Advertisement
I hoped the day’s menu would be a sharp departure from the food I ate in high school in Harrisburg, Pa. But my hope was quickly dashed by smiling lunch ladies scooping meatballs, mashed potatoes, buttered bread and canned corn.
 |
Winona Daily News Reporter Nolan Rosenkrans takes a test last week while studying U.S. history in MIke Honken’s Social 10 class at Rushford-Peterson High School.
(Photo by Melissa Carlo/Winona Daily News)
|
Turns out cafeteria food hasn’t changed much since 2002, when I graduated. Neither have most things, in fact — a lesson I learned earlier this month when I went back to school. I wanted to know what it’s like to go to high school in southeast Minnesota these days, so I called Shane McBroom, first-year principal at Rushford-Peterson, and asked to enroll.
McBroom agreed to take part in my experiment and put together a class schedule for one day — taking particular joy in signing me up for advanced physical education. He got me a locker and all the books I’d need for a full day. He also told the teachers to treat me like they would any other student.
Unfortunately for me, they did.
Bad start, good grammar
“You’re late,” McBroom said.
OK, he was technically right: Classes begin in Rushford-Peterson at 8:15 a.m. It was 8:17 when I ran into the school. McBroom tried to look annoyed as we stood in the high school office, a long room dominated by a low table where secretaries hand out detentions and late passes.
I thought class started at 8:30, I pleaded. He didn’t buy it.
Neither did secretary Kris Kingsley, who disapprovingly shook her head. McBroom’s heard that excuse countless times.
Luckily, after a brief debate, no detention slip was written, just an unexcused late pass. This wasn’t how I wanted to start the day.
McBroom escorted me to room 3-3, Mr. Forrest Mussleman’s freshman English class. Mussleman looks like what you might expect for an English teacher: glasses, goatee, jeans. He handed me the “Daily Oral Language,” a slip of paper with extra credit punctuation questions and a copy of Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird,” a staple of high school literature for decades.
The worn out, lavender book was strikingly similar to the one I’d been issued at Central Dauphin East High School.
The long room was barely half full; only 18 students sat in enough seats for 35. Mussleman stood in front of a blackboard and leaned on a wooden lectern. An American flag hung from a pole near an oddly placed Roman-style relief on one wall. A Picasso drawing of Don Quixote adorned the other.
“Test time, put away all your notes,” he called out. Ugh.
English 9: Test Week 9 focused on vocabulary and punctuation, with questions about Chapter 16 in Lee’s book mixed in. Piece of cake, I thought — I write for a living.
I was right. I got an A minus, only missing two questions about “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
After the test, Mussleman read Chapter 17 aloud to the students as they followed along with their own copies. Zachary Neitzke, a short, mopped-top blond wearing a University of Nebraska sweatshirt, leaned his chin on his desk and stared aimlessly at the boy’s sweatshirt in front of him.
“It’s harder to run uphill, but the view from the top is awesome,” was printed on the shirt. It’s a quote from science teacher Tom Vix, who coaches basketball at the school.
A few other kids looked ready to sleep.
The class, mostly 14- and 15-year-olds, is on the brink of adulthood. The child in them still sits on opposite sides of the room from the other sex. The adult in them discusses classic American literature.
Class was over. I turned in my books and headed to my next class: Car Care.
An oil change
It took about two seconds for me to realize I was out of my element in Mr. Winkles’ shop room.
Work tables were surrounded by closets of power tools and a plethora of gears and parts. Mark Winkles — referred to only by last name by his students — instructed me to grab a pair of safety goggles. My knowledge of cars consists of the buttons, wheels and knobs in reaching distance from the driver’s seat.
I was in deep.
Unlike the quiet that pervaded Mussleman’s studious class, the hands-on environment in Winkles’ provided the opportunity for ample boisterousness.
Nick Hanson, a football player, introduced himself to me and offered sympathy when I explained why I was there. The senior, who wore a football jersey, had gone to school for a year at Winona Senior High School but couldn’t deal with the larger school and came back to Rushford, he said.
