MARILYN MARINELLI. Born 1951.
TRANSCRIPT of OH 1834
This interview was recorded on February 25, 2013, for the Maria Rogers Oral History Program. The interviewer is Luke Lorenz. The interview was transcribed by Carol Jordan.
ABSTRACT: Marilyn Marinelli has lived in Boulder since early childhood. She describes her experiences of being educated in Boulder schools, some of which she later returned to as a teacher, principal, and/or central administrator for the Boulder Valley School District. Topics in this interview range from descriptions of Boulder High School initiation rituals during her teenage years, to the culture of Boulder during the tumultuous years of the 1960s and 1970s, to the many schools and school policies on which she left her mark during the course of her career in education, which included ground-breaking work in special education and curriculum development.
NOTE: The interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in brackets.
[A].
00:00 (The date is Monday, February 25, 2013. I’m Luke Lorenz, and I’m interviewing Marilyn Marinelli who worked for the Boulder Valley School District for many years, and we’re interviewing in the Lafayette Public Library. Marilyn, thank you first of all for taking the time to do this, and would you mind starting out by telling what date you were born, if you don’t mind, and where you were born, and a little bit about your early life growing up where you were from.)
Sure, I was born December 11, 1951 in Madison, Wisconsin. My mother’s parents were dairy farmers there and a lot of my family who still lives there, and are farmers in the area. My dad’s family is from Madison. My family used to come out to Boulder camping when we were very young. At that time I had three brothers and myself, and we were under five, and my parents thought it would be a good idea to come out camping, with four of us under the age of five. They fell in love with Boulder, and my dad decided to transfer his job from Dow Chemical in Wisconsin to Dow Chemical in Colorado which has become or did become Rocky Flats. So that’s how my family moved to Colorado when I was three years old. From that time, I grew up in Boulder. I attended the Boulder Valley schools. I started at Foothill Elementary, and I then went to Washington and Casey, and graduated from Boulder High.
(Can you describe a little bit what Boulder was like. You were young at the time, but how did you feel about it and how did you feel about the move from Wisconsin?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 1
Well, I was very young, so I don’t recall a lot about the move from Wisconsin. I recall missing my relatives, but we got very quickly integrated into Boulder. It was a beautiful community, as it still is. I remember the Flatirons. Population was probably about 20,000 people then. It was a very— I believe, very innocent place to grow up. My friends who still live in the area, when we get together and talk about that, we talk about how we would leave our doors open and leave our bicycles out on the front, play ball in the parks. It was just a very wonderful place to grow up.
(So what was it like at Foothill, as far as your recollection of elementary school?)
Foothill. I was at Foothill for kindergarten and first grade. It was of course much smaller. I don’t remember a lot about it. I do know the class sizes were quite small. I go back to my photographs, and I count 20 students, maybe 22 in the class. We had—I know we had PE and Music. Of course PE was with our own teacher, our classroom teacher, and the girls were usually separated from the boys for PE at that time.
(What part of Boulder did you live in?)
Lived in north Boulder at 9th and Dellwood, on the corner of North Boulder Park. Walked back and forth to school. In second grade, my family moved to the other side of the park, 6th and Alpine, so at that time we went to Washington—Washington Elementary School, which is now being turned into condominiums. [chuckles]
(How do feel about that? Changing an iconic place like that, that’s there for many years, and now—)
Well, I’m happy that they are going to, I think, maintain the building in some way. But I think it’s okay to have the development. The condominiums—some of us who went— who attended that school, look at our sixth grade classroom, and looks like it’s going to be about a half million dollar condo, so we think that’s a little funny. [chuckles]
(It is.)
04:39 (Now where did you shop and go at that time in Boulder? Where were the places that you went to purchase things or socialize?)
Well, let’s see. I remember Starr’s Clothing down on the mall. There was not 29th Street Mall. It used to be Crossroads. That wasn’t there. Trying to think where—Joslin’s was downtown Boulder. I think it’s still called the Joslin’s Building, but that used to be a department store. And there was a Penney’s.
(In downtown?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 2
I believe it was in downtown. I can’t remember where that was, but I do know there was a Penney’s. But there were very few places to shop—North Boulder Market was there across from Community Hospital.
(So then you went on to Casey?)
Then I went on to Casey.
(Now there’s another place that they’re destroying your heritage there, aren’t they?)
They are.
(The buildings—)
They are, but they have remodeled Casey, and it is an absolutely beautiful building. So that has been actually exciting to see.
(Was it an old building when you went to school there? My recollection of Casey was always so—it was old looking.)
I think it was one of the older schools in the district, but I don’t really remember thinking that this is an old building I’m attending. It was grade seven through nine of course, so I think in ninth grade we did have students from Sacred Heart take classes at Casey with us.
(Can you remember who your principal was at Casey?)
I know that assistant principal was Vince Callahan, and I can’t remember who the principal was. But I do remember who the assistant principal was. He was very visible with the students, and out and about a lot, I know.
(Right. So what were some of the activities you were involved in as you went to Junior High?)
Well, I know I was on Student Council. And I primarily remember that. And I was involved in the Drama Club.
(Any teachers that you remember the names of, that you had in class?)
Well, let’s see, I remember Tom Kepler I had for Science, and I had Fred Wostenberg for Shop. Let’s see, English was a Mr. Lundquist. He was a fabulous teacher. I can probably go through and really remember all of them if I went through subject by subject.
(Sure, that’s fine. At this point in your life, how do you feel your education was? How well-prepared were you for continuing on with what you wanted to do in life?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 3
Well, I knew from very early on I wanted to be a teacher. That’s what I wanted to do since I was about five. And I had some wonderful teachers along the way who really encouraged me. Starting really in second grade I had a teacher who just would give me the right kind of work. Would give me additional work. I also remember in fifth grade, it was pretty much the same subject for every level of student, but I remember my teacher giving me an extra workbook. You know, a lot of the teachers along the way would do things to really encourage, I think, a lot of the students. So I feel I had a very good education in Boulder.
