symposium

Winter and Spring Symposium

Students at Harbor City participate in two symposium periods each year--for three weeks in January and three weeks at the end of the school year. These periods operate a little bit like a college J-term.

Winter and Spring Symposiums are used to weave intensive experiential immersion opportunities into the curricular fabric of the school. The symposium is composed of intensive single topic courses, wilderness trips, field studies, and international travel. These symposiums also provide students the opportunity to pursue personal interests through internships, mentorship, job shadowing experiences, and other topics.

The symposiums are mandatory elective credits, but students can choose which topics to explore. Four symposium credits are required for graduation. Some that have already been offered are; Sculpture, An Exploration of Local History, International Dance, Geocaching, Trail Building on the Superior Hiking Trail, Boundary Waters Canoe Trips, Destination Imagination, and Intro to Poetry.

One senior's Winter Symposium was spent Groovin' in Ghana - in a drumming class co-taught by HCIS Music Coordinator Darin Bergsven and former University of Minnesota Duluth professor and master Ghanian drummer David Schmalenberger.

After falling in love with Ghanian music while playing rented drums, the student based his senior project around it, wrote $3,000 in grants to buy the school its own drums, and helped Darin teach the Spring Symposium version of Groovin' in Ghana. That Symposium's students performed and taught Ghanian drumming in local elementary schools.