Beyond the textbook

By Anna B. Mitchell  

MARCH 12, 2010 9:34 a.m. (1)

Meby Carr said her dad wouldn’t let her go to college until she learned how to check her car’s oil, tire pressure and battery.

The St. Joseph’s High School history teacher said she wonders how her young charges would fare if they were stranded on the side of the road.

“Girls in our household, they are so reliant on their cell phones,” Carr said of the St. Joseph’s homeroom she oversees. “The Garmin – they are so dependent on that.”

That observation coupled with past experience at Spartanburg Day School, where teachers take a week annually to teach outside their traditional posts in the classroom, pushed this history teacher and two other colleagues to ask for the mini-mester at St. Joe’s.

In its first year, the weeklong mini-mester, which wrapped up March 12, offered 26 classes ranging from trout fishing to aviation, fashion design to biking, baking to sports administration.

Kids could sign up for whatever they wanted – some falling along gender lines (fashion versus trout fishing, for instance) and some not very popular (All Things Francophile and Introduction to the Traditional Latin Mass were canceled).

Christine Wiethop – a math teacher at St. Joe’s – said she fantasizes with her best friend from college about opening a bakery someday. Wiethop treats her household students to weekly baked snacks and cakes or cookies for their birthday. When every student in one of her math classes gets an A or shows improvement, they get goodies, too.

This week, 10 girls joined Wiethop at her Hartwell Lake home to learn the basics of baking – and the value of bringing passion into everything, even cooking, that you do.

Character formation is at the center of history teacher (and experienced fisherman) John Devanny’s Backcountry adventure with several St. Joe’s boys. They hiked into the mountains with fishing gear in search of the perfect spot to catch trout.

The remote locale, Devanny said, offered a chance to teach about preparation, setting priorities and dealing with setbacks and difficult tasks graciously.

Physics teacher Julie Schroeder, who started taking sewing classes a year ago, said she’s looking to have some fun and perhaps introduce girls to a career fashion marketing. She and science teacher Carol Dunn run the school’s lunchtime fashion club.

“I have always been interested in fashion,” Schroeder said. “Although, I will be the first to admit I have not always been fashionable.”

A trip to the Art Institute of Charlotte in North Carolina this week was coupled with a trip to Southpark Mall (home of Neiman Marcus and Nordstrom) and designing and making a skirt from students’ measurements.

Carr said she welcomed a chance to give her girls a little more independence on the road – even if they’ve heard these tips before at home. Her mini-mester course, with Latin teacher Lavinia Plumbee, also taught self-defense, how to balance a checkbook and apply for a loan, administer first aid and do basic carpentry.

Chemistry teacher Paul Barra has maintained a side career in journalism for 30 years, most of it spent in the Catholic press. His mini-mester kids wrote, designed and published a newspaper this week that delved into single-gender education – complete with photography, straight news, opinion pieces and editorial cartoon.

Barra said his students aren’t familiar with that side of his work – which includes breaking a few major stories over the years. “I have two lives. It’s true,” Barra said, adding that his students simply expect he be a good chemistry teacher.

But he also doesn’t let them get away with sloppy writing in their lab reports.

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Pam  - Way to go!!!   |2010-03-18 02:31:37 What an excellent idea. Wish all schools did things similar to this, but I'm afraid not all teachers would be as dedicated & take the responsibility/opportunity seriously... You school and teachers are to be commended. Reply

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