(Do you remember any of those teachers’ names? Your second grade teacher?) Mrs. Peese was her name, and I had Mrs. Jammer for fifth grade, and Mrs. Little for sixth grade.
(And they influenced you and encouraged you—)
They really did. My teachers did.
(As far as gender roles at that time—of course, you being encouraged to be a teacher, that would fit in very much with the social norms of that time. Were you ever interested in anything else where you were discouraged, or—)
I really wasn’t discouraged, but I don’t remember being exposed to a lot of different things, and it seemed like to me it was either you were a nurse or a teacher pretty much, so I don’t really remember thinking about anything else.
(That was your role.)
It was my role.
(One of those two.)
09:34 (How about Boulder High School? Do you remember any significant teachers there that you worked with?)
Let’s see, at Boulder High, I had—I think it was Mrs. Monet for Home Ec and she was fabulous, because she made me her office assistant and that really helped. I needed responsibility and she gave that to me I thought at that time, and—I’m trying to think— Boulder High—other teachers, I had—well, that was back in Casey, I had Wayne Daniels, and he was just a kind and gentle soul and a wonderful teacher. I was thinking I had him in high school as well, but I think he was just at Casey.
(Do you remember any of the administrators or counselors at Boulder High when you were there?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 4
I do. My counselor was Mrs. Newberry, and I remember that because I also had her at Casey. The principal was John Hobeck, and it was—when I was a sophomore, we had— it was quite different. The girls had to wear dresses to school, and the boys, pants, when I was a sophomore. This was not a faculty-sanctioned activity, but we also had initiation at Boulder High School and we all would put on, had to wear gunny sacks that were painted with Boulder High, BHS, purple and gold, and we had to bow down to Minnie and Jake. The Minnie and Jake monkeys that are still on the building. And that was part of being initiated into Boulder High.
(Now did you have some fear and trepidation, being a 10th grader entering Boulder High? Was that the—What was the purpose of the initiation?) It was really a sense of belonging. There was no fear with it. I know they wouldn’t tolerate that now. But there was no fear. There was a picnic afterwards. Everyone thought it was fun, as far as I can tell.
(And John Hobeck and the administration, although they didn’t sanction that, they thought it was ok?)
I don’t remember any repercussions from it. You know that was when I was a sophomore, and then it seemed—well, I graduated from Boulder High in 1970, so that— late ‘60s, early ‘70s really was a very different time in Boulder.
(How so?)
Well, there was a lot of—it was Vietnam era. There were a lot of what is referred to as hippies, coming into the area. People at the high school—students—were starting to rebel more, about certain rules, like having long hair, what you could wear. When I was— I believe I was a senior in high school, it was our class who changed the rule about girls wearing pants to school. We all showed up one day—it was a cold day—with pants. And I remember John Hobeck so well because he handled the whole situation so well, and really sat down with people and talked to people. I believe that’s when the whole rule about girls wearing pants or dresses to school got changed.
(Was that a board policy, Marilyn, or was that a Boulder High School policy?)
You know, I don’t know if it was a board policy or not. I think it must have been, because I don’t remember that that was accepted in any school in the district, although I didn’t really have an awareness about what was going on in other schools at the time.
(Who were the hippies, and how did they affect Boulder?)
Well, there were a lot of just transients moving into Boulder, camping at Central Park with tents. You know at the time—I believe I was working at Community Hospital—I remember they had to close Central Park for a while because of just a lot of diseases that were being feared, I guess you could say. There was just a lot of turmoil during that time across the country, but it really did hit Boulder very significantly—a lot of, you know,
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 5 just changes in the way people looked and dressed and acted. You know, the whole era was lot of civil rights, a lot of the women’s rights, a lot of those things coming really to a head, and a lot of change happening all over the country.
14:37 (Where were you with all of that? Confused? Or did you know where you were as far as your place? You were a senior in high school, or a junior in high school. Was there a lot of influence—oh, drugs were coming on—)
Drugs were coming on. You know Boulder’s very liberal with that. I left school, and my goal was to go to the University of Colorado. I spent a lot of my free time working. I worked at Community Hospital. I don’t really remember being personally affected by a lot of it, but I certainly know of, and know people who were affected by it, and got very involved.
(What kinds of ways did they—)
Well, you know of course, there was people getting involved with drugs, and choosing alternative lifestyles. Friends moving to Gold Hill.
(Gold Hill, being the—what?)
[chuckles] Well, Gold Hill, Nederland, really was just kind of a way to—a place to move to have an alternative lifestyle. It seemed alternative at the time.
(What did it consist of, the alternative lifestyle? Was that drugs, and less responsibility?)
It was probably just a different sense of priorities. Maybe more like communal living, different people setting up households and sharing in the responsibilities, different kinds of family configurations—you know, music—peace—love. It’s really [chuckles]— Boulder was very big with all that.
(Yeah, Yeah. How did you—And of course, sounds as though then you were busy getting on with your life. You had goals, and you worked, and so that was kind of on the periphery of what you were doing at that time.)
I did.
(How about your dad working at Rocky Flats? I remember Rocky Flats at that time perhaps became quite a magnet for controversy, because of what was going on there at that time.)
It was, I believe, and I’m not sure if at that time he was still working there. When he was working there, it was called Dow Chemical. Really even in the ‘50s, everything was very secretive that was happening there. You didn’t really know what people did. So there
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 6 wasn’t a lot of talk in my family about what exactly my dad did there, but I think he was some type of inspector. But in the ‘70s, he wasn’t there.
(So then you graduated from Boulder High School. How about the rivalries, because I remember—maybe I’ll go back to—do you remember when the school district—when all the school districts that existed around Boulder and in Boulder reorganized? You were a student at one of the schools at the time, I think. That happened in the early ‘60s. That wasn’t a significant part?)
It wasn’t. I heard about it later when I worked for the school district, but I didn’t really have a awareness that there was a reorganization. (And Fairview—was that something—did you go to football games and things like that where Fairview was the rival and so on?)
