER PIETZ, DN

That’s a powerful frame when you look at it from that lens, ‘I’m not just a person of the city of Muncie. I’m also a member of our world. What can I do to make the world a better place?’”

- BEN WILLIAMS, Principal of Northside Middle School

4See CITIZENS, 18

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Practicum Partnership

BSU theatre education students gain hands-on experience with the help of Northside Middle School.

Miguel Naranjo Reporter

When David Hreno was in high school, he considered himself to be a shy person, finding it difficult to socialize and make friends with his peers, he said.

When he started participating in theatre, however, he was immediately immersed in the novel experience and felt like part of the group.

Now, as a third-year theatre education major, Hreno wears the hat of director for a group of middle schoolers at Northside Middle School, putting on his own shows. Alongside Megan Templeton, thirdyear theatre education major, the two are doing the same thing for the Northside students: building a community for them to thrive in.

Ball State theatre education students (THEDs) fulfill their primary practicum with the support of MCS schools surrounding Ball State University. In the case of Hreno and Templeton, their practicum is fulfilled by co-directing the spring show at Northside.

The Northside spring show this year is “The Adventures of Stuart Little,” a theatrical adaptation of the children’s book by E.B. White. It follows the

titular character through his youth and adolescence making friends, avoiding the family cat and adapting to life in New York as a 2-inch-tall mouse.

There are about 15 middle schoolers acting in the play, with five more making up the tech crew, moving stage elements and manipulating the lights to set the right mood for the actors to portray their characters. One of Hreno’s and Templeton’s goals is to build a small community out of the cast and crew, so they feel comfortable and confident around one another, Hreno said.

“We’ll usually have them play a little warm-up improv game at the beginning of rehearsal, so they have that chance to practice their acting skills while having fun as a group,” he said.

Just as the primary practicum is part of the THED curriculum, first and second-years are required to participate as production assistants and assistant directors respectively in middle school shows. It is a means of preparing THEDs for their own primary practicum in their third year, Hreno said.

He and Templeton are co-directors for the spring show, and they are joined by five other Ball State THEDs: one assistant director and four production assistants. With the directors at the helm, each THED contributes to the show according to their own chosen specialty.

For example, Clarence Davenport, production assistant, takes on costuming for the middle school actors, while Mya Tolley, assistant director, acts as set designer and decorates the stage elements the actors use. The Northside students answer to Ball State students, whichever role they find themselves in.

“We do our best to let [the Northside kids] know that we’re cool, but that we’re also here to work and put on a show,” Briant Lewis, production assistant, said. “We all set an example for the kids to follow.”

Even students who are not assigned to the production as part of their curriculum are welcome to lend a hand upon invitation from a THED who is working on the show, Templeton said. While she was painting the background elements for the show, Tolley invited three of her friends to help her, none of whom were theatre education majors.

“The Ball State theatre department as a whole is a tight-knit community already,” Templeton said, “and we find it fun to take on each others’ projects and just do what we do together.”

Classes like THEA 150: Introduction to Theatre Education and THEA 295: Teaching Methods are examples of other classes that prepare THEDs for directing a young cast and giving them a wellrounded education in theatre, Templeton said.

As directors, she and Hreno aim to teach the Northside students “a little bit of everything” when it comes to acting, including memorizing lines, proper intonation and stage presence.

We won’t just be directing plays when we’re student teaching, we’ll also be teaching English classes during the school day unlike what we do at Northside. I’m so excited to have a theatre classroom of my own one day.”

- DAVID HRENO, Northside spring show co-director

Second-year theatre education major Mya Tolley paints two models of boats for “The Adventures of Stuart Little” April 3. As assistant director, she works with Hreno and Templeton to develop the spring show but is not yet immersed in each aspect of directing it. MIGUEL NARANJO, DN

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Thinking Thrift-fully

Well Made Vintage sets up shop in the Village.

‘90s and early 2000s, according to their Facebook page. In terms of brands, there is a wide variety.

Seth Pope and Blake Edwards have been friends since they were first-year students at Ball State University. Though Pope was an elementary education major and Edwards went for business administration, what brought them closer was their love of collecting vintage clothing.

