More About Mike... I have been a guidance counselor in St. Paul for 15 years.  I am extremely excited to be given the opportunity to work at such a caring, dedicated and passionate school. My story sounds like the typical Minnesota version of the “Beaver Cleaver” family.  My Mom was a city girl and grew up in a traditional middle class family.  My Dad came from a large German Catholic immigrant diary farm family that settled northwest of St. Cloud.  Dad was chosen by his family to represent them with the church and was sent to the seminary for 4 years.  After he decided that was not his path in life, he moved to Fridley to live with a couple of his older brothers.  As fate would have it, living across the street was this cute city girl!!!  After serving in the Army my Dad came home and married that city girl.  Two short years later they were married, and one year later I was their first child.  I have two siblings, a brother and a sister; we had a nice house in Blaine, lots of pets from dogs, to fish, to rabbits.  We did all the usual kids stuff from picking on our sister to spending long days running the neighborhood.    As traditional as my family and my upbringing seems we were very blessed to have a unique look at the world.  In 1965, I was born with a genetic condition called Diastrophic Dwarfism.  In my family my parents and brother are traditionally tall and both my sister and I were born as Dwarfs.  Even though I had 13 surgeries my first thirteen years and I spent parts of almost every summer either in a hospital or therapy, I still grew up with lots of skinned knees, bruises and broke more than my fair share of garage windows.  I had to mow the lawn, rake, make my bed, do the dishes, pick up dog poo, do my homework, make friends and deal with bullies just like any child should.  If things took me longer I learned to make more time, if things were out of reach I learned how to reach them with a stick, and if I ever felt my height was an issue, my parents taught me the world was always going to be built for tall people and I was going to have to figure out how to leave my impact one person and one situation at a time.  I was truly blessed with parents that raised all of their children to work hard, do the best they could, and always make life a wonderful adventure.   I always knew growing up that I didn’t want to settle for anything less than a full life.  As a young man, all of the disabled people I knew in school worked for a factory in Columbia Heights processing mass mailings for minimum wage.  They did very little schoolwork.  They spent lots of time secluded in their homes playing video games.  And yes, there were video games when I was a kid!!!  They didn’t dream, they didn’t hope, they didn’t strive.  All they did was settle.  I was determined never to settle and absolutely never to be anything less than what I was capable of. Knowing my body was never going to allow me to build houses, be a plumber or play professional sports, I knew I had to use my brain and my heart to make my life.  I choose to get my education by attending Anoka Ramsey Community College, and then transferring to the University of Minnesota at Duluth.   While at UMD, I earned my Bachelors Degree in Psychology and my Masters Degree in Educational Guidance Counseling.  I have always wanted to work with people.  While attending UMD I found my passion was to try and help students and their families not settle for anything less than what they are capable of. ***** I like Open School because the staff, students and families are so dedicated to each other. I have been at Open School since August 2007 and I have been a counselor in St. Paul for 15 years. My favorite thing to do at Open School is help our wonderful students take the next step “into the BIG world.” When I was growing up, my favorite teachers, Mr. Dahl and Mr. Getti, taught me that education was not about lectures, chalk or reports.  It’s about bad jokes, wiffle ball and duck duck grey duck.  It’s about learning through relationships and real life. The best class I ever took was world religions from Bob Scotagaard at Anoka Ramsey.  If you look for what is in common and appreciate other’s point of view, the world can be a beautiful place.