Fairview, let’s see—during the time I was in high school, Fairview was at where Platt is now. That was Fairview. And then when I was a senior in high school is when—that was the first year—that class was the first class that graduated from Fairview.
I don’t remember—well, there was a big rivalry between Fairview and Boulder High always with the football. I do remember that because I remember—oh, just some issues that went on back and forth like putting chickens in the—the Boulder High students putting chickens in the Fairview cafeteria, because people referred to them as Fairview farmers back then, so there was things like that that went on between the high schools.
(So Fairview was considered the “hick” high school at the time?)
Well, I just remember they were referred to as Fairview farmers because they were more out in the country. At that time it was considered kind of out of the city.
(Right. Not “sophisticated” like Boulder High students!
Well, I don’t know if they thought that. [chuckles]
(Oh, I remember—)
Is that right?
[chuckles] (Oh, I think so.)
I don’t think we were very sophisticated, but— [chuckles]
19:54 (So, any other activities you were involved in at Boulder High?)
Well, at Boulder High I did intramural volleyball, and basketball, and gymnastics. At that time, there were—we didn’t have sports. There were not organized sports for girls,
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 7 so we did more intramural activities. And I worked quite a bit when I was in high school. I worked most of my free time, and went to school. That was my extra-curricular activity.
(Was that common as far as your social group? Was it common back then to have a job while you were in high school, and work?)
Well, not really common, I wouldn’t say. I had a couple friends who worked, but I wouldn’t say it was necessarily common. Maybe to have a job in the summer. You know, people would babysit or get a job in the summer, but I worked pretty much year round.
(What kinds of things did you do at Community Hospital? What was your job there?)
Well, I worked in the kitchen, so I did—on weekends, I did a lot of the preparation of the food for special diet patients. I just did most anything, from washing pots and pans, to cooking food, to delivering trays to patients, picking up trays, washing dishes, so—pretty much anything. Yeah, worked in the kitchen—oh, and ran the snack bar—cafeteria.
(So then you went on, and you said it was an early goal to go to the University of Colorado.)
Mmm-hmm. So then I went to the University of Colorado—graduated [from high school] in 1970—so I started the University of Colorado that fall, and started right into—with the focus of being a teacher.
(What was it like—did you want me to turn it off?)
No, that’s okay.
(What was it like, as far as entrance requirements, and what you had to—was there an assessment, like SAT or ACT, or anything like that?)
I know I took the SAT, and—you know, I think there were requirements, but it’s not like today, with the requirements in terms of particular classes that you have to take in different categories. I think it was not nearly as difficult as it is today. There was no writing of essays. As long as you had, I think, a certain grade point average and SATs, it was easier to get in. It was nice.
(What was the image—there are other colleges—you didn’t—you just wanted CU? You didn’t think of going away to school, or anything like that?)
I really didn’t think of going away to school. I just thought of going to CU. I thought that’s what I could afford. I pretty much had to pay for my own college, so I just decided to do that. Yeah.
(Did you live at home while you went to school, then?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 8
No, I didn’t live at home. I found a little apartment and moved away. Lived in Boulder, and worked, continued to work—
(At Community?)
I worked some at Community Hospital, and then I got a job, which was on the Hill, and it was at a clothing store called Mattson’s. It was—at that time then, there were two— there was Neustetter’s and Mattson’s. It was considered a very nice, kind of high-end clothing store, and I worked there all through college.
(What kind of clientele went to those stores at that time?)
Well, what type of clientele—
(Were they CU students or were they more of the townspeople, business people?)
Both. They were town’s business people, and CU students. Downstairs, we sold men’s jeans. The person who owned the store, Dale Mattson, was a big CU Buff fan, so all the football players would come and get their jeans there. So it was a variety of people. It was a great job.
(What was the Hill like at that time?)
Well, the Hill—that was the 1970s, early 1970s, so it was just—I remember the Colorado Bookstore had glass windows, and there was a—throwing of rocks through the glass window. It was pretty disruptive time on the Hill. Let’s see, Tulagi’s was there, the Sink was there. You know, there was a lot of active night life. It was pretty different—it was ‘70s. [chuckles] It was 1970.
(Well, describe it—)
I know, for people who weren’t there then.
(Yes.)
There were a lot of transients. Kind of the style was grunge, long hair, you know. Pretty open, free kind of area.
25:27 (Did you feel comfortable on the Hill at that time?)
I did. Yeah.
(So you didn’t feel threatened by these hippies?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 9
Oh, not at all. I never did.
(They were good people? Kind people?)
They seemed like it.
(Except they threw rocks through the window.)
That happened once. I just remember that. There was a riot on the Hill.
(What caused it?)
There was riot for something. I want to say it was around—it might have been that whole Kent State era. There were different riots at different campuses during that era, and it hit CU of course. So I was working on the Hill then.
(Well, I think what’s interesting is as much as was going on that was somewhat unstable, that you felt very comfortable working there, and it was a pleasant place to be. Your parents weren’t concerned about you, and that type of thing.)
(No. The Hill had some very upper-end shops, so it was interesting because you had the CU students, then you had the more transient population, and then there was some very upper-end stores, like The Regiment Shop was there, Kingsley and Company, Mattson’s, The Buccaneer. Those were all considered nice stores, and community people would come and shop. I do know that sometimes the store owners did meet, and they were concerned at times that maybe some of their regular clientele were a little bit nervous about coming on the Hill to shop.
(To me it’s very interesting—people rolled with the punches, so to speak. You did. You were going to school and working. It was okay.)
It was, I thought. I don’t know, maybe growing up and kind of being part of the change, or having friends or acquaintances or family who was part of that, made it just seem kind of part of what my—the natural evolution of life was about.
(So then you went—right away you started out as an Education major at CU?)
I did. I started out as an Education major, and loved it, loved my student teaching assignments, loved being in the classrooms and in the schools, and knew that was really what I wanted to do, wanted to be. I got my Bachelor’s degree four years later, and then I went right straight for my Master’s degree in Special Education, so I finished that up the next year.
