Career Day

By Tami Olson

November 13th was Career day at Minnetonka High School. Mini-School had 5 alumni (Ron Byers, Joe Reifenberger, Ginny Reifenberger DeMun, Kathy Seamans Wilcox, and Brad Johnston) come in and talk to all the students about their time in Mini-School and what they’ve done since then.

Ron inherited the Glen Lake Bakery from his parents 3 years ago.

Joe went to Dunwoody Institute and now works fixing refrigerators, air conditioning, and ventilation systems.

Ginny is a registered nurse. She went to Minneapolis Community College and Normandale.

Kathy is an office manager for a finance company.

Brad (Joanne Johnston’s husband) makes things like you would see in the Rainforest cafe.

Doug asked the students to come up with some questions to ask everyone. I did the best I could to write down everyone’s answer:

  1. What did Mini-School provide for you?
  2. How did you get involved with the careers you’re in?
  3. Is a Mini-School education good enough for college?
  4. Any advice for us?
  5. What kind of problems did you have? Were any of you involved in any drugs? How have you changed?
  6. A lot of people criticize Mini-School, because they say there’s no real work and the teachers are too easy on us. What do you think?

Ron

  1. The teachers were great. I really bonded with the other students, especially on trips. I was ready to drop out of school when I went into Mini. It helped me a lot.
  2. He had no idea he was going to work in a bakery. His mom remarried to her new husband and he bought a bakery. When they retired Ron inherited it.
  3. You have to work for everything, nothing comes easy.
  4. He only drank on the weekends.
  5. It was nice having someone to rely on. I realized that things work better if you work together. Mini really helped him prepare for the real world.

Joe

  1. Mini really helped him stay in school. He had a lot of trouble in his life. It would have been easier to walk away before he went into Mini-School.
  2. He did not go to college until he was 26. He really wanted to work with machines. He likes his job because he gets dispatched from home.
  3. Stay in school and finish up- you’ll be done before you know it!
  4. His motivation went way down when he smoked marijuana.
  5. It’s good it has alternatives like this. It helps kids make it through the rough times.

Ginny

  1. The trips helped her a lot. Teachers were a big reason why graduation came so easy for her.
  2. Still has to take 30 hours of classes every year in order to keep her license. A big reason she got into medicine is because almost everyone in her family is.
  3. Concentrate on getting done the things that are most important. You won’t believe how fast time goes by.
  4. I look around me now knowing that like 15 of my friends are dead, and I think of how lucky I am.
  5. She realized she had to take care of herself. It was hard for her to go to school. Just getting there was a really good thing for her.

Kathy

  1. The structure of the class was more relaxed, unlike main-stream. Mini helped her get interested.
  2. She worked at a bank for 10 years, then she worked at a car dealership. Then she finally got to where she is now. She says she would not mind working at McDonald’s if she had to.
  3. She says she did not get into drugs really. Her main problem was alcohol.
  4. She said that Mini helped teach her that when you get knocked down you can get back up again.

Brad-

  1. He felt out of place in school. Then he got kicked out because he missed 3 weeks of school.
  2. It started when he was in treatment. He realized he liked to paint. He was thinking he wanted to get into social work, but someone said that would not be a good profession for him.
  3. He smoked pot in high-school, but the 6 years in the Marines got him drinking. He was in treatment for 3 months after he got out of the Marines. He’s glad he’s not a teenager anymore. Times were tough then.

Everyone had the same answer for question #3.
Everyone agreed that what you want to do and what you’re forced to do are totally different and that’s why they liked college. Getting into college or Vo-Tech was no problem for any of these people. They all did real well in school because they were motivated. Mini-School taught them how to stick to things and apply themselves.

I would like to take this chance to thank all of you for visiting us. And we all hope you will return again someday. We enjoyed your presentation!