This year’s regional robotics competition at the University of Minnesota is so big it will take up two sports arenas. About 120 high school teams from Minnesota and surrounding states have designed robots that can throw Frisbees and climb a 10-foot-tall pyramid.
Shattuck-St. Mary’s former teachers claim Seibel’s alleged sexual abuse of students known, not reported
From reporter Madeleine Baran:
It was the sound of teenage boys screaming that jolted teacher Seth Hedderick out of his apartment one night in a dormitory at Shattuck-St. Mary’s. What he uncovered would remain a secret for years until it surfaced in criminal charges against one of the Faribault boarding school’s most beloved teachers.
On that night in the fall of 2000, Hedderick said, he went downstairs to investigate. He passed several boys on the stairs.
“What’s going on down there?” he asked.
“N-D-P,” one boy said.
The term meant nothing to Hedderick, who had worked at the school for just a few weeks. More students passed. They were naked.
“Where are your clothes?” Hedderick asked.
“It’s naked dance party,” one boy said. “You can’t have clothes on.”
“This is over,” Hedderick told the boys. “This is not happening.”
No, they said, you don’t understand. It’s fine. “Mr. Seibel’s down there.”
Lynn Seibel, then 59, was the head of the boys’ dormitory and chair of the drama department. The story didn’t seem plausible, Hedderick said, but when he entered the basement, there was Seibel, standing in the entrance to the showers, surrounded by naked boys.
“At that point, I was like, OK, this place is screwed up,” Hedderick said, “and I walked back upstairs.”
Hedderick said he reported the incident the next day to the head of the school, Gregory Kieffer, but nothing was done.
Allegations about Seibel’s sexual behavior, including the naked dance parties, remained secret until last year when a former student confided in a probation officer who then called police.
Seibel was arrested in California in August and charged with 14 felony counts of criminal sexual conduct for the alleged sexual abuse of six male Shattuck-St. Mary’s students from 1999 to 2003 and three related counts
Gov. Mark Dayton wants to expand preschool and child care scholarships for poor children by increasing the current funding of $3 million to $25 million. That boost in spending, the governor said, would help an additional 10,000 children across the state.
Parts of his plan are modeled after an ambitious experiment in St. Paul. Five years ago, business leaders rallied together to offer early-learning scholarships to low-income families, convinced that capturing young minds before they arrived at school would save money in the long run.
The Bigelow Head Start program (pictured here) was one of several St. Paul preschools that participated in the pilot program that launched in 2008.
(MPR Photos/Jeffrey Thompson)
Rushford-Peterson Schools building (pictured here) was built in 1906 and is badly in need of repairs.
Two-hundred miles to the north, in Moose Lake, Minn., Moose Lake school Superintendent Bob Indihar struggles to make use of a 78-year-old building damaged in a flood last June. The school system spent $800,000 to repair the school but does not want to put any more money into the building.
The Rushford-Peterson and Moose Lake districts plan to join forces to ask the Legislature for $20 million each to offset part of their rebuilding expenses, hopeful that a collective approach will boost their chances.
(Photos by Alex Kolyer for MPR)
Gov. Dayton released his budget and tax proposals this morning to the 2013 Legislature. The two-year budget plan would increase spending from $36.8 billion to $37.8.
Here are some of the highlights.
• Cuts the sales tax rate from 6.875 percent to 5.5 percent
• Extends the sales tax to clothing costing more than $100
• Extends the sales tax to legal, accounting services
• Increases income taxes on couples with taxable income of $250,000 or more. Single filers at $150,000 or more; the new bracket would be 9.85 percent, compared to the top rate now of 7.85 percent
• Raises cigarette taxes 94 cents per pack
• Provides property tax relief through a $500 rebate for Minnesota homeowners
• Reduces corporate tax rate by 14 percent, from 9.8 percent to 8.4 percent
• Increases education spending by the following:
— $240 million more for higher education;
— $118 million for K-12 schools;
— $44 million for early childhood education;
— $40 million for all-day kindergarten.
• Outlines $5.1 billion in cost savings and reductions over four years through “reform and responsible fiscal management.”
Read more from reporter Tom Scheck here.
(MPR Photo/Jennifer Simonson)
After 89 years, St. Paul’s College of Visual Arts will be closing at the end of this academic year.
RELATED: Students react to CVA closing
![As many as 145 languages are spoken in Minnesota public schools. This fall, students with the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication are working with MPR News to explore that classroom diversity — and sharing a bit of what they find as they go.
There will be stories airing on MPR News in the future, but until then you can get a sneak peek on their Tumblr.
teachingminn:
From Alexander Holston:
Students come to America with greatly varied levels of scholastic education depending on the circumstances that brought them to the US.
Students whose families immigrate to the US for work or higher education have often had some schooling, and often already speak at least rudimentary English.
