Apollo Reflections: Legacy Interviews with Staff Who Created the Flex-Mod Curriculum at Apollo High School, Saint Cloud, Minnesota

Independent School District 742 of St. Cloud, Minnesota inaugurated a new facility in September 1970. The Apollo Senior High campus had been designed and equipped to support flexible-modular scheduling, large and small group experiences, team teaching, and independent study. For both community and students, this program was an unfamiliar educational experience that many neither understood nor supported. For the instructors who staffed Apollo during its first decade of operation, implementing the new curriculum was a never-to-be-forgotten experience. When a number of these teachers began to retire, Lawrence Severt, a guidance counselor at Apollo, took the opportunity to interview his colleagues about their lives and teaching experiences. This book compiles their reminisces and provides a unique picture of what it meant to be a teacher in mid-20th century mid-America, when social, political, and international conflicts all were being addressed in an educational arena that itself was in turmoil.Today, fifty years after opening its doors, Apollo High School continues to provide quality learning experiences for St. Cloud students. Some of the educational concepts implemented at its outset have been retained, some modified, some abandoned. This evolution had a profound impact on the original Apollo teachers, and in their comments we can glimpse future problems that will have to be addressed as schools struggle to deliver an ever-increasing range of educational services to growing numbers of students.