Edwards started selling clothes in 2016 while he was in high school, but Pope didn’t start until his second year of college when he sold vintage clothes on Snapchat.

Pope and Edwards met in 2018, and, once Pope started selling, he asked Edwards if he wanted to put together a pop-up shop.

“When that pop-up shop did well, we were like, ‘Okay, this is something we could definitely continue doing,’” Pope said. “It just sort of built

Pope and Edwards did not enjoy constantly hosting pop-up shops. They wanted something more stable where people can come in at any time. At the beginning of 2023, they decided to open a thrift shop called Well Made Vintage.

Well Made Vintage sells clothes from the ‘70s, ‘80s,

Pope and Edwards chose to sell clothes from these decades because of the quality of the clothes.

When Pope is not at the store, he teaches third grade at South View Elementary School.

Pope has always enjoyed working with children and helping others learn. This led him to becoming a teacher.

“It is a job that I feel like I can make a big difference in,” Pope said. “Being able to be a teacher that is young and can relate to students more than a normal teacher is a big deal to me.”

Pope’s students love the idea of him running Well Made Vintage. Every day, they come to school excited to see what Pope is wearing.

“It’s just kind of a relationship building thing for me,” Pope said.

His students even tell their parents he runs a thrift store. Parents have asked him when the shop is open, so they can bring their kids.

“I had a couple of my students come into the shop, and I have a couple more that are going to come in pretty soon,” Pope said.

Pope said being a teacher and running a store can be difficult, but having a business partner helps a

Clothes hang on racks at Well Made Vintage thrift store in the Village March 21. The shop opened March 1. JACY BRADLEY, DN

Ball State alumni Seth Pope (left) and Blake Edwards (right) speak about their thrift shop Well Made Vintage March 21 in the Village. JACY BRADLEY, DN

a lot. During school hours, Edwards can run the store, then Pope can fully be there on the weekends. If there are things Pope couldn’t get done at school, he is able to bring it to the store.

Pope’s coworkers at the school understand he works two jobs. They all do group planning to make sure everything goes smoothly.

As a teacher, he is busy trying to help each individual student. As a business owner, he is buying new items and rearranging the store.

“Being able to be comfortable in that chaos and being able to bring it back into some order is something that I’d say I’ve learned a lot from, trying to manage and host events and set up things in here,” he said.

Unlike Pope, working at Well Made Vintage is Edward’s full time job.

Edwards fell in love with thrifting at an early age. He didn’t want to miss out on cool pieces of clothing, so he would go thrifting constantly.

Pope has been thrifting for the past couple of years, and through thrifting, he found his love for selling. He started selling toward the end of 2019, because he was finding clothes that did not fit him and started posting them.

“I was finding all this cool stuff that wasn’t in my size,” Pope said. “I started just posting it on my Snapchat story and selling it to my friends.”

Their clothing sizes can range anywhere from extra small to three or four extra-large. Being inclusive is very important to Pope and Edwards.

They try to have clothes for any age and any size.

“For me, at first, … I was selling so that I could get more stuff for myself,” Pope said. “Once I got there, I was like, ‘I really enjoy selling stuff.’”

Having a business was an important factor in getting Pope and Edwards through school.

“That’s kind of how we made our money in college,” Edwards said. “It’s what paid for my bills, what paid for my food.”

Before the location in the Village, Well Made Vintage was located on Wheeling Avenue. At the previous location, Pope and Edwards were on a month-to-month lease. They were there for two months before opening their doors in the Village.

“It was a big move for us to move our entire store when we’ve been open for a month,” Pope said, “but this ended up being a really cool spot. This is the spot that we belong in.”

They do not just sell clothes at Well Made Vintage. The owners will buy clothes from

customers, and people can trade in clothes for different ones.

“That’s another cool part of vintage,” Edwards said. “You can wear whatever shirt it is for however long you want, and if [you] decide you don’t want it, you can just find someone who has clothing like you, and hopefully you got a brand-new shirt.”

Sustainability means a lot to Pope and Edwards as well. They believe shopping at thrift stores is not only helping clothes not be thrown out, but thrift stores help save the planet.

