Wintering Well
Angela Repke
Leelanau Faculty | Learning Specialist
It’s no secret that the winter months in Northern Michigan can be grey and cold. Some Michiganders practice hygge* as they do in Scandinavia, snuggling up inside with a cup of tea and a good book, distracting themselves until things start to bud again. While cozying up can bring peace and fulfillment, sometimes the lack of sunlight can get to a person, delivering lethargy instead of rest.
At The Leelanau School, we’re focused on wintering well with each other.
It’s risky, of course, to kick off the warm blanket and try something new. Yet when we step out into the wintery world, we find lots of magic blooming during this season, too! In fact, Winter Term maybe when our lights shine brightest.
During January’s stand-alone, five-week Winter Term, the Leelanau campus is abuzz with creativity. And creativity is vital to, well, vitality.
On and off campus, creations of all kinds are sparking up daily. In the ever-so-popular Food is Love class, the faculty and students make recipes from scratch. In just the first week, the class cranked out pasta with flour, egg, and salt when preparing their delicious fettuccine and sausage tortellini soup. In Illustrated Storytelling, students learn to trust their inner voice and wild weirdness by letting words and art flow. The Digital Photography students are capturing the zany details in Mr. Piña’s chickens and our frosty landscapes, and our Game Designers are inventing their own, like finger golf. As if directly speaking to the dark metaphor of winter, Leelanau’s Accent Lighting students are quite literally bringing light to campus by creating their own intricate metal-pierced and stained glass lanterns while learning about a day in the life of a studio artist.
And part of what makes this creative process so fulfilling is togetherness.
The fact that this creativity is practiced within a loving community brings even more joy to learning and sharing.
Rather than slumping into winter hibernation, our students are taking significant risks - together. Their adventurous spirits are quenched when they plummet down Crystal Mountain in the Snow Sports class, travel to the Upper Peninsula to try dogsledding in our Let’s Go: Trains, Planes, and Automobiles class, or dive into the Bahamian waters in the Sharks, Service, and Sustainability class.
These opportunities require an awareness, interconnectedness, and courage that speaks to the heart of Leelanau School learning. From sharing written words and art to plunging deep seas with sharks, we ask students to practice bravery. And what more extraordinary act of courage is there than to take these risks with others watching? When we put ourselves out there—together—true magic ignites.
Some people can only see winter months as cold and grey, but not at The Leelanau School! We’re thriving here because we’re taking risks and wintering well…together.
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* Hard to pronounce, hygge (“hooga”) is also challenging to explain. In brief, hygge is about taking time away from the daily rush to be together with people you care about - or even by yourself - to relax and enjoy life’s quieter pleasures.