(What was your interest as you experienced the students and student teaching and so on? What drew you to the Special Education population?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 10
Well, I was student teaching at Crestview Elementary, and I worked with a teacher there who was working with learning-disabled students. I saw that she was able to really work with them in small groups and focus on reading skills, and I thought that would be something that I would find interesting. I also thought that if I did get my degree in Special Education, it would just give me additional skills—I might be more marketable as a teacher if I had some additional skills in that area.
29:08 (Do you remember any of your professors at CU in Education or in other classes that were significant in your being influenced, or—good teachers?)
Well, I had Michael Cog and Leonard Baca. They were my two professors when I was in graduate school. They were both very good, very influential. We had a small cohort group of maybe 30 people, that went through the program in a year, so we got to all know each other really well, and I still have contact with some of those people, and just have very high regard for both of the professors in that program.
(Now, Special Education, was it relatively new at that time? Was that department somewhat new?)
It was relatively new. Interestingly enough, when I graduated in 1975, I got my Master’s, that was right—I believe that was right when PL94142 was passed, and it was the Education of All Handicapped Children Act. That was a federal law requiring that school districts provide services to a variety of students with special needs. So at that point in time, a number of jobs opened up, and there was a very specific identification process for trying to determine what needs students had, and then what the program would be to meet those needs. So, there started to be more programs for students with learning disabilities, emotional issues, just beyond what we think in terms of as more traditional needs.
(And did you then seek employment after you graduated in ‘75?)
I did. I graduated in ’75 and I interviewed for a job. I got my first job at Emerald Elementary with what they called a self-contained classroom. At that point in time, they were pulling students out of the regular classrooms more, and trying to meet their needs in a separate classroom. I had a classroom of I believe 10 students, grades 1 through 3, and they had significant learning disabilities as well as emotional issues, so that is what I did for two years. Then they wanted to start putting programs in the high schools so I helped set up the first program for learning-disabled students at Fairview High School. That was the first program at the high school level in the district. It was probably 1977.
(What was the impetus to do that? To fulfill the law, or was there actually community support for it, parent support, administrative support, or teacher support? What was the motivating factor, would you say?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 11
Well, I think the motivating factor was the law required it, but there was also a lot of community support for it, and a lot of parental pressure for that to happen. I think it really came from a lot of different areas.
(So when you went in to Fairview High School, the staff and administration there was supportive of your being there?)
Very much so. Uh-huh.
(Okay.)
Let’s see, Keith Chambers hired me. Then he left for a district position, and Bill Van Howe was there, and Cheryl Dorsey, and they were very supportive of having a program there.
(And Keith was the principal and then Bill took his place? Correct?)
Yes, yes.
(And Cheryl was assistant?)
Yes.
(And so they supported you in that role?)
Very much.
(So what did you come up with, or how did you organize that beginning classroom?)
Well, there was another woman—her name was Pat Upsak—and I—we worked together at Emerald—so we set this up, and we got—teachers made recommendations and parents made recommendations. There was a whole evaluation process. Students had to have psychological evaluation, a social evaluation, academic evaluation. There had to be an understanding of why a particular student wasn’t working up to their potential. We would have a meeting, called a staffing, and then we started to do a couple of things. We had one class a period—one of the student’s classes that they would get scheduled into was called Resource Room—or Learning Lab—and they would bring their work from other classes, or we would help them with reading skills or writing skills, so that that would help to support them in their regular classes.
Another thing we did is to team-teach with some of the teachers. For example, in an English class, we would work directly in the English teacher’s classroom, with—we knew of maybe three or four students in that class who needed our help—so we would go in to support them, to try and also understand what the teacher was doing in the classroom. Then when they would come to their period with us—their class with us— we
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 12 could help them with their studies. That’s kind of how it started, and it’s probably very similar today.
35:00 (What was the culture like in south Boulder at that time? Because Fairview represented mostly students from that part of the town—city.)
Right. South Boulder was a newer area really. The culture—I don’t know exactly what—how to respond to that. It seemed—you know, there were a lot of professional people that lived in south Boulder. I don’t know. Boulder’s kind of—it’s just a lot of little pockets, and I think each pocket has a lot of diversity actually.
(Was there much ethnic diversity in south Boulder, did you feel? Or even at Boulder High when you were there?)
Well, I think there’s more ethnic diversity in north Boulder, or at least there was, than in south Boulder. At Fairview at the time, there really wasn’t much ethnic diversity. It was probably more middle, upper-middle class Caucasian people probably, in terms of looking at the demographics.
(So those farmers—that farmer image has changed in a hurry.)
Farmer image changed. [chuckles]
One interesting thing that happened too when I was at Fairview—of course it’s a little different now. We had—when Bill Van Howe was the principal, and I had my Learning Lab, which was right by where the English Department was, and that roof caved in. The roof caved in from a day like this where we had a lot of snow on the roof. I was thinking about that building and that roof is flat, and we had to hold classes then on CU campus. That was a pretty exciting thing.
(Describe that experience. Marilyn, I have to say I’m having the hardest time, because I shared all of these details—) [chuckles]
I know I was thinking that.
(If it hadn’t been a Saturday, my son’s locker—he’d probably be injured, or not alive, you know. That was quite an event.)
Oh, so that was right by his locker?
(Yeah, where the roof caved in. So it’s hard for me—not to chime in.)
I know.
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 13
(Tell about that experience. That was an interesting experience then because—were all of the classes suspended then at Fairview? They had to be, I suppose.)
All of the classes were suspended. Uh-huh, they were.
(What was the transition? Or why CU campus?)
I think the CU campus had enough room. There might have also—it could have been CU, Boulder Theater, let’s see—Bill Van Howe would remember all this, he was the principal. I don’t really know how all those logistics were handled, but it just actually seemed to work out pretty smoothly, given what had happened. And we were over at CU for I don’t know how long.