In the United States, the average person throws out 81.5 pounds of clothes each year, according to Earth.org. A gallon of water is about eight pounds, according to World Atlas. This means the amount of clothes being thrown out is equivalent to about 10 gallons of water. Around 11.3 million tons of textile waste are being thrown in landfills each year, according to World Atlas.

I want it to be a space where people can just come hang out, maybe listen to a record, watch a VHS movie, play an old video game they used to play as a kid, just something that brings back nostalgia ... They can just come and be a person.”

- SETH POPE, Owner of Well Made Vintage and teacher at South View Elementary

Vintage decorations hang the walls of Well Made Vintage March 21 in the Village. JACY BRADLEY, DN

Third-year psychology major Andria Johnson shops at Well Made Vintage, a newly opened thrift store in the Village, March 21. JACY BRADLEY, DN

DNPartnershipProject

Grayson Joslin Opinion Editor

Central boys’ basketball team. After four straight first-round exits in the sectional round, the Bearcats had a mindset to go all the way to Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

For Chandler Thompson and other seniors on the team, this was their last chance to show the state of Indiana how good the Bearcats were. Muncie Central was ranked in the top 10 of the state the previous few seasons, but they had no hardware to show for it.

“We didn’t feel like any other team in the state was better than us,” Thompson said.

The Bearcats had not gotten out of their own sectional since 1982, where they came one win away from advancing to the state finals. Thompson noted how Marion, who had won the previous three state championships in a row — up to that point, only the second school in Indiana to achieve that in basketball — had lost most of their seniors due to graduation; however, Muncie Central had barely lost anyone.

state championship game. The Bearcats made it all the way to Market Square Arena and won their eighth state championship in school history.

Thirty-five years after the team in purple raised the state championship trophy, players and fans look back on that team.

It was around the time of Muncie Central’s 1979 state championship triumph that Brian Cheatham and his dad started going to Muncie Central games.

Cheatham’s parents both went to Muncie Central, and they soon got season tickets to Bearcat games.

“We just got hooked,” he said.

Watching these games, Cheatham looked up to players such as Ray McCallum and Jack Moore since they were shorter than average players in the game of basketball. Inspired by them, the 5-foot-8 Cheatham started playing basketball shortly after.

He tried out for the middle school team in seventh grade; he was asked to be a manager for the team, and he accepted that opportunity. In high school, he managed the freshman team, leading to

Cheatham said, around Muncie, there was always a “passionate” atmosphere surrounding basketball. Muncie Fieldhouse, where the Bearcats played their games, was always packed on Friday nights.

“When you’re ranked up the top and people come, they want to see how good you are,” Cheatham said.

Often in the seats for Muncie Central games during that season while Cheatham was carrying out his managing duties was Kay Rankin.

Between Muncie Northside and Muncie Central, Rankin taught in Muncie for 41 years. A 1964 graduate of Muncie Central High School, she has gone to Muncie Central games since she was in elementary school. Her parents used to take her out of school early Friday afternoons, so she could go see sectional games at Muncie Fieldhouse.

During the 1987-88 season, Rankin taught at Northside High School; however, she still had season tickets for Muncie Central.

We knew what our goal was. And regardless of what everyone else felt, we knew what we needed to accomplish, and we needed to go out there and do it with them [or] without them.”

- CHANDLER

THOMPSON, Player on 1988 state championship team

Looking back at Muncie Central’s most recent boys basketball state championship

Muncie Central High School boys basketball players of 1988 pose for a photo. BALL STATE UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY MEDIA REPOSITORY, PHOTO PROVIDED

“We were with them all the way to state,” Rankin said.

Even before the season started, Thompson said he felt like the team had “the whole city behind them.”

Thompson noted that during the season, there was “a lot of hype” surrounding the team and their potential, but he said they didn’t listen to the noise.

“We were grounded kids,” Thompson said. “We knew what our goal was. And regardless of what everyone else felt, we knew what we needed to accomplish, and we needed to go out there and do it with them [or] without them.”

