Looking Back

This morning I did something I haven’t done in years–I walked back in time. It was fifteen years ago that I said good-bye to Hibbing High School and a legacy of sorts. In addition to teaching at the fabled high school, I coached and taught some of the brightest kids ever to grace those hallowed halls that I walked today. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion. In the sixties I coached debate, in the nineties the high school academic team (Knowledge Bowl). Over the eight years I coached, our academic teams had the reputation as Minnesota’s very best! This is not due to this man’s coaching prowess by any means, but rather a tribute to our HHS teachers and what they taught every day in their classrooms. I merely took our teams to tournaments throughout the state. (For two years we won every tournament we entered . . . including two State championships. Our 2000 and 2001 teams were among the best in the nation and participated in national tournaments at Pepperdine University in Malibou, California. Our program had a trophy case crammed with hardware from our victories and photos of our scholars. To my chagrin, the trophy case was empty and only a few banners near the second floor ceiling remained. I was disappointed but it’s no big deal. The past is past.

Not only did our teachers do their masterful work, the maintenance people did theirs. The halls were newly waxed and glistening. Without a doubt, Hibbing High School is the most elegant and well-preserved public ediface in Minnesota and worth anybody’s time to visit. If you attended school there, or even visited while in Hibbing, you know exactly what I mean. I could spend a day writing about the school’s rich history–something I’ve done in many of my early books.

Anyhow, what prompted this blog more than anything could be summed up in one word: CHANGE! I’ve been gone for quite some time and fully expected to see changes–which I did–but what struck me the most was not what I saw but what I felt and what I learned. I found a veteran teacher-friend in her classroom and we visited for a few minutes about the past we shared as well as the upcoming school year. When I taught the overhead projector was my most useful visual aid. Computers (for teacher record-keeping) had arrived in the late nineties. Today . . . yes, laptops and cell phones, national standards and social media and teacher websites so they can be connected at any time by students or parents relative to lesson plans, assignments, etc. And, of course, there were many new faculty names on the new, and more secure classroom doors, but some old names still remained; those evoked memories of a bygone day.

When I left the building I had a smile on my face. The old place still looked great but it has passed me by. It even made me feel ‘old’–I disliked that part of my visit. I think I’ll feel much better by clinging to my wonderful years and deeply-etched memories. As I’m inclined to do, I thanked God that I was a part of everything that happened there in the best of times. Or, I should say, the best of times for me. When next September rolls around and the football practices have started at the Lincoln ELEMENTARY school, I will still remember my excitement of a new school year . . . and I’ll get an even stronger sense of nostalgia than I have right now.