(So you held your classes there. The students were transported? Were they? Over to—)
I don’t remember transportation being provided. That’d be interesting to know how all that worked.
(Yeah.)
There might have been classes in some churches possibly, maybe at Boulder Theater. That was a lot of students to reorganize for though, yeah.
(What kind of guy was Bill Van Howe? What kind of role did he play as far as what you were doing at the time?)
Well, he was a very highly visible principal. The staff really supported him. He was very good with students; well organized; very good leader; very personable man.
(So he was seen by the staff and yourself as someone who supported your goals, and wanted to further along what you had—)
Yes, very student-centered; very collaborative.
(Who were some of the other staff members there that you worked with? Administrators, counselors, or anyone that you recall?)
Let’s see, okay, there was—I mentioned Cheryl Dorsey—Jerry Faulkenberg was there. He was, I think, Dean of Students. He had been a math teacher there. And counselors, Les Leary, Dan Hunter. Well, I think Gayla was there.
(Yes, probably, she was.)
Gayla Lindquist was there. Al Jacques, teachers, Russ Croop. You probably remember all these people too, right? [chuckles]
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 14
(I do. Although I never worked there, we were close, at Southern Hills. So then you worked there two years?)
I worked there two years. And then after that, Floyd Baribeau who was the Director of Special Ed asked me if I would be a staffing coordinator. Apparently, he needed someone to go around to the different schools and chair the meetings where we got students into special education. We had meetings and identified students’ needs and wrote and developed individualized educational programs for them, which is where I think I met you—[chuckles].
(That’s right. At a staffing.)
At a staffing, I think. 41:02 (See Marilyn, I should probably ask you what your maiden was, so you have an identity from who you were at that time.)
Marilyn Schwenn.
(Schwenn? Okay. How do you spell Schwenn?)
S-C-H-W-E-N-N.
(N-M?)
N-N. Two Ns.
(Oh, two Ns. Okay.)
(What kind of guy was—Floyd Baribeau was the director of Special Ed.)
Floyd Baribeau was the director. He was very student-centered, always wanted the best things for students, would do anything for students, visited classrooms. Every Christmas he had a turkey dinner, a big turkey dinner where he would invite all the Special Education teachers. We had a very tight group at that time.
(Because it was just a smaller group, would you say?)
I think it was—must have been a smaller group when we first started. It was right after that law was passed, and a number of people got hired, and many of us had been in graduate school together.
(How was it—go ahead, excuse me.)
And we just worked on developing a lot of programs together, you know, the teachers. We had a tight-knit group.
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 15
(And then what was the transition like, from being directly working with students, and then going to the high school and working with students, and now you did work with students to some degree but you were working more with the adults in the district, as far as being a staffing coordinator?)
Right. Well, I found the job to be very interesting. I did miss working with students, and I thought I would be working with students a lot longer, but I did continue in that role and I did that for probably, a couple years. [chuckles]
(Yeah, I often found that students sometimes were easier to work with than adults. I don’t know why. How was that transition for you? I suppose it depended, to some degree, but—)
Well, I don’t—
(You went to different buildings.)
Yeah, I went to different buildings, and worked with different staffing teams, so I was in a lot of different places. I just kind of had that focus of really integrating a lot of information and making decisions, which I did find interesting. It was a different kind of reward than working with students. Very much, but I made the transition okay.
(Was there a different atmosphere at different schools regarding meeting the special needs of these students? Were some more amenable to it, or did they all kind of embrace the fact that there was additional help?)
I wouldn’t say that they—they did not all necessarily embrace the fact. It was a process, and some schools and some teams and some individual people were easier to work with than others. Some of it was I think out of really frustration of trying to figure out how to get a student help, or by the time the student maybe got additional help, there had been a lot of issues going on. There was that part of it too I think, always—many times kind of filtering through. People and—There was a lot of times pressure from parents to do certain things that we could do or perhaps couldn’t do, and then that would become difficult—yeah, so it was just different kinds of challenges. I really found it—I just like to take it as a challenge, and figure out what’s the best way to work with all the different personalities and figure out how to help people understand what the needs of this particular student would be, and how they could help, and try to sometimes turn some of that around. I enjoyed that challenge.
45:16 (So you were a staffing coordinator for a number of years?)
Let’s see, I was a staffing coordinator I think for maybe two years, maybe three years, two or three years, and then Jim Williams was at the central office, and my office was at the central office, and he asked me if I was interested in regular education administration,
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 16 which I had given some thought to, and I’d been taking some course work in that, some additional course work, but at that time, I became Assistant Principal at Centaurus High School, and I did that. They needed another Assistant Principal over there, or Dean of Students, so the following year after that, I started in regular education, not special education.
(How did that transition take place that you switched from regular ed.—I mean special ed. to regular ed.?)
I know it’s always _____. Well, it gave me that different kind of perspective—it gave me a larger perspective on just what was necessary in a school for a lot of different things that were happening. I was primarily working with students who were having difficulty because I was the Dean—like a Dean of Students, so my Special Ed. background sometimes came in handy and my knowledge of services, and what people could do to help certain situations was good, so—
(Now, did they have it by gender still then, or was it—in other words, did you usually work with girls who were having some problems, or did you work with a cross-section of students?)
I worked with a cross-section. I did work with a cross-section. Makes me recall one of my interview questions that I was asked when I interviewed for this position of if I was going to be able to handle the male students with discipline issues. I was fairly young at the time. I was still in my 20s. My response was yes—I grew up with four brothers, and you know, I thought I could handle it.
(That was a good response.)
It was a good response. And it’s true. [chuckles]
(Were there issues at Centaurus at the time that were unique to that culture out there? And the reason I say culture is because every building has a culture. It’s not meant to be positive or negative. An identity maybe would be a better statement.)
Well, I think that Centaurus had a higher percentage of students who were from what we would describe as lower socio-economic backgrounds, and of course with that can sometimes bring some other issues. And so I think there was a lot of need out there in that regard. Centaurus was just such a wonderful place to be, and the teachers were so great to work with, and it was a very student-centered high school I found.