Refugee families, however, often come with no formal education and in some cases come from cultures where oral tradition dominates written language. Others have spent years in refugee camps, or come from areas where access to schools was difficult or nonexistent.
This was certainly the case during the latter half of the 1970s when the first waves of Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees began to arrive in Minnesota. While many of the earliest arrivals arrived with some schooling, many others came with little to no literacy, which presented obstacles to language acquisition.
But these language limitations didn’t necessarily translate to hands-on work.
According to Janet Benson, who became an ESL teacher at Edison High School in the late ’70s after working for years as a home economics teacher, doing could be more effective than saying.
“Most everyone but me had a language background,” she said. But instead of being an impediment, Benson said her background helped her more than any language program could have.
“It was very family oriented,” Benson said, referring to home economics, “and I could pick up on that much more quickly and realize the importance of that far sooner than people who did not have that background.”
Another early ESL teacher at Southwest High School, Wanda McCaa, said one of the most important parts of teaching English was finding ways to allow students to express themselves non-verbally.
Many of the Hmong girls, she said, were already accomplished with needlework and sewing. “They could just whip up an outfit,” McCaa said. “Home economics was just a Godsend to them.”
Not only did classes like home economics and woodshop give foreign students a chance to express themselves, she said, but they also gave American students a chance to learn about cultures other than their own.
Perhaps most importantly, the teachers were able to incorporate American life into the foreign students’ lives, helping them with acculturation.
So even though the home economics teachers were monolingual, McCaa said, “[they] became wonderful bilingual teachers.”
Photo: ESL students, Edison High School yearbook, 1981](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_me7wpiYDa71rk5lgoo1_500.jpg)
As many as 145 languages are spoken in Minnesota public schools. This fall, students with the University of Minnesota’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication are working with MPR News to explore that classroom diversity — and sharing a bit of what they find as they go.
There will be stories airing on MPR News in the future, but until then you can get a sneak peek on their Tumblr.
From Alexander Holston:
Students come to America with greatly varied levels of scholastic education depending on the circumstances that brought them to the US.
Students whose families immigrate to the US for work or higher education have often had some schooling, and often already speak at least rudimentary English.
Refugee families, however, often come with no formal education and in some cases come from cultures where oral tradition dominates written language. Others have spent years in refugee camps, or come from areas where access to schools was difficult or nonexistent.
This was certainly the case during the latter half of the 1970s when the first waves of Southeast Asian immigrants and refugees began to arrive in Minnesota. While many of the earliest arrivals arrived with some schooling, many others came with little to no literacy, which presented obstacles to language acquisition.
But these language limitations didn’t necessarily translate to hands-on work.
According to Janet Benson, who became an ESL teacher at Edison High School in the late ’70s after working for years as a home economics teacher, doing could be more effective than saying.
“Most everyone but me had a language background,” she said. But instead of being an impediment, Benson said her background helped her more than any language program could have.
“It was very family oriented,” Benson said, referring to home economics, “and I could pick up on that much more quickly and realize the importance of that far sooner than people who did not have that background.”
Another early ESL teacher at Southwest High School, Wanda McCaa, said one of the most important parts of teaching English was finding ways to allow students to express themselves non-verbally.
Many of the Hmong girls, she said, were already accomplished with needlework and sewing. “They could just whip up an outfit,” McCaa said. “Home economics was just a Godsend to them.”
Not only did classes like home economics and woodshop give foreign students a chance to express themselves, she said, but they also gave American students a chance to learn about cultures other than their own.
Perhaps most importantly, the teachers were able to incorporate American life into the foreign students’ lives, helping them with acculturation.
So even though the home economics teachers were monolingual, McCaa said, “[they] became wonderful bilingual teachers.”
Photo: ESL students, Edison High School yearbook, 1981
"My hunch was that the school knew, because I knew. I think the school knew about it, and in my opinion, I don’t think they did anything about it because Lynn Seibel was a hero at the school when I was there."
— Hans Finanger graduated from high school at Shattuck-St. Mary’s in 2002 and remembers Lynn Seibel, the former teacher that had criminal sexual conduct charges filed against him this week.
Finanger was one of Seibel’s drama students, and was one of a group of kids who took a field trip with Seibel to Hollywoood. He remembered the teacher and school fondly, calling Shattuck-St. Mary’s a “marvelous” place, and said he wouldn’t hestitate to send his own kids there.
Finanger isn’t one of the alleged victims in the case, and said he doesn’t have any first-hand knowlege of the incidents. But he said he thinks someone at Shattuck-St. Mary’s did. Finanger said rumors of Seibel’s sexual proclivities and interaction with students were widespread before Seibel left the school in 2003.
Read more from reporter Elizabeth Baier.
