By Lester Hughes
And thus another year in Mini-School comes to a screeching halt and all the crazy events that occurred during the 1989/90 school year once again get filed away in the brain’s cabinet of memories.
Memories that ranged from the trips and field trips we took to the certain classes and teachers we had; and memories, of course, of the always abundant happenings and oddities that happen throughout the year.
When we remember the year’s trips, we remember the year starting out with a bang of a trip and ending with a bang of a trip. The year began with the trip to the Woodland Caribou Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, where Doug and the students on the trip got a chance to meet up with Mini-School’s good friends from New Hampshire, Les and Viv Coit, and do quite a bit of canoeing.
Next another good friend of Mini-School, Mark Warren, came up from Georgia and taught us some of the ways of the Indian at Doug’s cabin on the St. Croix River in Wisconsin, and not too long after this trip a large group of Mini-Schoolers went right back to Doug’s cabin–only this time to hike the Grantsburg Trail behind the cabin. With winter in it’s early months, Doug took a group on the first of the 2 Boundary Waters expeditions to go cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. With Randy finally getting his turn to embark on an adventure he took a group of students downhill skiing at Ironwood, Michigan, but unfortunately they didn’t get much skiing in because of the warm weather and the lack of snow.
Even though tough times hit Doug and the group of Mini-Schoolers on the way to Arkansas with an accident including one of the canoes and another car, they still had a great time canoeing the Buffalo River. After this trip, Randy led 5 Mini-Schoolers and Dawn on a bike trip. They got to know Doug’s mom pretty well and appreciate her hospitality. The final bang of the year trip was going back to Mini-School’s second home, the Boundary Waters, for a 10-day canoe trip. Of course, no year of Mini-School is complete without some field trips.
Mini-School went everywhere for field trips from Lone Lake Park to start the year off, all the way to bowling at Hopkins Bowl and somewhere mixed in the year were two after-hour field trips to Dudley Riggs comedy shop, two field trips to the Science Museum and one field trip to the Minnesota Zoo.
The year in review, unfortunately for Mini-School was without a former long standing teacher and friend, Norm Garneau, because of his plans to teach in mainstream. But, although his shoes couldn’t be filled, Mini-School’s happy to say he was replaced by a couple of great teachers/friends–Dawn Norton; who teaches science, a fairly new class to Mini-School and also teaches Better Body (a fitness class), and Joe Komarek, who teaches math. Mini-School also had a new class called O.M. (See article on it,) in which Lester taught and coached. Doug not only had Spirit of the Environment offered as a class for a couple of quarters but also teamed up with Randy for the class, On Your Own. Lester also tried her hand at teaching a nutrition class.
What can you say about a group of teenagers and a group of crazy teachers getting together for a year of school? You can say that there will be a lot of weird happenings and a lot of fun memories. Weird events like Sean Armstrong bringing a BB gun to school to scare a kid away. To Dawn’s science classes trying to create a scale model of a town which although looked nice and made it half way, ended up being a large craft table, and although it isn’t weird it is frightening to see the large population of freshmen entering the program.
With the weird happenings there are fun memories. Memories of the year’s graduates. We said goodbye to, including old friends to Mini-School, like Rob Stundahl, Chris Waldroff, Dave Kolstad, Dave Nestberg, etc., memories of the extra visit we had by Mark Warren and how we could share with the rest of the staff and students our friend from Georgia, and how impressed everyone was not only with his musical talent but also with his knowledge of the outdoors, and last we remember Dave Kolstad’s own solo camping trip earlier this year.
The year was very successful in many ways but as far as students entering the program, we started the year off with an all time low of 34 and by the end of the year we doubled that.
Although I listed just a handful of events that occurred throughout the year in review like the trips, the field trips, the teachers, the classes, and a whole lot more, there still were many more individual memories, and what more to end a year of memories than by celebrating 20 years of Mini-School and its students and its memories.