As the summer draws to a close, school-agers face the transition back to the books. But for one Sheboygan area student, the learning never quits and instead of vacation, summer has been filled with forging a path to the future. For MacKenzie Villareal, or “Kenzie”, learning is a way of life.
“Yes, I have always been interested in learning since I was in elementary school, and I have always been a bit of an over-performer.” Kenzie was attending Sheboygan South in her sophomore year when her mother suggested earning college credits before graduation. “She’s the one who found the program. So I brought it up to my school counselor at South, and talked about what the requirements were for the Rising Phoenix program and, unfortunately, I wasn’t going to be old enough to start that program until my junior year of high school. But I learned of a separate program called the Early College Credit program. It sounds similar but it’s a different program, and for that program high school students can earn up to 18 credits in high school, so I earned those 18 credits in my sophomore year and then, after that, I transitioned into the Rising Phoenix program in my junior year.”
By then, Kenzie was attending the George D. Warriner High School in Sheboygan, a personalized learning school that worked well with Kenzie’s ambitions. Remaining in the Rising Phoenix program means staying in high school, so even though Kenzie will have enough credits to graduate this fall, she will stay in high school into next year, first attending her Associate’s Degree classes on the UWGB-Sheboygan Campus through the fall semester, and then transitioning to the Green Bay Campus for her Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing beginning this coming spring, all while finishing her high school obligations remotely. “The staff at Warriner has been very supportive…my school counselor, Jenny Maramonte, has been working very closely with me to sign up for all my classes and schedule me with my success coach (from UWGB) and all that.”
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