AspireNORTH — a new program of Minnesota North College’s five campuses — shows the exciting changes possible when key institutions intentionally set their sights on coordinated regional impact. Shifting to build systems that work for students – not the other way around – sets our local colleges on a path to offer learning that fits …
For rural communities, Veterans Day is an up close and personal day of remembrance. Many of us count family, friends and neighbors among those who have served our country in times of war and peace, and are serving today. Minnesota author and veteran Diana Oestreich asks that this Veteran’s Day we go deeper than simply …
Classes at many college campuses, including our area’s Minnesota North schools, are getting started. The cost of college makes headlines a lot these days – as it should. Students have shouldered an incredible amount of debt in recent years as they pursued their dreams of school after high school, and Minnesota students and families have …
By Linda Gibeau
More than 60 years ago, Charles Blandin gave two students – both women – scholarships to continue their education. A self-taught man, he knew education was one key to these students’ strong futures. We are honored to stand again this year with 344 Itasca students, each dedicated to their educational dream – at community, technical …
Deer River Implements Full Service Community Schools Model to Improve Student Outcomes Up to two-thirds of a student’s ability to succeed in school is determined by what happens out of school. A child who is hungry or cold, in pain due to untreated medical needs, or exposed to traumatic stresses can have trouble with memory, …
Labeled a silent epidemic by two previous surgeons general, oral disease is on the rise in the United State as access to dental care dwindles in hard-to-reach places. At home in Minnesota, remote rural areas grapple with unrealistic dentist-to-patient ratios, distance to clinics, lack of transportation and clinics that cannot afford to accept dental assistance. …
Take a step back in time, to a 1900 logging camp in the Northwoods of Minnesota. While there, you can take in the smells of the bunk house where lumberjacks sleep two to a bed, visit the cook shack where men eat piles of flapjacks, wind timbers, sinkers and swamp water, grab your gear in …
MacRostie’s traveling exhibit “What’s Left: Lives Touched by Suicide” is a perfect example The art exhibit “What’s Left; Lives Touched by Suicide” was created to open a more honest conversation about mental illness and suicide. For over two years, it has done just that, crisscrossing the state, forcing people to talk about, and truly “see” …
It’s January. Many folks start each new year focused on improvements they want to make. Itasca area youth programs are doing the same. Today, 30 staff from nearly a dozen organizations that provide after-school activities and programs are reviewing data about the quality of their programming, and charting a course for change. The programs are …
For Mac McKinney’s son, there hadn’t been a program yet that had totally clicked. He had been working on his own with a therapist to help with his emotional and behavioral struggles, but had never engaged in group therapy. That was until Healing Foundations Therapeutic Farm opened its barn doors. “It’s a different approach to …