By Scott Taylor,Staff Writer

LEWISTON – The school’s curriculum called for a community in transition, a once-robust place that had fallen on hard times and is now coming back.

For teacher Dan Wellehan, that described the Twin Cities, where he grew up.

“It’s the perfect example of a place that’s on the rise again,” Wellehan said. “It all dovetails nicely with what we’re teaching.”

Wellehan, a 1993 Edward Little graduate and a 1999 Bates College graduate, brought eight ninth-graders from a Massachusetts-based school to Lewiston Monday to tour the old mills and learn about the area’s history.

Shackleton School is a private, expeditionary school with a home base in Ashby, Mass., on the outskirts of Fitchburg. Students spend a third of the school year on the road.

“It stays with you so much more than if you just read about it,” said student Lisa Mae-Brown, a New York native from Queens. “You read and read, but seeing it up close, it seems like you really learn it. You feel it.”

Every school year looks at different themes. For Wellehan and his teaching partner, Colby Campbell, this year’s theme is “A Sense of Place.”

The ninth-graders began the course in the fall, studying their own personal histories before going to New York City for several days to learn about immigration.

The next part of the curriculum was to consider how communities start and how they grow and age. In Lewiston’s case, Wellehan said he wanted to show what happens when a community starts coming back from the brink.

“I have friends who work with the city and L/A Arts, so they tell me what’s happening,” he said.

The students met with Lewiston community development staff Monday in the Bates Mill to talk about Lewiston’s history, from building the mills to the recession that followed when they shut down and local efforts to revive the community.

Next, they toured the L-A Museum in the Bates complex. They were staying at the JED Collective in Greene overnight before heading off to New Hampshire Tuesday.