(Who was the principal when you were there?)
The principal was Les Mueller and was the assistant?—oh no, that was Broomfield. Who was the principal at Centaurus?
(Bill Johnson?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 17
No.
(John Knox?)
John Knox! Thank you. John Knox was the principal of Centaurus. Yeah, I think he just started there and I was only there a year, and then I went to Broomfield High School.
(Okay, so you were at — you transitioned over to—)
I transitioned to Broomfield High School and Les Mueller was the principal there and Bernie Brown was the assistant principal.
(I see. Now, was that a switch in culture, did you feel?)
You know, it was another switch in culture. You know Broomfield was probably more— I would say—seemed more middle class solid and there was very much an emphasis on sports, it seemed.
They’d just done a building modification and my first—I was given a big box of keys and I had to figure out every key that went to every door. That was my first job, because they were all thrown into a big box.
50:11 (That’s a job of an administrator that probably you don’t get a whole lot of preparation for.)
Uh-huh. Yeah, I was in training. Right, I was in training, yeah. [chuckles]
I worked there too as—once again, I was Dean of Students—I also worked with curriculum, some curriculum redesign for that school. I was—the intention was for me to stay there the next year, as far as the district was concerned, but I— high school administration is very time-consuming, which is fine, except that was when I was actually pregnant with my first child—I had gotten married the year before—and I just thought “I can’t do a full-time high school job,” so I asked at that point to look for something else. And that’s when I moved to Casey, so then I became Assistant Principal at Casey, because there wouldn’t be as many night activities.
(Describe that situation where the high school administrators—I’ll throw in my observation—is that it’s almost an impossible task because the time demands and other kinds of things.)
Mm-hmmm.
(To me, they’re under-administered at the high schools.)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 18
Right.
(How would you—)
Well, my experience then was that high schools—there were many things that I loved about being in a high school, but there’s also so many activities at night. There must be five nights a week where there’s a high school activity, and there always has to be at least one, maybe two, administrators on duty, so you’re really there all day long, and you’re there two or three nights a week, was my experience. I enjoyed being at those activities, and I enjoyed the football games or the plays or whatever. You become part of a community. It’s such a great community to work in, but it is very time-consuming.
(So then you went back home, to Casey?) I went back home to Casey, where I— I know— [chuckles]
(What was that like?)
Well, you know, there’s still two teachers there—
(There were?)
There were two teachers there who were my teachers when I was a student at Casey.
(Who were they?)
That was Fred Wostenberg and Tom Keplar.
(Did they give you a hard time?)
No, they were great. They were really great, I must say. Yeah. And they were both very involved in the union—you know, the union at that time—and so they were the union reps and the faculty. Luckily, it all worked out. Yeah, it was great. It was just—really one of my most wonderful memories working in the district was my Casey years. We had such a great faculty, and did so many things to try and really get to that whole emotional kind of development of students.
(Who was the principal when you were there at that time?)
Let’s see, when I was the assistant principal, it was Ken Reiter. Ken Reiter was the principal.
(Had the culture changed, as far as the students and that part of Boulder, as far as who you drew from?)
Casey had a very diverse population then. We had an ESL program, and we got a lot of students who had just come to this country. We had a fair amount of Cambodian
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 19 students, and that was so interesting, and Hmong, because of their whole culture that they brought with them, and just a lot of very interesting things happening at that time.
(Is it because of the geographic location of Casey? Did a lot of the Cambodian and Hmong families move into that area?)
It might have been partly the geographic location, but we also—the district had some services at that school—we had a lot of programs at Casey, a number of district programs for some students. We had what was called the SLIC program [Students with Limited Intellectual Capacity], that was the terminology used then, for special education students—self-contained program. We had English as Second Language programs. Just brought in a lot of diversity.
55:01 (Were they integrated into the school community quite well? Or were there some barriers—how did you see that?)
They were integrated quite well. I mean, that staff did an amazing job, and they always wanted to do more, and I think that was one of the great things about being there. One of the difficult things was that oftentimes when there was a student at another Junior High who’s having problems, we’d get a visit, and that student would be transferred to our school, and it just really became somewhat overwhelming because you can’t really help anyone if, you know, you have too many kids to help. So we had to have a nice little talk with Dave Jansen about that process, and it did switch.
(So you became kind of a magnet school for those students, and it started to become overwhelming?)
It started to, because we just needed to have either more help, or we needed to have everybody take a look at meeting the needs of students who were in their geographic area. The other difficult thing was it was open campus on the Junior Highs, and I think it was maybe the following year—I was Assistant Principal there for two years, and then Ken Reiter left, and I became Principal—it was during the time when we decided to close the campuses for lunch, and that was a pretty drastic step to take with the students.
(And what caused this change that you felt necessary?)
Actually, attendance issues, behavioral issues after lunch. Maybe students would leave and they wouldn’t come back. And there were also unfortunately some car accidents that happened.
(Car accidents?)
Car accidents—a couple car accidents that happened during lunch when students were off lunch. They weren’t driving, but—yeah, and it was kind of a district issue. Kids got hurt.
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 20
(So did that—did you feel pressure then from certain parents or teachers or administration to change from an open campus to a closed campus? I’m sure the students didn’t put pressure on you to do that.)
No, not at all. I don’t remember so much pressure as that it was just a very clear understanding that that’s what needed to happen. It just didn’t seem right anyway to have that much time off campus. Casey was near 7-11—there was a 7-11, and there were a couple stores around there—and really they were complaining too about kids—the students loitering. I mean, they’re Junior High age. So, just things that happened that shouldn’t be happening at lunch.
(Did other Junior Highs have an open campus at that time?)
Hmm, I’m trying to remember. I think it was, I think it was district-wide open campus, but I’m not positive.
(So, how did you deal with the students when you had to close the campus?)