“I was the new kid. I couldn’t interact with anyone else,” he said.
I could relate.
Winkles called to my unfortunate partner, Zachary Meredith, whose normal work buddy hadn’t shown up that day. I was told to fetch an oil pan, as we’d be learning how to change a car’s oil, along with two jack stands we’d end up not using.
Meredith and I loaded up his car to head to the bus garage a short way from the school and were followed by a caravan of other cars. I breathed a sigh of relief after Meredith and I started a brief conversation in the car. He plans to study to be a mechanic after he graduates. He said he’d like to stay in the Rushford area and work on cars when he gets older.
“I don’t like big towns,” he said. “There are too many people.”
Some kids in Winkles’ shop class — mostly the ones using dollies as racecars or blasting the bass on their speakers in the garage — have no idea what will become of their lives after high school. Meredith already knows where he wants to be and what he wants to do. He’s taken all the shop classes he can.
We pulled into the garage, the cars lined up in two rows, and Winkles told us to get started. Meredith asked him where the oil pans are kept, because he couldn’t find one, and my stomach hit the floor. I knew where our pan was.
“That’s because Nolan forgot yours,” Winkles barked. “We’re going to have to share now, guys.”
Winkles was in the Army before becoming a shop teacher at Rushford. He wore a Chicago Cubs hat, jeans and a plaid short-sleeve shirt. He knows wrangling a class of boys, partially free in an open area surrounded by engines, takes a different approach than, say, one in a math class. He frequently snapped and barked at his students — mostly me. Mr. Winkles doesn’t tolerate incompetence or horseplay.
I asked Meredith whether Winkles hated me. No, he explained, Winkles is hard on everyone, kind of like the older brother in charge. He was tough, quick to crack a joke. The students respected him but were ready to joke right back.
Meredith spent most of the class underneath Winkles’ car, as I watched and pretended to help. It was apparent he knew his way around the underside of a vehicle, and Winkles came by only a few times to check on us. Both tried to politely ignore my uselessness.
Class had run late, and now we all needed an excuse. A frustrated Winkles said he’d go to each of our next classes and explain the tardiness to each teacher.
Into the feeding frenzy
My next class was study hall. I tried to go to my car to get a notebook, left in my hurry when I arrived late to school. McBroom immediately shot down my request. Rushford-Peterson, previously an open campus, stopped allowing students to leave the building after the 2007 floods. At the time, it was for safety reasons during the cleanup, but the policy has remained.
So with nothing to do, I thought about lunch. More specifically, who I’d sit by. The high school cafeteria is the arena in which survival of the fittest plays out, where the social hierarchy is set and enforced, sometimes brutally. Play your cards right, and you can sit with the cool kids. Slip up, and you’ll eat fish sticks alone.
When I walked into the cafeteria, I froze and scanned the room for a familiar face. A blond, unshaven boy named Kasey Olloff turned around and waved me over to a table of about a dozen boys. I’d met him earlier walking to Car Care.
The kids looked at me like sharks circling a potential kill. They had just found fresh fish. Caleb Hughes, a junior, pounced first.
“What’s with the flannel, dude?” he asked about my jacket. “You look like trailer trash.”
Everyone laughed. For a second, I thought about choking him. I ate a meatball instead.
Lunchroom fodder was mostly crass jokes, insults and no doubt exaggerated tales detailing the exploits of the students at the table.
At 24 and less than a decade removed from high school myself, I recalled a repertoire of filed responses developed during my years at the lunch table. To say I was accepted would be hyperbole, but I finished my lunch without turning into a smoldering heap.
Olloff, another football player, asked me whether I was excited for advanced physical education later that day.
You better be ready, they warned.
Their grins reappeared as we headed back to our lockers.
The war to end all wars
Next was Social Studies 10 with Mr. Honken. Mike Honken, a tall man with a loud, deep voice, guided his class of about 10 students through the lead up to World War I. He lectured about nationalism and alliances, while we took notes from an ancient overhead projector.
