What is ‘Mini-Week’? A special report by Haines High School students

Haines High School reporters tell us what happens when a large majority of their student body travels for sports, and the students who stay at home get to experience what is known as “Mini-Week.” Haines senior Trygve Bakke, and freshmen Colin Aldassy and Willow Bryant report:

Last week, with the many participants of the Region V Basketball Tournament gone, one-third of the Haines High School students were left behind in a whirlwind. These students didn’t continue on with their usual class load, instead they participated in a “mini-week:” a week-long event of specialty courses taught by community members centered around a theme.

“So an opportunity arises every year to have what’s called a mini week,” said Sam McPhetres. He’s the computer teacher at Haines High School and has been one of the leaders of the Mini-week program, which has been going for the better part of 12 years.

“This year, we chose to do outdoor safety. We’re very fortunate to have the Alaska State Trooper Colin Nemec come in and do a cold water safety course,” McPhetres said. 

At the Haines Pool, Trooper Nemec instructs a group of students to jump into the water and practice putting on survival suits. They also had to learn how to drain their suits after getting onto the pool deck, as if they were crawling up on shore.

“My name is Koa Doddridge. I’m in grade eleven here, so I’m a junior at Haines High, and this week I took cold water safety. We had a lot of training putting on survival suits, getting in and out of them, inside of the water, outside of the water, and putting on life jackets and learning about the different levels of them.”

To conclude the course, students had Coast Guard guest instructors come up from Juneau to help facilitate an open water rescue and boaters safety on Portage Cove. 

“Today was our final day of the class. We got to go on the troopers boat and swim back to land with the survival suits on in the salt water,” said Doddridge.

“The hardest part of today was not panicking once we got in the water without our survival suits on, because it’s like below freezing out there right now,” said Ryland Jorgenson-Geise. He’s a freshman experiencing Mini week for the first time.

“What I’ve learned from this week is that we don’t want to mess around near cold water unless we’re prepared to,” said Jorgenson-Geise.

While some students were battling the cold water for survival, on the other side of the school, cooking students were tackling another difficult task: making a perfect French Macaron.

Selby Long, a Haines freshmen and baking extraordinaire, leads the class in this delicate recipe.

“I am Selby Long and I’m in the 9th grade. Well, so I’m doing cooking right now. I have two blocks of cooking, and I’m doing it just because I really like to cook. I really like to bake, and I just want to further my skills and do things I enjoy. And I’m actually teaching this class sort of macarons are sort of my specialty. And I thought it’d be fun if I showed everybody in the mini week class how to make them too. So that’s kind of what we’re working on today.”

The students in Cooking class had a different recipe everyday to provide them with new skills and confidence in the kitchen. Other recipes included cinnamon rolls, fresh rolls, pizza and cake baking. Selby wasn’t the only instructor in the high school kitchen, other members of the staff and community helped share their culinary knowledge.

Ceramics is another class students were able to choose. Six students worked on pottery wheels and improved their throwing ability. For one class period they were blindfolded and told to throw only by muscle memory.

“So as the advanced ceramics students you should be able to do this all by feel and not actually by sight,” explains Giselle Miller, the art teacher. 

Junior student Matilda Rogers spent the majority of her Mini-week on the wheel in the art room.

“I love mini week because it gives students the opportunity to explore interests that are outside of academics and what you could typically see in your school day. Yeah, it just allows you to explore your own interests and you can either try something that you’ve never done before or kind of deep dive into something that you’re really interested in. And so I think it’s just a brilliant opportunity for the whole student body,” Rogers said.

Along with the previously mentioned classes, students had a range of courses to choose from including Wilderness First Aid, Backcountry Avalanche Training, and Native Youth Olympic practice.

While students here in Haines might feel a little left out from the Region V festivities, in place they gain valuable learning experiences and life lessons that they will be able to use in the future. Mini-week not only gives these students a break from normal class work, but also an equally entertaining week learning with friends. It’s a Win-Win. Let’s go Glacier Bears!

This story was reported by Haines senior Trygve Bakke (left), and freshmen Colin Aldassy (center) and Willow Bryant (right) as part of a ‘Mini-Week’ radio journalism class. Edited and produced by Giselle Miller.

Students toured KHNS radio station, learned about interviewing, recording, script-writing, and developing stories for air.