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By ANDREA JOHNSON, Staff Writer ajohnson@minotdailynews.com The headline in the Minot Daily News on May 26, 1990, told the end of an era: Children and teachers at the Minot Lab School, which had been housed in Model Hall at Minot State University, had gathered the day before to say goodbye to their school. They buried a time capsule filled with lists of the children who attended it that last year and other mementoes of the school. They planted a tree in the school's honor. And they cried.

Young Bobby Wieland didn't believe his school would really close. "Bobby said he started thinking about it yesterday when they were taking all their pictures off the walls," his father, Lee Wieland, told a reporter for The Minot Daily News. Joseph Wax, director of the campus lab school, said his students loved the school because their teachers treated them as individuals. The school used experimental techniques that were not in vogue in other schools during that era. For instance, each child in a classroom had a separate reading textbook so he could learn to read while reading something he was interested in.

A model school was affiliated with the Minot State Teachers College since the early 1920s and was originally located somewhere else. Education majors, college instructors and teachers worked with children in the classroom and learned best practices in teaching. Originally, a junior high and high school were also attached to the school, though grades 7-12 were discontinued in 1968. The school transitioned in 1966 into a school that tried out more experimental, innovative teaching methods. The school was closed because Minot State University officials no longer wanted to spend the $150,000 for the lab school and wanted to take the university in a different direction.

"What a waste that's the thought from my perspective," Wax told the newspaper in 1990. "It has been fashionable lately to discontinue lab schools, but there also has been a realization that lab schools improve education. While the rest of the planet is zigging, we're zagging." In 1990, long-time teacher Pat Swanson told The Minot Daily News: "We had what the 21st century says education is all about and it's sad to see that come to an end. A school closing is kind of an emotional roller coaster. When that school is your life, when it stands for everything you believe in and it ceases to exist, you're not just losing a school, you're losing a way of life."

Eighteen years after it closed, Swanson and longtime teachers Sandra Starr and Marlys Armstrong still sound regretful about the closure of the school.

Lee Wieland told the Minot Daily News reporter in 1990 that he had put his children's names down on a four-year waiting list for a spot in a lab school classroom as soon as they were born. Starr said many professors at Minot State University put their kids on the waiting list for the school as soon as they knew they were pregnant. Parents paid a nominal fee per semester for the privilege of enrolling kids in the lab school. At one time Minot State University professors' children had preference, along with children who lived in the old Harrison School District, but the N.D. Department of Public Instruction put an end to that to encourage children from different backgrounds to enroll. Still, the waiting list meant parents had to really want their kids to go to the school and cared passionately about education.

The teachers said they were practicing many of the most innovative teaching techniques, all of which are still in vogue in public schools today, back in the 1960s. They practiced teaching techniques based on the Montessori teaching method, which is designed to give children a sense of independence and uses real objects, to teach preschoolers. They practiced differentiation, a way of using different methods to teach lessons to kids in the same classroom who had different ability levels and different learning styles. They practiced multi-age grouping. There was a pre-kindergarten and kindergarten program at the lab school long before kindergarten was regularly offered by other schools in the area. The children had music every day and physical education three times a week. They did a lot of writing at every grade level. Kids put on their school programs in the auditorium at Old Main and trooped across campus to have their physical education classes in the Swain Hall gym. Teachers guided them through tunnels that are closed off now due to asbestos.

The former teachers kept track of their students for many years after the school closed and said many of them went on to be successful in their fields. Of the students who were sixth-graders in 1990, Swanson said 20 to 23 of them were on the high school honor roll, had lead roles in plays, were first chairs in music, were leaders academically or in the arts. A high percentage of them went on to prestigious colleges.

Among former pupils were actor Josh Duhamel, and Ann Nicole Nelson, who died during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center. The auditorium at Old Main is now named Ann Nicole Nelson Hall in her honor. Mayor Curt Zimbelman was a graduate of the Model High School. Gov. John Hoeven attended the elementary school program. Other former students became doctors or went on to teach at the Air Force Academy or to become well known in other fields.

The former teachers said their students learned to become independent learners and to be "lifelong learners," another phrase that is currently in fashion with today's teachers. Swanson said the directors of the school should perhaps have done a better job of tooting the school's horn and making known how innovative its teaching practices were. Minot State closed the school at a time when other universities were recognizing the value of this sort of teaching and of campus lab schools.

But old students still fondly remember the school and contact their former teachers, said Swanson, Starr and Armstrong, and they know the school had an impact long after its doors closed.