Cook County Middle School students enjoyed the inaugural adventure of The Journey last summer. Taking part in the Boundary Waters teambuilding adventure were Molly Thomas, Alicia Smith, Jocelyn Deneweth, Molly Sietsema, Jaden Aubid, Danny Lewis, Joe Semhric, John Ray Mendivil, Jared Baker, Kylor Johnson, Austin Graham, Ian Nelson, Andrew Lashinski, and Dylan Works. (Not all students are pictured and they are not in order in the photos). The leaders on the trip were April Wahlstrom, Betsy Jorgenson, Larry Dean, Tom Jack and Myron Bursheim.
Last summer, Cook County Middle School offered a new opportunity to seventh and eighth grade students, one that the school hopes will continue in years to come. The program, called “The Journey” was created to build relationships among peers and between students and Cook County Schools staff. The hope, said Betsy Jorgenson, is that those relationships will support students academically, socially and personally throughout the middle school years.
The program began in August at Cook County Middle school with a day of teambuilding, journal-making and preparations for a five-day canoe trip with YMCA Camp Menogyn on West Bearskin Lake.
Jorgenson noted that Camp Menogyn provides teenaged youth with wilderness experience all summer, but few Cook County kids have participated in Menogyn’s program. Camp director Doug Nethercutt was excited to help local youth come to Menogyn and is partnering with Cook County Middle School to bring students back again next summer. “They gave a local discount to all of our students and want to get as many Cook County kids up to their camp as possible next summer and on,” said Jorgenson.
Students in The Journey set out on a Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) trip from Menogyn and learned about wilderness travel, teamwork and personal values like respect, responsibility, caring and honesty—values that Menogyn and Cook County School both share and teach.
Students wrote in journals, fished and talked about the upcoming school year. Participants in The Journey will connect with group members and staff (Larry Dean, Tom Jack, Betsy Jorgenson, Myron Bursheim and April Wahlstrom) throughout the school year to offer friendship, support and encouragement.
Superintendent Beth Schwarz hopes to develop The Journey into a program that can be offered to more or all of the Cook County Middle School students. Schwarz said The Journey was funded with a combination of school funds and special funds called “Targeted Service Revenue.”
She said, “The school portion of the funding was paid for with levy dollars as this is part of the initiative for ‘Academic Excellence.’ In recent history we have not been doing any formal academic programming outside the school day to support academic excellence for our middle school students. This is one of the enhancements we are piloting to improve our educational programming for middle school students.”
Schwarz said she had not yet calculated the cost of an expansion to all seventh and eighth graders, but said a rough estimate would be $30,000. “Now the question is could we pass some of this onto the participants, what other funding sources could we find, etc.”
Participants said it was a very successful first year. Jorgenson summed up The Journey by saying they had made “great memories, new friendships and skills for the 2011-12 school years. “
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