Word: labs
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...fighting on a near daily basis, but Joe finally found in Mandernach a man he could trust. He took Mandernach's power technology class in his sophomore year and thrived. Junior year he arranged his schedule to be with Mandernach for a remarkable three hours a day: in auto lab, auto mechanics and as a student assistant. His academic teachers began to see less antagonism. Joe was finally getting his high school life under control...
Everyone has a story from high school, sketched out of memory and myth. The myth reflects the faith that we all have a chance to invent ourselves, and high school is the lab. We enter, still children, for this sweaty, four-year experiment, and if we are brave and lucky, we race out the big double doors that graduation flings open onto the rest of our life. Sometimes we don't even think to look back at the ones who got lost along...
Senior Joe Brussel, with his purple Burton backpack slung over his right shoulder, cell phone clipped to his tan cargo shorts, strolls into Frank Mandernach's advanced auto-mechanics class--late but relaxed. The rest of the class is already in the lab room, watching a student take apart a 1987 truck engine. Joe makes eye contact with Mandernach, settles into a chair out of sight of most of his classmates and pulls out a notebook. "Sometimes Mandernach just lets us get organized," he says. For the rest of the period, Joe stays to himself, his mind far away from...
...like a fully functioning engine and detail center. Just inside, propped on cement blocks, is a rusted, formerly red 1979 Jeep Cherokee, used to teach bodywork. In the back of the shop, huge wooden slabs, stained by oil and grease, lie on top of old gym lockers, creating the lab space where students learn engine anatomy. All sorts of auto parts fill the shelves and remaining floor space. "All this stuff is just tools," says Mandernach, looking around his shop, "tools to motivate kids...
Three years ago, Mandernach, as Joe's freshman-year academic lab instructor, saw Joe the way his other teachers did--angry, ready to fight even at the slightest challenge, and irresponsible. "He had a small-man problem," says Mandernach. Joe weighed only 80 lbs. in his freshman year, and even now, with short brown hair, smooth face and dimples, he looks more like a freshman than a senior. "Joey's such a sweet kid," says his mother Debbie Deimeke, who divorced Joe's father when Joe was six, "but inside he's got all this pent-up anger...