During her time as a teacher in Muncie Central, Rankin was also the coach of the cheerleading squad. She helped the cheerleaders decorate the high school, celebrating the Bearcat basketball team and other sports.

“They also decorated the player’s lockers, and then they would make decorations to take to the players’ homes,” Rankin said.

Thompson said the team was all friends outside of practices; even if they had their own cliques, they all considered themselves friends and family.

“I think that we as a team, we all wanted to do well,” Thompson said.

There was a guiding motto their coach, Bill Harrell, would say to the players during the season: “You can’t be beat if you won’t be beat.” Cheatham said that motto was on a sign the team brought with them to every game that season.

Cheatham doesn’t remember who or where they came from, but during the course of the season, each of the players got to pick a nickname.

Thompson was “Showtime,” Sam Long was “Slow Moving” and Billy Vance was “Smoke.”

Cheatham was “Half-Court” because at the end of every practice, he would shoot half-court shots. While practicing for the state championship in Market Square Arena, Cheatham attempted a shot from the top of the arena.

The conference Muncie Central was in, the North Central Conference, was considered the best basketball conference in the state, Cheatham said. Alongside Muncie Central, there were other strong programs such as Marion, Anderson and Richmond. When Muncie Central and Richmond played that season, Richmond was ranked No. 1, while the Bearcats were ranked No. 2.

Thompson said that even though Muncie Central lost the game in overtime, Richmond didn’t beat Muncie Central. On the almost hour-long bus drive back to Muncie, there was no talking or joking around; they were upset they lost.

“We took losing seriously,” Thompson said. That would be the only loss the Bearcats would suffer the entire season.

Thompson said there were many games that challenged the team over the course of the season

and made them “battle-tested”; he pointed to the Richmond game, as well as games against Anderson and Ben Davis, as important games.

He felt like the Bearcats “got by” with a win against Ben Davis due to a travel being called on what would be a game-winning shot in the last game of the regular season.

After getting past both Muncie Burris and Muncie Northside in the first two rounds of sectionals, Muncie Central met Muncie Southside in the sectional championship. The previous year, Southside ended Central’s season in an overtime contest in sectionals.

“They always gave us trouble in the sectionals every year,” Cheatham said.

After losing that sectional championship game, Thompson stayed around and watched how everyone else felt; he said it felt “crushing,” and he didn’t want to experience that feeling again.

After another overtime contest, Central pulled away from Southside and captured the win and the sectional championship with a 66-61 victory. Muncie Central later beat New Castle and Greenfield Central to win regionals and earn a chance to play at Hinkle Fieldhouse.

After beating Bloomington South in the morning game, Muncie Central faced off against Ben Davis once again.

“We wanted revenge against Ben Davis,” Thompson said. “It was going to be a tough challenge for us.”

The Bearcats got their revenge, winning 74-

69 and punching their ticket for the state finals. In the morning game, they faced Bedford North Lawrence, led by their star player Damon Bailey. However, Muncie Central had to overcome some adversity; Cedric Vanleer, who Thompson referred to as the Bearcats’ second-best player, was out. But Muncie Central was prepared.

“We had guys that knew their roles,” Thompson said. “We had a couple of bench players that came in and defended Bailey very well.”

Muncie Central won 60-53 and advanced to the state championship game against Concord, an undefeated squad led by 6-foot-10 senior and future NBA All-Star Shawn Kemp.

“We had never really played anybody that was tall like Shawn Kemp,” Cheatham said.

Cheatham said Thompson played right with him during the game, crediting his long arms and how he could jump “incredibly high.” Thompson also blocked one of Kemp’s shots during the game.

Thompson had a steal which led to a dunk; Rankin remembers after the dunk happened, fans were astounded by it.

“We said to each other, ‘Did he just do what we think he did?’” Rankin said.

Led by Sam Long’s 29 points and Thompson’s 21 points and 3 blocks, Muncie Central outlasted Concord 76-53 to win the eighth state basketball championship in school history.

“It’s just the best feeling you can have,” Cheatham said. “When you’re the best of 300 and some high school teams, you just can’t believe it.”

