Holiday Overnight

 

Highlights of the Holiday Overnight 2012.

Victoria sharing some words by Maya Angelou about having the courage to start each day anew (especially considering the Maya Calender Prophecy of starting a new period for humanity).  

Bonding over dinner and snacks, competitive games of connect four, apples to apples and dominoes.

Getting to use some of our new lanterns (from summer), while new sparkly glitter lanterns were being created for next year in the center room.

GIFT EXCHANGE!   

Stephen with Mountain Dew!

Lots of great surprise gifts!

The staff being nerdy...










Sure, the cookies burned and we only watched 2 movies the whole night (though Batman was played twice), and a bit too much cologne was sprayed in the hallways, but over all it was a wonderful way to celebrate and end Interim. 

Wrapping up Interim

Interim is a short grading period between Thanksgiving and the Holiday Break. During this short time period, we try to offer a wide variety of fun classes to bring out some of the natural gifts and talents of our students. We also bring in community experts and guests to share their knowledge with the school. 
One such guest this Interim was a former student of Loring Nicollet;

Susan and Jake

Susan graduated from Loring Nicollet in the year 2000. The radical knowledge she attained at LNAS put her on a path to earning a degree from the University Of Minnesota in Cultural studies and Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, and Media Studies, all with a focus on the representation of women in international media. She's also an internationally certified Yoga instructor. It was always her intention to return to Loring Nicollet to put back in -even a fraction of what she got out, and has felt very lucky to teach Yoga and Punk feminism to these awesome, whip smart students.

Another guest Teacher was Jake, who helped out with a spoken word class.When Jake was asked about his experience here at LNAS he said 
"I love to write poems and ask questions. I have really appreciated the opportunity I have gotten to build/develop a relationship with the students of LNAS."





Many of our topics during Interim are "Spiritually" focused (spiritual defined as the relationships one has with their self, other people and a higher power or value in which they believe).  For instance, students learned about the spiritual connection some people have with nature, and also visited a wild life retreat center. 

Michelle

Students also worked with Michelle on their physical fitness (Thai Boxing) and on learning film production skills. 






Another enjoyable piece of Interim was to have so many guests stop by and share their unique skills.  Community members spoke on various topics such as survival skills, community organizing and activism, acupressure, physical fitness and more. Students also visited the local Zen Center, and learned about meditation and the importance of silence.  We even had a special guest come in to talk about being a spoken word poet and rapper in the Twin Cities. Check out some of Gaunte's inspiring work.  Thanks to all the speakers who stopped by and made this an unforgettable interim.

"All of my classes kept me open minded, they were all interesting keeping my mind on the lesson. Every topic I had made me think hard, but I always recieved the message from it. Some of the subjects that were taught influenced my life in some way, a positive way to be exact. Overall the interim schedule was laid back but still major. In other words, it was relaxing but at the same time, you had responsibilities with schoolwork. Every bit of it."- Brian


"One thing I liked about interim is that I met new people and I really liked the classes. My favortite class was "People United" because the subject we talked about was really realistic and I had no idea all those things were happening. The classes I disliked more were Dreams and Spirits." - Leo


"This interim I liked the good discussions in "People United," and "What a Riot" classes. They actually had to do with real situations that are happening in your everyday society. Situations like the relationship between masculinity and the recent school shooting, or learning about people who step up and try to educate people about human trafficking" - Marissa


The best thing about Interim is that the classes are more fun (What a Riot, People United, and Signs and Stones) and we also enjoyed creating the school website in our class Showing your Lizard Face. The classes relate to our lives more, have less work, and taught us valuable life lessons we wouldn't learn in regular high school. We look forward to graduating from Loring Nicollet this year!
-Seniors Summer and Ariana

Anathoth

In September of 2012, the whole LNAS crew went to Anathoth located near Luck, Wisconsin for a camping trip. Anothoth is a sustainable living community made of activists and people determined to make the world a better place. 

While we were there we were all helping the owners of the place, we helped move pumpkins and pull weeds after our tour of the camp ground. So as we were leaving the sight we were at, I saw something under my feet slithering too fast for me to grab. I said out loud “I think I see a snake!” Carnell came over to where I was standing and helped dig for the snake. Once he had found it, it turned out to be an orange belly Garter snake. The scales of the snake, in other words the body itself was a grayish silver metallic color. Which I thought was amazing. Carnell picked the snake up with no worries and gave it a name, he named it “Potato”. He was walking around the whole place with a snake who had just become his favorite pet.

I  asked Summer how she felt about the entire camping trip, she responded with “It was okay, the only thing I didn’t like about it was that everyone got loud at night.” It is totally understandable as to why that happened, we were all having fun! You’re in Wisconsin with your friends on a camping trip, might as well make it unforgettable.

 

Marissa was asked how she felt about the Anathoth camping trip in Wisconsin. She answered “it was a great experience to be out in the country side. After doing all the hard labor all day, it paid off at the end because we helped people out which took one day for us and it would have taken a couple weeks for them.”

By Brian (student)

Harvest Fest Overnight (October

"So I arrived at the harvest fest in my comfy clothes because you had to alter your appearance in some way when you got there. The teachers were all dressed up for Halloween like they were going trick or treating themselves. At least some people were in the Halloween spirit. I wasn’t all that much but it was cool though. When I got there Rosie and I were complaining about how boring it was going to be so we decided to play some cards and we agreed on spades because we knew how to play also Carnell and Ariana wanted to play. Carnell and I were on a team and the other two were on the other team. We weren’t winning but it was a chill game.

When it was over some of us got together and decided to play this game called "alien". The rules were if you got tagged you had to go to jail and once there were four people it was jail break. There were at least one or two people who were the alien and tagging people. It was a pretty chill game it was the high light of my night because we got to run (well, walk fast) around the school not worrying about classes.

Then when that was over we decided to make some marshmallow treats and brownies because we were hungry for a snack. I didn’t eat the brownies because I don’t eat chocolate all that much, I made them for whoever wanted to eat them. After all that, I just went from to room chilling and talking with people. I actually connected with people who I thought I wouldn’t even have a conversation with. I got to know people at my school a little bit better than I would have on a regular school day. Hardly anybody slept there maybe a few people but that was it. Towards the end of the overnight Rosie and I realized that the overnight wasn’t boring up until we were patiently waiting to go home early in the morning."

-Marrisa M. LNAS student.

Animal Behavior Field Trip

The Animal Behavior class went on a field trip to The Wildlife Science Center in Columbus, MN.