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UHS Alumni |
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1980-1981 |
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1981-1982 |
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1982-1983 |
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1983-1984 |
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1984-1985 |
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1985-1986 |
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1986-1987 |
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1987-1988 |
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1988-1989 |
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1989-1990 |
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The Eighties
Richard Buckminster Fuller, a man who has been called the
Leonardo of the Twentieth Century, opens the Upland Hills Ecological
Awareness Center. With his arms around the shoulders of two children, he
says that the future of our world is in their hands. We must dedicate
ourselves at the school and the center to the proposition that "the
world work for 100% of humanity without disadvantaging the natural
world." This is not the usual 80's mindset, however, and by 1983, the
school suffers a loss in enrollment, shrinking to less than 40 students.
Nonetheless, Jean Ruff, Phil and Karen Moore, and Ken Webster run the
school by themselves for three years. We dream of expanding and begin a
capital campaign, called "Project Schoolhouse," to raise money for a new
building. Ashely Montagu, the brilliant anthropologist, visits the
school and emphatically endorses the school as "the kind of school every
school should be." Enrollment grows, donations are offered, the land is
purchased, plans are drawn and by the fall of 1989, the current building
is in place.
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Allison Butcher
UHS Alumni 1986 - 1992
I can remember being taught in the portables as well as the excitement of moving into the new school.
I think fondly of the years I spent at UHS and am so proud to have been a part of such a special school. I recently finished graduate school at the University of Michigan where I earned my Doctor of Pharmacy degree. I am currently working in West Palm Beach, Florida as a pharmacy resident at the Veterans Affairs hospital as well as part-time at local CVS stores.
I sometimes hear about concerns from parents of UHS children both past and present regarding the non-traditional ways of teaching some of the very traditional education topics. For those parents and students, here is the story I have for you. When I was about 10 years old my teacher at UHS was Cindy Falcoff. During my time with her we had visiting teachers come to see how the school worked and help out in some of the classrooms.
One day we came to school and were presented with a skit to read aloud designed to teach us about punctuation. Each of us had a part in the story to play. My part in the play was the comma. My role was to say my lines whenever my character was supposed to and any time there was a comma mentioned or a comma in the punctuation of the sentence I was supposed to say "Pause." Other characters in the play included period, who would say, "Stop", and exclamation point, who said "WOW"!
This simple exercise, to this day, affects the way I write and edit my compositions. When I re-read what I have written, I evaluate the need for a comma by whether I paused at that point in the sentence. This technique has worked extremely well for me throughout high school and my adult life. I never learned the technical "rules of grammar" in school, but what I did learn was how to feel instinctively where punctuation fits in a sentence. As a result, I am often called upon by friends and co-workers to act as an editor for their assignments. While the style may oftentimes be unconventional, the lessons I learned at UHS have endured the test of time.
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Emily Butcher
UHS Alumni 1988 - 1996
I left UHS after 7th grade to enter the public school system in Lake Orion. After high school I attended Michigan State University to study Interior Design. I was active in the student chapter of ASID (American Society of Interior Design). I graduated from MSU May of 2005 and landed my first professional job as a designer a month later in Atlanta Georgia. Besides work, I am an avid golfer and enjoy staying busy in the big city.
My years at Upland Hills will always have a place in my heart. It's there where I made my firsts. My first friends, my first injury while woodcarving with Nome, my first soccer goal, and yes, even my first kiss! The gifts I received from UHS are priceless and irreplaceable. I feel very lucky to have been a part of something that is so amazing. I know I will always have a place in the UHS community, and that is a great feeling!
THANK YOU UHS FOR GIVING ME MY FIRSTS!
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Athena Childs
UHS Alumni 1989 - 1991
How did I end up in Peace Corps Guinea?
After getting my degree in International affairs I worked in several big
business settings because September 11 had just happened and jobs were hard
to find. I worked in Fort Lauderdale an hour south of my Mom's home and then
moved out to Colorado to enjoy the people and community there and ended up
working for a mortgage company. It was from there that I applied to the
peace corps after deciding that the frame work was open enough that I would
be able to and encouraged to do work that would be sustainable and really
help people with what they need and not just walk it like big NGO's telling
them what they should do. We definitely do work right at the ground
level here and I am happy to be a community health agent because basic
preventative health education is something at the base need level of life
and people are interested. Life is very real and often hard and that is OK.
We (the people in my village and I) do what we can each day. Culturally this
place is amazingly different. Basic assumptions of love and work are
completely different here. But they still use humor to get through a tuff
situation and I am lucky to be a in a country were they have an
extraordinary kindness to strangers.
It is beautiful.
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Mary Margaret Giroux
Mary Giroux attended Upland Hills School
from 1986 to 1995
She began playing guitar while in Ted's group at UHS.
Influenced by Joni Mitchell and Ani DiFranco, her own style mixes
traditional folk with complex rhythms and blunt self-reflective lyrics.
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