After 35 years, the friendship and the connection with the other members of the state championship team has not waned.

“We all talk to each other throughout the year,” Thompson said. “Most of us still hang out and talk to each other to this day, 35 years later.”

Contact Grayson Joslin with comments at Grayson.joslin@bsu.edu or on Twitter @ GraysonMJoslin.

Sectionals

Hosted by Muncie Central High School

Muncie Burris (W 69-32)

Muncie North (W 71-53)

Muncie South (W 66-61 OT)

Regionals

Hosted by New Castle High School

New Castle (W 84-61)

Greenfield Central (W 100-60)

Semi-State Championship

Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indianapolis

Bloomington South (W 73-59)

Ben Davis (W 74-69)

1988 State Championship

Market Square Arena, Indianapolis

Bedford North Lawrence (W 60-53)

Concord (W 76-53)

When you’re ranked up the top and people come, they want to see how good you are.”

- BRIAN CHEATHAM, Student manager on 1988 state championship team

DANIEL KEHN, DN ILLUSTRATION

Source: John Harrell’s Indiana Boys Basketball

Letters from Muncie Community Schools

The Daily News reached out to educators of Muncie Community School to provide context to where MCS is heading. The Daily News publishes Letters to the Editor and guest columns with minimal copy edits. The views expressed in letters do not necessarily reflect those of the newspaper.

Placing Learners First My Passion and Calling

Lee Ann Kwiatkowski Director of Public Education and CEO, Muncie Community Schools

It has been nearly five years since the start of the historic partnership between Muncie Community Schools (MCS) and Ball State University, and about four years since I joined MCS as its chief administrator. In that time, we have seen some drastic improvements in certain areas while other areas continue to be challenging.

Let’s start with some of the successes. After 15 consecutive years of declining enrollment, we finally saw an increase in students in 2021, and we remained steady at the start of the current school year. We have also turned around the district’s finances from being “in the red” to having a cash balance of more than $30 million (with another $12 million in a “Rainy Day” fund). Those are major accomplishments!

In addition, we have grown enrollment in our preschool program nearly 250 percent, significantly increased employee salaries to be among the top-paying school districts in the region, improved teacher retention by as much as 16 percent; drastically increased enrollment in our Project Lead the Way (STEM) courses for students in grades 1-12, provided health clinic services to thousands of students and community member, welcomed dozens of refugee students

into our recently created Newcomer Program and implemented a new program called “City Connects” that offers schools and community services for students and families based on their individual needs.

We are quite proud of all those achievements, but we still have plenty of work to do. We are still feeling the effects of disrupted school years due to COVID-19 and need to do more to get our overall academic achievement numbers higher. We know there is also room to grow our family engagement, improve our student attendance and take our preschool program to even higher ground.

As we continue to navigate these challenges, I need to express my deepest appreciation to our dedicated board of directors and the many community partners that have come by our side to aid in our quest to improve. Muncie is an incredibly caring community that works together for the good of all, and we appreciate that.

We will continue to implement the strategies outlined in our five-year strategic plan that supports our vision of “placing learners first.” We’re off to a good start but know the best is still yet to come.

As someone who joined the teaching staff at Grissom Elementary this school year, I am really happy with what is happening here at Grissom and all across Muncie Community Schools (MCS). Muncie is an amazing place to be!

Data-driven lessons, high expectations, rigorous learning and active engagement are just some of the things that come to mind when I think of MCS. All of these things lead to exceptional growth, as well as current and future success for our students.

I am currently in my fifth year of teaching, and I work hard every day to engage my students so they get as excited about their success as I do. But it doesn’t stop at me. My colleagues at Grissom and throughout MCS put their all into teaching, and that’s why I’m so encouraged about what lies ahead for our district. When you’re teaching in an environment like that, it’s adrenaline you get that can’t be explained, just experienced.

I love what I do — it’s my passion and calling — even with all the challenges that come with teaching these days. MCS has provided the support I need to help me help my students succeed. To me, that’s the best thing anyone can ask of a school district.

Tori Johnson Fourth grade teacher, Grissom Elementary School

CEO of Muncie Community Schools reflects on improvements and challenges during her time at MCS.

