I must confess I am somewhat anxious for Saturday when I am attending the first art class I will have been to since high school. I took art history in college. I loved it. I hated every art class I had to take in Grades K-12 that involved creating art.
We had good art teachers in our public school. I simply have no talent for drawing or painting. My handwriting is awful. It is even a chore for me to do special decorations on cookies or cakes. We have a very active Communuty Education program here that teaches everything from seed saving to toddler management to learning MahJong to making your own bath bombs. There also are art classes, and Boommate strong armed me into taking a Raku class with her this Saturday. I think it only involves choosing a pre-made piece of pottery bisque and painting it to be fired. I think I can handle that.
In December I am also signed up with her to take a class in which we will create acrylic paintings. It is being held in the high school art room. If it is the same art room from when I was in school, I will probably have nightmares. I would much rather take a class in toddler management!
What does your town offer for Community Education? Ever taken any classes? What were your most and least favorite classes in high school?
WOW! bomb-making. And I thought that things were radical in my home state of California! Whom do the educational leaders of LuVerne imagine bombing?
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High school having been 60 years ago and not a stellar experience in general I can scarcely remember the classes I took or the teachers that taught them. I can, however, say without hesitation that my least favorite classes were the physical education classes. It’s not that I was singularly unfit, I just had no impulse or interest in the sports activities by which we were graded and I found the gym teachers to be uniformly cretinous bullies.
Minneapolis schools offer a great many community and adult education options and I peruse the catalog that arrives in the mail with interest but so far haven’t taken them up on any of the offerings.
I have taken classes at other venues. I’ve had instruction at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts in book binding and book repair as well as alternative printing processes, like cyanotype.
I’ve taken poetry writing classes at the Loft. I have a long history with the Arts Colony of Grand Marais with painting classes, one that combined painting and poetry. My daughters and I took a beginner’s class in pottery—throwing them on the wheel and glazing them to be fired.
During the pandemic, I engaged in many online classes. Most of them were free, so I suppose I can’t complain, but they generally lacked in substance. The one that I took through Harvard, which I paid a nominal amount for, was my favorite. It involved interpreting history through objects—the sort of activity you might expect of a museum curator, and there was a lot of writing involved. Regrettably, the course offered no interaction with the instructor. All that writing was subject to review by peers and I would have to say that their comments were unsatisfying.
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I enjoyed school for the most part and I can’t really think of any high school classes that stick out as my favorite. I did have a favorite teacher Gerald Fugate, who taught English. He was the one who encouraged me to read my first science fiction novel and he also gathered a small group of students together and we formed what we called The Poetry Circus. We did a handful of field trips to elementary schools and read poetry to kids.
My least favorite class is easy – it was biology. In fact, I took biology in summer school because I added up the hours that I would spend in class if I took it during the year versus taking it in the summer. It was about 20 hours shorter I believe – significant in my eyes. The unintended benefit was that I was the only one in the class that summer who was not taking it because I had failed it the year before. That made me the teacher’s pet in the first 10 minutes and when it came time for dissection and I was turning green, I was excused. Woo hoo.
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Oh, forgot about the community ed classes question. It’s been years, but I used to take them on a fairly regular basis. Looking back, one of my most notable must’ve been Ukrainian eggs. In fact, the egg table is up right now.
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I usually turn down a couple of pages in the Community Ed catalog if I have time to page through it, but rarely have taken anything. When Joel was a toddler, I participated in a parenting class where the kids got to play (supervised) in one area while the parents shared experiences and ideas. That was a good class! and I met some good people.
I’m taking a class through Senior University on WSU campus – What Were We Thinking – about changing religious thought in the USA from Puritan times to present. The teacher realized yesterday that he needs more sessions to cover all the material. : )
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I did one like that as a young mom as well. It was the best. Glueing macaroni onto a cardboard Christmas Wreath at home was not going to happen. But if we attended that class, we jointly would do the craft projects that are good for kids and boring for me.
