St. Paul teacher made this school his home, and the neighborhood helped him thrive

For 31 years, Tim Chase has taught science in the same classroom at Murray Middle School in St. Paul, and he begins class on the same battered stool.

"Good morning," he says to his students. "It's good to see you."

Chase retires next month as an award-winning champion of science and the environment — a sturdy hand in a St. Anthony Park neighborhood accustomed to excellence in such endeavors.

The mix of students at Murray has grown more diverse, but the school's message to kids is clear: We're more alike than different. And a lot of the best unifying stuff is happening outside of the classroom.

Outward bound

Among the schools whose kids feed into Murray is St. Anthony Park Elementary, and years ago, when Jon Schumacher's children attended, there was a rite of passage: an extended field trip to Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center in Finland, Minn.

Murray partners with the center, too. Students take in the streams and other habitats. They tackle a ropes course encouraging teamwork, trust and risk-taking.

Schumacher is a former executive director of the St. Anthony Park Community Foundation who served four years as a St. Paul school board member, including two as its chairman. For years, he accompanied the Murray students to Wolf Ridge.

Many kids, he said, came from outside St. Anthony Park, and together they'd ride five hours from the city deep into nature. Eyes were wide open and adrenaline pumping, Schumacher said, and there in the center of it was soft-spoken Chase, firmly in control.

"You could barely hear him if you weren't within 10 feet," Schumacher said. "He'd wait. He was so patient with those kids. And he'd start laying things out in ways they could understand. He's really an amazing guy."

One night sitting around the fireplace, he said, Chase pitched the idea of launching an environmental education program eventually dubbed E2. It'd utilize Wolf Ridge and put kids on track to accelerated coursework in high school — students who otherwise might not have known such opportunities were available.

Schumacher rounded up the $46,000 in contributions needed to get the program running. When he retired, he cited E2 as one of the two projects he was most proud of in his 20 years heading the foundation.

The program would play a part, too, in Chase being named environmental educator of the year in 2014 by the Minnesota Association for Environmental Education.

His motivation?

"You see the diversity that's within my classroom," he said. "Not all students are seeing all of Minnesota. It's not just two downtowns. It's not just their neighborhood. I wanted everyone to have a feel for what Minnesota is ... to immerse them in that experience."

Teacher handoff

Back in the day, the Murray Middle School science fair was legendary, "developing scientists and intelligent, informed citizens for decades," Chase wrote in 2014. When he began there, he'd just left behind a failed sales career. No better place to be, right?

But the timing worked against him. He arrived in the middle of the school year, and still shell-shocked from his experience in the business world, he struggled to connect with students whose teacher had left them.

Chase thought he should stick around to teach summer school, but was unsure of himself, he recalled. So, he turned to a veteran instructor, the late Johnny Bland, for advice, and was told: "You're going to spend time with your wife. You come back next fall. Those students will think you've been here forever, and it'll be better next year."

Soon he had his confidence, and 30 years later, his imprint is everywhere. It's not just in the Wolf Ridge field trips his former student teacher, Nick Altringer, now leads, but it's in the garden beds out back that produce vegetables for a culinary skills class at Como Park Senior High.

Last week, Altringer worked with honors students to build new wood-framed garden beds. Some kids drilled, some wielded shovels, and nice shoes were muddied.

Altringer, too, entered teaching as a second career, and served as Chase's student teacher when the E2 program took off. He became a full-time instructor, and realized that by being part of such an accomplished science team — Mary Crowley and Erin Dooley are there, too — he could make great things happen now.

A summer fishing guide, Altringer has installed a trout tank in his classroom. Earlier this month, he brought his students to Cenaiko Lake at Coon Rapids Dam Regional Park to release more than 200 trout. It was just a one-day trip, he said, "and we froze to death, but they're going to love the memory of it."

Altringer now teaches in Bland's former classroom.

Soon, Chase will give his retirement speech, and he'll reference Bland, thank his teammates and share memories of "the toughest job one could ever love."

But he lives near Murray, walks to school, in fact, and the staff can expect to see him volunteer there, he says. And when next year's Wolf Ridge trip comes around, "I will be on the bus," Chase said.