First-year MCS teacher talks about sense of community.

Building Futures in MCS

Muncie Area Career Center director and Muncie Central alum talks about dedication of MCS educators

Caleb Beasley Director, Muncie Area Career Center

As the Director of the Muncie Area Career Center (MACC), I have the unique opportunity of serving two student populations. The first is high school students seeking to develop technical abilities in a chosen field and needing their personal competencies expanded in the larger arena of life. The second is adult learners who have already begun their working life but are wanting to advance in their careers by securing educational achievements that, for various reasons, were out of reach in their younger years.

Thanks to the MACC’s dedicated team of professionals, we are able to support both of these groups quite successfully. Our experts approach their work every day with the backgrounds and knowledge needed to enhance our learners’ individual skills and capacities. We think of our work as helping people build better futures for themselves, their families and our community.

Over the course of more than 10 years working in various roles within Muncie Community Schools [MCS], I have seen scores of dedicated

educators pouring into their students — from our preschools all the way through our high school. Throughout the district, teachers and support staff are constantly doing whatever it takes to reach and teach kids the skills they need to be successful. I don’t just say that as an employee but also as an MCS parent.

My wife and I have one daughter who is a Muncie Central graduate, and we have two younger children currently attending elementary school in MCS. In fact, we are also Muncie Central grads ourselves and are grateful for the educational opportunities we received while growing up. We know firsthand the effort and care MCS teachers, staff, coaches and administrators put in to help students develop into knowledgeable professionals and responsible citizens. We are living proof! It’s exciting for us to know our children, and thousands of others, will build their futures through Muncie Community Schools. With the support of our friends and colleagues at Ball State and throughout our community, I look forward to watching all of our learners flourish and our community prosper.

MEGHAN HOLT, DN ILLUSTRATION

CITIZENS

Continued from Page 09

“They don’t just go to city council meetings,” Snider said. “They have to present a resolution that they want to get passed, and we go to the school board meetings, and they have to present ideas in front of the school board. This idea of don’t just sit back and be a resident of Muncie, be an active participant in what’s happening in your community. Because if you don’t, we’re gonna have roads that you’re not happy with. You’re gonna have programs that you don’t like, so do something about it.”

She said she has even been reminding students they only have to be 18 years old to run for mayor. Students in her class this past November were involved in the election as poll workers and saw how they noticed things such as how many voted “straight ticket,” when a voter selects all nominees of a political party for partisan offices on a ballot, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The idea from Williams, Snider and others on the project is to get students to experience civics beyond the classroom, so they can apply the lessons learned to their lives.

Snider said she has a desire for future partnerships with Ball State academic departments, such as the political science department, recycling entities, local businesses and anyone else who wants to help students get experience outside the classroom.

“My vision for the CREATE project is to not only create wonderful opportunities for our students and our teachers but then to create some sustainability for that,” Chuck Reynolds, superintendent of MCS, said. “After the grant has gone, we have curated resources, embedded opportunities for field trips and then real-world experiences that were kickstarted by the project.”

Reynolds and others know students may not stay in Muncie, so they prepare them for life beyond town borders.Wherever they end up, the project seeks to create citizens that go beyond boundaries.

“Kids growing up in a community that realize they have a purpose,” Williams said, “it will make our democratic society, not only just in Muncie and Delaware County and Indiana but throughout the United States and throughout the world … that’s a powerful frame when you look at it from the lens [of] ‘I’m not just a person of the city of Muncie, I’m also a member of our world. What can I do to make the world a better place?’”

Contact Abigail Denault with comments via email at abigail.denault@bsu.edu.

Although it is part of their studies, Templeton and Hreno are proud of their work at Northside and find it rewarding to direct the middle schoolers, Hreno said. Seeing the students open up and come out of their shells is the part they enjoy the most, they said.

“Seeing them come up with silly jokes as a group is so much fun, and we always like to make it part of the show if it works,” Hreno said. “The way they pal around with each other as friends has a way of bringing back the inner child in me.”