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Oh, and high school – Least favorite were the hard ones – Chemistry and advanced Algebra. Phys Ed – it depended — I truly came out of high school thinking I was uncoordinated, since I wasn’t good at any of the things covered: volleyball, etc., rope climbing. Now, if they’d had some dance classes…
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I fulfilled my college phy ed with ballroom dancing, archery and two terms of juggling!!
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I can’t recall there being a phy ed requirement at the U of M and I can’t imagine why there would be but if there was I have no idea how I satisfied it.
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I’ve been taking lots of classes at FiftyNorth, our community senior center. It’s such a great place. There are all types of exercise classes, including swimming and several kinds of yoga. There are many groups to join: skiing, bicycling, Nordic walking, and photography. I’m more interested in the plentiful arts and music activities. I play mandolin in the Eclectic Strummers; I played flute in the FiftyNorth concert band for a short time; I participate in knitting club weekly; and I just finished a knitting class. I’ve taken a beading class, a wool felting class, a paint your pet’s portrait class, and several knitting classes. There are also plays and concerts, a social club, tours, talks/lectures, various card-playing clubs and bingo, a book club, a library, and an art gallery.
FiftyNorth will be merging with the Y in January. This will provide even more resources, but our facility will remain just for those north of fifty for the next 3-5 years. I have mixed feelings about this, but I’m keeping an open mind.
I’m taking Spanish 1 through community education too.
My favorite classes and activities in high school were English, German, history, choir, band, and plays. I wasn’t into athletics at all, although I was the lifeguard for the boys’ swim team. There was no girls’ swim team. I didn’t mind biology, but I hated dissecting the fetal pig. I have never enjoyed math. I didn’t take typing, which most of the girls seemed to take. I took creative writing instead.
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Go Krista! I wish I could find a knitting group like that close to home.
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I have two groups! Both Mondays-one in the morning and one in the evening. The Fiber Friends group on Monday evenings is really a hoot!
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Rise and Shine, Baboons,
I think your enthusiasm for Luverne is well-earned, Renee. For whatever reason, those two communities have always offered so much more than nearby Pipestone (or Fairmont where I lived years ago). If my Pipestone relatives are any accurate example, my guess is that your community is more enthusiastic about funding and participating in such offerings.
Back in the MSDOS days, I tried several Community Ed classes to help me understand how computers work and what programming did. That was utterly useless. The teachers (I tried more than one) were the worst. As in look at your shoes and mumble and do not relate to the students. I am sure I did not ever finish one of those. I also took some art classes through various community ed programs. The Bloomington Art Center used to offer very fine classes that I loved.
School: Band, literature, and history were the consistent favorites in High School. I loved school, but really, the social scene, especially with all of us band nerds, was my priority. My friends, who I still correspond with and see yearly, were great kids and now great retirees. It was a blow to lose Carol last December.
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i took lots of courses at edx when it first opened lead by harvard and mit but adding other great schools and courses. now it appears to have established itself and wants to be paid. community courses around here charge too much. its like taking a class at a school as far as price goes but offerings seem soft. i am at hennipen tech doing botany right now loving it. i took art at the u of m years ago and loved it. have taken music computer architecture writing song writing drawing chess chinese and guitar. i love studying its regiment i have an issue with. gimme a choice of stuff to dive into and i will. dictate and theres a problem
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Boommate took a Senior Defensive Driving course last week to get an insurance discount.
I loved History and Biology. Boommate and I included local native cannabis plants in a plant collection our Botany teacher assigned us to get. He thought it was pretty funny when he saw the leaves in our display book. Boommate had huge cannabis plants growing in her Dad’s pasture. It was as tall as the tractor. They had to cut it down every year since it made the cattle sick.
I hated high school math. Little did I know I would take four semesters of advanced statistics in Grad School.
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Husband took a sourdough baking class here last year. It was a good class that provided sourdough starter he is still using. It was taught by one of Boommate’s relatives.
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