Well, there were a number of things that happened. It was closed campus, there was emphasis put on dress. We were trying to establish a little bit different dress expectation. And tightening down some hallway pass things. So there were a number of things that happened. Well, the students had a walk-out, some of them, and it was on the front page of the Camera. It was a big deal. We set up some negotiating meetings with some of them, and it really worked out to be much better, a much better environment after that. We established some lines of communication, some expectations, some agreements—
59:13 (What was your emotional reaction to be on—you know it’s a sad state, but that’s when administrators and schools get their publicity usually, on the front page anyhow. The back page sometimes has positive things. So how did you react to that? Did you know this was going to be an issue that was going to be newsworthy?)
No, but we were right in downtown Boulder, so we had the Boulder Daily Camera there quite often. [chuckles]
(Oh, okay.)
I think that happened when I was assistant principal. Ken was there—Reiter was principal. Well, I don’t know what I thought. I was a pretty new administrator. I thought just deal with it, get through this, figure out what to do next. “Come back in the school.” No. [laughs] “Get back in here, please! We’ll talk about this.”
(That must be an interesting experience! Did you have preliminary knowledge that this was going to occur? What percentage of students walked out, would you say?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 21
I want to say it was probably—it could have been 20 to 25%, maybe 25% right out on the field. It seemed like a lot of students to me. Yeah. But there were a lot of other—I think that almost needed to happen for things to get established in the right direction. There were so many other great things that were happening along the way. We had maybe one of the first big multi-cultural fairs to try and really highlight all the different cultures we had in the school in a positive way. All the kids got passports, and families—all the families brought food in, and brought their handicrafts in. It was just a big community event, so it really a lot of—there were a lot of other things going on there too. Casey was just a really unique wonderful school to be part of, because of all the diversity, and the richness and community involvement. And the teachers—the faculty was amazing.
(So was it an ethnic walk-out, of a certain—)
No.
(It was general?)
It was general.
(But it was a catalyst for a lot of positive things happening.)
It was, I think. Uh-huh.
(So where did you go from Casey?)
Well, from Casey I went even more back home. Then—okay, let’s see—I was principal at Casey. I think I was there maybe three years, and then I was going to have my second child, Elyse, and so I thought, you know, I really wanted to—I ran into a person who wanted to do a job share, and that was Kathy Berman, and she was the principal at Foothill, and so we got to talking, and we decided, well, how about if I go to Foothill, and we’ll do a job share, which I thought would work out perfect for me, with two children. And she wanted to do it, so I went to Foothill and did a job share for five years with Kathy Berman. So, back to my original elementary school. [chuckles]
(Wow, that’s interesting. What kind of skills—to job share, obviously, it seems to me you have to really communicate with that other person—)
Yes.
(—and have probably similar values as far as how to handle things.)
Yes.
(So how did that work out?)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 22
Well, it worked out great. We set up a system. We met with the—first of all we had to develop a proposal for the district. This had not been done before. For administrators. So we had to develop a proposal, and we did is identify all the tasks that a principal would have to do, and we divided those, and we developed a communication plan, and an overlap—we had a half-day, theoretically, of overlap—so we could follow up. And we made an agreement that if we were dealing with a particular issue with a student or a parent that we would follow that through; it wouldn’t really matter if it was our day off, or whatever. So we made ourselves pretty available—it worked out great. We did have similar values. Sometimes there were differences, so we just kind of had to joke, “Well, you got your way last time, so this time, I’m getting my way.” [chuckles]
But the faculty, there were maybe three sets of job-sharing faculty at Foothill so they kind of understood the process, and they all worked with it. It worked out great, I think.
(Yeah, it would take some—go ahead—)
Well, the parents—there were some—we had a meeting with the Foothill parents about it. We wanted them to be supportive of it, and there were some questions of course, as there should be, about how that’s going to work out that they—. Some were reluctant, but they agreed to support it, and they ended up really feeling it was a good situation for the students, that they got two “more than half-time” people. [chuckles]
(I was going to say—I was going to say, that seems to be the way those things work out.)
Yeah.
65:00 (Do you think the expectation was from the administration that, I don’t know, that we’re going to get two “more than” really, or you just almost have to agree to that, that it’s not going to be 50% that I’m there.)
Mmm-hmmm. Right. We both wanted it to be successful, so we both just did what it took, and it worked out for—well, we did it for five years.
(And you were the forerunners, you were the test—)
We were the test case.
(For administration. You said the teachers were doing that.)
Mmm-hmmm, for administration.
(So then, what happened in your career? This is just fascinating. I’ve known you for a long time, but I didn’t know this.)
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 23
[chuckles] I know. Then after that, I went to the district office in curriculum, and I was still part-time, and they wanted someone to be a liaison with the curriculum department and the principals. It was a very kind of beginning of when there was a lot of discussion about changing the curriculum in the district, or having the curriculum being more uniform. There were just a lot of issues starting to come up around the district with that. So I started working in the curriculum office and going to the principals meetings and communicating between the curriculum division and the principals. I did that for maybe a year, I want to say.
(Did you find that across the district there were discrepancies as far as what skills students were being taught in different schools—)
There were. I mean there were different things at different schools. There was a curriculum that had been developed years ago, however, some of that had not gotten fully distributed, or maybe new teachers—you know there was turnover and new teachers didn’t get it. They would follow certain expectations, but implementation was different. So there was starting to be discussion about how could a student be in the same class here and get this, and then move over here and then they get a different curriculum.
(Was there a particular discipline where it wasn’t as well coordinated, would you say? Math, Science, Social Studies, or—)
I would say maybe more—I would say English and Social Studies. Math is pretty sequential. Yeah.
(So would you say the impetus of this came from teachers, or was it parents, or the district? Why did they feel the curriculum needed to be tweaked?)
I think it was a lot of different factions at the time. At the time too, there started to be this movement “The National In-State Level Toward Standards,” [later corrected by narrator: there started to be this movement toward standards-based curriculum] and what was often referred to as a core curriculum. There was discussion about two systems there, in that was also when charter schools started.
(So what year would this have been roughly?)