Templeton and Hreno recognize this as a stepping stone in their journeys to become theatre educators, they each said. For their fourth and final years as THEDs, they have secondary practicums — otherwise known as student teaching — lined up in two high schools in Indiana.

“We won’t just be directing plays when we’re

student teaching,” Hreno said. “We’ll also be teaching English classes during the school day unlike what we do at Northside. I’m so excited to have a theatre classroom of my own one day.”

While the Ball State students working in the spring show have the support of the theatre education department, they work with only one member of the Northside faculty who acts as a liaison between them and the Northside students. However, Hreno and Templeton see it not as a hassle but as an opportunity.

“We might not work with many Northside folks, but that also means that we have more creative freedom to put on our show and teach the kids everything we can teach them,” Hreno said.

“We’re grateful that they trust us enough to give us that freedom.”

Contact Miguel Naranjo with comments at miguel.naranjo@bsu.edu or on Twitter @ naranjo678.

“This is the perfect location for it,” Frobig said. “This is such a good collection of items that I feel like they’ll get pretty good business being here.”

Frobig acknowledged that thrifting is becoming a more common way to buy clothing. The growth of consumers buying more from secondhand stores comes from wanting to be more sustainable, according to GlobalData. She thinks this will draw more customers to the shop.

“I feel like something that’s really popular right now is thrifting and antiquing, so as more and more people find out about it, it will certainly garner more and more business.”

However, customers can do more than just shop for clothes at this vintage store. There is a couch and a television in the back of the store where customers can watch a movie or play video games.

Pope and Edwards realize there are not many

places for people to hang out in Muncie, so they

“I want it to be a space where people can just come hang out, maybe listen to a record, watch a VHS movie, play an old video game they used to play as a kid, just something that brings back nostalgia,” Pope

The store has already led to fond memories for Edwards. While he and Pope were putting the store together, customers were already waiting to come in.

“They were just walking to our store, and just that was kind of like a signifier that we were making the right move,” he said.

Pope said his fondest memory was the end of their grand opening. Even though it was on a Wednesday, there was a line outside, and people enjoyed seeing all the pieces for sale.

In the future, Pope and Edwards hope to open a second location. Right now, organizing the shop and constantly changing things like the décor in order to keep the look of the shop different is the main focus.

“This is a very rough sketch of what we want it to look like in the end,” Pope said.

Well Made Vintage is open six days a week and can be found at 1614 W University Ave., Muncie, IN 47303. More information on their hours can be found on their website.

Contact Lily Jones with comments at lkjones3@ bsu.edu.

Continued from Page 10

A miniature bald eagle sits on top of a box of push pins in Julie Snider’s classroom April 6 at Muncie Central High School. AMBER PIETZ, DN

Crossword & Sudoku

CROSSWORD EDITED BY KURT KRAUSS; SUDOKU BY MICHAEL MEPHAM

52 “That’s the answer!”

55 Freight weight

57 Message-spelling board

59 Slim woodwind

18 Withdrawal charge

22 Gentle handling, for short

24 “To __ is human ... “

26 Perfectly fine

28 At no point

29 “__ baby!”: “Way to go!”

30 Clueless gamer

31 __ choy

32 Foot or furlong

33 Ventimiglia of “This Is Us”

34 Happy Meal chicken option

37 Luau bowlful

39 All-purpose roll

40 Bovine disease, familiarly

42 “__-ching!”

43 “SummerSlam” org.

45 Slime

46 “How cool!”

49 __ Lumpur, Malaysia

50 Gallbladder neighbor

51 Kick out

52 Dog biscuit shape

7 “Mr. Holland’s __”: Dreyfuss film

8 Froze, perhaps

9 Pink Floyd guitarist

53 Wild mountain 47-Across

54 Win by a __

56 Gumbo pod

58 Like a newly reborn phoenix, probably

60 Floor-washing tool

61 Relatively timid

DESERVES REAL OPPORTUNITY

Unfortunately, opportunity isn’t equal.

committed to removing the barriers that keep today’s Black, Hispanic, Latino, and Native American students from the education and lives they seek.

Learn more about Lumina’s commitment to equity: luminafoundation.org/racialequity

luminafoundation.org