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SPEAKER: August may not be prime time for a history lesson for most teenagers, many are savoring the last days of summer before school starts. But last week, a few dozen Saint Paul middle schoolers spent some time in the woods for lessons on racial equity, leadership, and an up-close look at history. Solvejg Wastvedt has the story.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: It's dark on a trail at Wilder Forest in Marine on St. Croix. 17 of us, twist down the path. Trees press close on either side.

From my spot in the back of the line, I can barely see a few people in front of me. We hold hands so we don't trip. It's quiet, just stick snapping under our feet and leaves crunching.

[SHOUTING]

The shout comes out of nowhere. We take off running, which is hard on an uneven trail where you can't see anything. A whip cracks. There are chains rattling. Our guide goes off trail, so we follow. We crouch in some bushes.

SPEAKER: Hush your mouths. [SHUSHING]

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: I let go of the sweaty palm of the middle schooler in front of me.

SPEAKER: Nobody make a sound.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Most of these people huddled around me are middle schoolers from Saint Paul. We're out here for a simulation of the Underground Railroad, the secret network that helped slaves escape from the American South to freedom. A local nonprofit runs the simulation with its crew of about 12 people One of them, our guide at the head of the line, doesn't have to tell us the shouts we hear are slave catchers.

SPEAKER: I know they're out here somewhere.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: The voices fade. They've gone up the path. So we get moving again because there's lots to do on this trip of about 3/4 of a mile.

We stop to meet historical characters who tell us stories drawn from slave narratives and a book by the Black writer and abolitionist William Still. We stop at a safe house run by Quaker abolitionist Lucretia Mott. Then a woman portraying Harriet Tubman ushers us into a shelter with her gas lantern.

SPEAKER: Everybody here?

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: The students crowd around the light.

SPEAKER: Y'all all right?

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Before Tubman tells us about the hundreds of slaves she helped escape North, she has each of us grab another person's hand.

SPEAKER: I want you to tell that person this. I want you to make them this promise, and this is real serious. I want you to tell them, if you don't make it to freedom, I don't make it to freedom. Go on.

ALL: If you don't make it to feedom, I don't make it to freedom.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: This whole nighttime escapade is actually just one piece of a multi-day camp. The whole point is to train middle schoolers to be leaders to promote racial equity in their schools. Hours earlier in one of the camp buildings, things look much more like your typical educational summer camp. It's a bright, air-conditioned, cricket-free classroom with magic markers and that big white poster paper.

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Earlier in the week, the students practice discussing race and learned about leadership and identity. Now they brainstorm how to take those lessons back to school. High-school-aged counselors like Cyprus Kenny lead each group.

SPEAKER: What do you think could make your school better? What do you think could make your school like community stronger?

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

SPEAKER: Less ignorance, I think, around race.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Seventh grader Sanam Achea reads some ideas from her notebook. Sanam goes to Highland Park Middle school. She says at an ideal school, students would have mandatory conversations about race. Her group and others call for making history of traditionally-marginalized people part of school's core curriculum.

Those history lessons are a big part of this camp. Students did simulations on Hmong immigration and the Dakota uprising of 1862 as well as the Underground Railroad. Saint Paul's Patrick Duffy who's leading the camp says the experiences make those stories about more than oppression.

PATRICK DUFFY: You've got a group of interracial people that were working around the clock to try to help others achieve their freedom and to really combat systemic racism at its deepest form and for over a century.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: And Duffy says, students will take what they learn back in the fall.

PATRICK DUFFY: These students are going to go back to their schools, and in some ways be an Underground Railroad of their own. They're going to be working to help others be allies to others and also really look at how they can be a symbol of freedom.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: That history is alive outside with the crickets chirping. Our group stands in an open field for a break under the brilliant stars. When we get moving again, we go back in the woods this time, down a hill. I might be wrong, but I think it smells like lake water.

[GUNSHOT]

A shot and shouting come out of nowhere like before. Running down the hill, I try so hard not to trip. Suddenly, I see where that lake smell was coming from.

[WATER SPLASHING]

SPEAKER: [INAUDIBLE] You are you doing great. Come on now.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: We go right through the water. On the edge of a pond, it's about waist deep, and there's probably about a foot of mud on the bottom. My feet get sucked down with every step. Everybody thrashes around toward the other bank.

[WATER SPLASHING]

We make it up scramble into the grass. But I can't help wondering about all this-- the lake, the gunshot sounds. We're learning. I know that. But where's the line between education and pretending to experience something we will never understand?

Later, I run that by the man in charge of this simulation. Chris Crutchfield has led the program since the late '80s. Crutchfield is a big African-American guy with a great sense of humor. But about the simulation, he's serious. He makes that clear to me and to the students. And he's obviously thought a lot about my question.

CHRIS CRUTCHFIELD: The last thing we want people to think is that this is a game. And the last thing we want people to think is that this is a movable play through the woods. It's not a drama. It's really trying to-- it's an education program trying to use the environment to help people really have strong understanding about not just the Underground Railroad, but about freedom and what it means.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Crutchfield says, he does the program to honor his ancestors. But he says, everybody has struggle for freedom in their past or present.

CHRIS CRUTCHFIELD: Hopefully, by doing this program, we can help others to see that and to empathize with that and to make it a transformative experience.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Back in the classroom afterwards, the students seem like they're digesting that lesson. Michael Sims is soft spoken. He's going into seventh grade. After the discussion, he tells me he was so scared out on the trail, he was shaking.

SPEAKER: I didn't get to experience how our ancestors had to do it, but they had to walk for-- they had to walk for a longer period of time.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Michael says doing the program changed how he thinks about this history. And he says, he'll bring the lessons back to his classmates.

SPEAKER: Like, I'm going to tell them, like, if they like act wrong or something, I'm going to tell them about history and what their ancestors did for us to be here today.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Near the end of the trail, it's getting hard to focus. We're tired. The woods are dark. There's no moon. It must be after midnight, but the last storyteller motions us closer.

SPEAKER: If you all get freedom, y'all got to promise me that you will try to show others the right way, too. You ain't got to show them which way is North, but they going to watch you with your actions.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: His words nudge us back to our real lives.

SPEAKER: Can y'all make me a promise y'all will try to show others the right way if you get freedom?

ALL: Yes.

SPEAKER: Africans?

ALL: Yes.

SPEAKER: All right, North is exactly this way.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: A lantern glows just out of the woods. We run toward it.

SPEAKER: --this way.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: The path broadens and flattens out of the trees.

SPEAKER: All right.

SPEAKER: All right.

SOLVEJG WASTVEDT: Covering education, I'm Solvejg Wastvedt, Minnesota Public Radio News.

SPEAKER: By the way, you can see photographs by going to our website mprnews.org.