This would have been probably nineteen ninety—let me think here—’96. ’95 ’96, I want to say.
(So how did that transpire then? You had perhaps a good background of bringing people together to communicate, sounds like you did.)
Well, I did that, and then—I’m trying to think—I think it was about the mid ‘90s. Then I want to say that is when Dean Damon became superintendant, and there was a lot of— actually, he became superintendant before this—he was a big advocate of what’s called site-based management. So, perhaps for some people, whether it be teachers, community
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 24 members, parents—they possibly saw that as having buildings making even more decisions about curriculum than they were making, although it wasn’t necessarily—that wasn’t necessarily the correct interpretation of that policy.
69:51 There was a lot of discussion then of—there was site-based management, there were core curriculum standards, charter schools, vouchers, a lot more, I would say, community involvement and discussion about what the whole education system was, and what was happening in the classrooms.
At that point in time, the director for curriculum left, and there was a position open and I was—well, I was asked to do that or apply for that job, and that became my next job for the next maybe two years. At that point in time I was executive director of curriculum, and that’s when the standards were being developed in all the different subject areas, that’s when we put all the committees together for different teacher groups to develop the standards and curriculum. There was a lot of community input, and there was a lot of community discussion and controversy over what the standards should be, what the curriculum should be, how it should be implemented.
(What was the controversial part of—I assume—I always think of the health part of it, you know. I interviewed Lou Smario, and of course he—that was in the ‘70s however when the sex education was such an issue. What were other controversial kinds of things that people saw—where there was disagreement as far as how the curriculum should be set up?)
Well, one was reading, for example—how to teach reading in elementary schools. And so, they don’t have to be seen as that different, but I think the approach could be seen as different. One was whole language, and then one was the more traditional phonics approach to teaching reading. So that was a huge controversy. Really they don’t have to be different, but they were presented and seen as very different. Some people wanted much more emphasis on phonics and the phonetic approach to teaching reading, and other people thought that whole language didn’t include that. That became a big controversy.
There was even math instruction—almost every subject area really—what to include in social studies. I mean, should social studies curriculum—some people thought it had too much of a Euro-centric approach, so that was a discussion. Every subject area, now that you mention it.
Yeah, that really brought out—you know, all of that discussion really brought out a lot of different factions in the community. That’s when there was a school board election. And even the school board had very different opinions on what should happen and how things should happen. The school board meetings were usually jam-packed. That’s when they started to be televised. We had to go before the board and present the standards or the curriculum. There was always a lot of discussion; very different points of view. Rather contentious.
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 25
(How did Dean Damon—how did he handle—that was in the ‘90s and there was a fair amount—the board was somewhat divided, and so on. How did Dean handle that—the school board meetings and so on, where there were a lot of differences?)
There was a protocol to follow in the school board meetings, so I think that he did his role as superintendant, and tried to keep things as—he was a facilitator, he was very much a facilitator, and tried to maintain that during the board meetings, and tried to make sure the people were prepared with the information and what the protocol would be, and how that would be handled at the board meetings.
(Was there a good outcome of most of this? You’re very positive about the—I hear you saying that things—catalyst happened, and there were positive things. How about in this particular situation?)
Well, I think in this situation, I do think that it’s always important for a district to look at curriculum, to review curriculum, to be accountable, to look at whether or not students are achieving what they can achieve. I think that’s all very important. So I do think that happened. I think it happened—
I’m not so sure that all of it happened the way that it needed to happen, because I think there were unwarranted attacks against teachers and educators. I think perhaps—not in every case, but I think what—I think the district is in a very good place. I just think it was a very difficult time period to go through because of how some things happened, I guess is what I would say. There was just a lot of contention, a lot of blaming, a lot of distraction—you know, I think teachers do the best they can in the classroom, and that’s what teachers are there for, and when they have to be distracted sometimes by the politics of things, it’s difficult.
76:00 (You were then, in a lot of your job, you were in that role of being kind of the center of bringing things back together again?)
Mmm-hmm.
(What qualities did you have that apparently the administration and the community saw you as that catalyst to be able to pull things back together? What skills did you have that did that?)
That’s a good question. [chuckles]
(That’s okay—.)
I think, coming through the district, and understanding the community, I really tried to think about really what was best for kids in the classroom and knowing how could we
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 26 accomplish that together, and just work through that in a collaborative way, but get some really good outcomes. It was just a focus.
(Are there other kinds of things—you made some notes—are there things we need to include that we haven’t talked about? I don’t want to miss anything.)
Let’s see—my last job, after moving from curriculum, I’ll just wrap that up.
(Okay, sorry. That’s fine.)
I was there for about two years, and then I moved to assistant superintendant of secondary education. In that role, I oversaw all the middle schools and high schools. When I first got that job, Front Range Community College had been merged with the technical college, so my first job, the board wanted that de-merged and separated, so that was my first job I did during the first summer I was there. That was very interesting working with the community college and trying to figure out is this your computer or our computer? I know that head of Front Range, Phil Buck, he and I just made an agreement, “Look, we’re just going to forget about all the bickering that’s going on, and just let’s make it work. We’ll figure it out.” And we did, and it worked out okay.
After that then we rebuilt the tech center and had to rehire the teachers, rebuild the programs, get Arapahoe Ridge going as an alternative high school, implement some other programs there. That was kind of the first line of business with that job.
(That was a lot.)
And then I retired after a couple years. [laughs]
(Well, Marilyn, there’s no time limit, but I did say to you around an hour. That’s not a limit, we can keep going on and on and on, but that sure has gone fast, and your detail about—especially being not a Boulder native in the true sense, but in the real sense that— what, three years of age you moved to Boulder?—it’s a unique perspective on things. There are not too many people who have lived in Boulder most of their lives like that. Well, is there anything else?)
I don’t think so. I’ve loved my career in Boulder, meeting people like you.
(It was fun. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this. It’s a fascinating story that you have to tell.)
Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
80:06 [End of interview.]
OH 1834V, interview with Marilyn Marinelli, page 27