Home is a simple word, but the experience of finding home is personal, complex, and always evolving.
The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts & Letters invites people across Wisconsin to join our Finding Home series and explore what it means to find home through the lenses of science, arts, history, literature, and civil discourse.
In every region of the state, people shape their sense of home through cultural expression, ecological knowledge, and community care. Many are also noticing changes in the places they know best, from shifting seasons to new pressures on land, housing, and water. Finding Home programs explore how people respond with creativity, stewardship, and resilience.
At its core, Finding Home brings people with different perspectives together with the goal of deepening understanding and identifying shared values and common ground.
This Finding Home success story features Kellie Schmitz of La Crosse. Kellie is the principal of Logan Middle School and has dedicated more than thirty years to education.
Kellie is passionate about the connection between stable housing, food security, and student success. She believes that when students have a safe place to live and reliable access to nourishing food, they can thrive in school. Without those basic needs being met, many students face uncertainty about where their next meal will come from or where they will sleep at night, making it difficult to concentrate in the classroom.
Logan Middle School sits at the center of Habitat for Humanity of the Greater La Crosse Region’s ReNew the Block initiative; a neighborhood revitalization effort focused on creating healthier, more connected, and sustainable communities. Kellie emphasizes the importance of involving students in this work by bringing them into the planning process and listening to their ideas about the future of their neighborhood.
For Kellie, home is more than a physical structure. It is the people and sense of belonging that make a place meaningful. She sees those same qualities reflected in her school community; when students walk through the doors of Logan Middle School, she wants them to know that they have trusted adults who care, a place where they feel safe, and a community where they can be themselves. In that way, school can become a home as well.
