Minooka School District Must Now Repair Building

After a Shorewood resident crashed into Walnut Trails Elementary School Wednesday, district officials had to work to secure and then repair the building.

On Wednesday afternoon, the exterior wall of Walnut Trails Elementary School had a gaping hole. A Shorewood resident with a medical condition had crashed through the building. Once the administration at Minooka Community Consolidated District 201 verified that no one had been in the classroom, they began addressing how to secure and repair the building. "It's all brick and block and steel reinforced," MCCD 201 Superintendent Al Gegenheimer said. "We're going to board it up for now and then repair it." Those repairs, though, will not be complete by the time students return after the winter break. "We'll shift some classrooms around," he said. Gegenheimer said the classroom right next to the one that was crashed into by the car is currently …

• Photos (1)

Teaching Outside the Box

Minooka Teacher Uses Real-Life Experiences To Deepen Classroom Lessons

To help students empathize with Holocaust victims, teacher Tammy Walsh had students take a walk in their shoes, or lack thereof—literally.

Trudging through the snow in bare feet causes the feet to burn, go numb, and eventually feel lifeless, according to eighth-grade students in Tammy Walsh’s Language Arts class who walked outside school without shoes in the snow last week. The students had recently read an account from a 9-year-old Romanian Jewish child who was forced on a death march with other Jews during Hitler’s reign in 1941. Beyond just sharing information, the Minooka Junior High School teacher wants her students, who are studying the Holocaust, to have experiences that will help them relate to the plight of the people they are studying. “I talk with my students about the death marches that Hitler forced the victims to make, but like much of history, it is difficult …

•  1 Comment
• Photos (3)

Abby Holloway

6:03 pm on Friday, February 10, 2012

Sounds like an eye-opener!   more ›

Talking to Kids About 9/11 Hard But Necessary

Minooka Community Consolidated District 201 Superintendent said commemorating Sept. 11 is a big event at the district and as important as remembering Dec. 7, 1941.

In 2001, when the planes hit the towers of the World Trade Center, Al Gegenheimer was the principal and superintendent of Union School, a K through 8 school district between Joliet and New Lenox. His wife called him at the office and told him what happened. He then went about telling the teachers and coming up with a plan to tell the children. Collectively, they decided Gegenheimer should go class to class to tell the students. "The wanted each (child) to have the same message," Gegenheimer said. But, how do you tell the message to someone as young as 6 years old? "We told them that there was a tragedy that occurred and that two airplanes crashed into two high-rise buildings and that many people were injured or died," Gegenheimer said. "We…

• Photos (1)