A large map of the United States drawn on the far wall was adorned with a warning, “Honken is watching you,” and a portrait of George Washington dressed as a general hung next to it. Students pleaded intermittently for Honken to slow down as they furiously tried to keep up with the notes.
After the lecture, we watched an old videotape about the war narrated by a young Tom Brokaw. Then Honken allowed students to check the grades on their latest test. Some shouted in victory; others sighed in defeat.
Next, Honken tested us on the era, from Woodrow Wilson to the Creel Commission. I had to borrow a No. 2 pencil for the bubble test, because I had only a pen.
I answered 16 of 21 questions correctly. Not too bad.
The bell rang, and Honken gave me directions to the boys’ locker room and wished me luck in gym.
The view from the top is awesome (for some)
Advanced Physical Education sounded bad, and it was.
After changing in the locker room, I met up with Duane Koenen, a biology and P.E. teacher, and a group of upperclassmen who seemed unusually muscle-bound for teenagers. It turns out that I had been signed up for a gym class with half of the football team.
“We’re going to do a light workout today, ’cause the boys have a game tomorrow,” Koenen said. I am now convinced that Duane Koenen is either insane, sadistic or simply a dirty liar.
In junior high school I was somewhat of a runner, the only activity a slight frame proved useful for. I could run sub-six minute miles easily in high school, and my twin brother was an active cross-country runner. But college and the work week have not exactly allowed me to be fitness conscious. I’ve spent too many nights in smoky bars and acquired too many vices. My body is now soft, weak and mostly useless.
We ran to the base of Rushford’s scenic lookout. The class breezed through easily. I trailed the pack of about a dozen and was out of breath when we stopped to stretch. The warm-up run had already beaten me, and the worst was yet to come. We performed a series of leg stretches, most of which proved impossible for my inflexible body, much to the delight of the class.
Then, the real run began. We started what I was told was a two-mile journey up a steep, curvy incline to the peak of the lookout. Most of the students burst into a brisk run; some even sprinted. About 200 yards up the hill, I was positive I was going to die. Nobody hung back to help the straggler — they simply forged on at their own pace, feeling the joy of a workout that only the formidably fit can.
The group ran out of sight, and about a tenth of the way up, I took to interminably walking, my legs no longer useful, my lungs under siege. Half of me envied my classmates’ fitness; half of me hated them.
Seemingly hours later (about 30 minutes), I reached the summit. The class had already completed 100 push-ups and 100 sit-ups. A slow, sarcastic clap began as I panted my way into their midst. Koenen asked how my run went.
“Well, at least you made it,” he said.
The group stood around the lookout, stretching and joking. The view from the top is indeed awesome, as Mr. Vix had said, but only if you don’t pass out when you get there.
We ran to the other edge of the lookout, though what the class did when they got there I don’t know. I got lost and was forced to limp alone, meeting the group instead on their way back. I regretted both choosing to wear my low-cut Chuck Taylor All-Stars and eating meatballs for lunch.
I skipped a leg and finally reached the school — about a minute behind a kid with bronchitis.
I was broken. Too tired to change out of my sweatpants, I nearly crawled to my locker. Ollof, on his way to football practice, took great joy in my pain. Emily Frick, a student in my class with Mr. Honken, asked with a laugh how my run went. I muttered something terrible and limped by. She laughed harder.
I passed by McBroom’s office, and he asked about my day. I wanted to say that high school at Rushford-Peterson felt much like it did in Harrisburg. The constant jokes, the sometimes good-natured teasing. The unofficial segregation of the sexes and the desire to fit in hadn’t changed. Most of the classes felt exactly like the ones I took.
But I was too tired.
I thanked him for having me in his school and walked back to my car, happy I’d already graduated from high school, even if my diploma was held because I never paid for my cap and gown.
I drove back to the newsroom and thought about the four years and a day I spent in high school.
Nothing changes about grades nine through 12. We do.
Nolan Rosenkrans may be reached at (507) 453-3519 or at nolan.rosenkrans@lee.net.
The Ultimate Hustler wrote on Nov 9, 2008 7:58 PM: