Learning lurks in Lauri Winterfeldt’s bloodline. She always knew, she says, that – inspired by her grandmother –her future lay in education. “To my mother’s mind, a teacher was the best thing you could be,” she remembers.

But, certain as that direction seemed, it took a few years and the perfect mentors to lead her to the right spot in Moorhead Community Education, where she has reveled in her role for three decades.

Today, Lauri can see the clear path that eventually brought to head the district’s program of family, youth and adult non-classroom education. Back when the Fergus Falls woman had just graduated from North Dakota State University, though, the direction that would be right for her was a good deal less obvious.

“I graduated in home economics education – a degree that doesn’t even exist anymore,” Lauri says. “But my first year in the classroom in a rural North Dakota high school wasn’t what I expected. The students didn’t seem to be excited to learn. It confused me. How could school and learning bore them?”

So she resolved to try to reach them before that boredom set in. She returned to school, this time at Minnesota State University Moorhead, to add an elementary certificate to her teaching license, then spent several years as a substitute teacher in Fargo. “And that’s how I found out that elementary students aren’t necessarily all that excited about learning, either,” she reports.

Back one more time to MSUM. This time, she studied with near-legend Dr. Dorothy Dodds to earn kindergarten certification. In her first year among the youngest students, she also started teaching ECFE – early childhood family education – in Moorhead … and there it was! “That’s where I knew I could finally make a difference,” she says. “It was exactly what I was looking for – talking with parents about making their homes learning places for their children. Look at infants: They’re little learning machines from the very beginning, absorbing everything around them. If parents nurture that, they can keep it alive for a lifetime.”

Community Ed, the umbrella for Moorhead ECFE classes, is anavenue to carry that love of learning forward. While the majority of residents of the Moorhead school district associate its name with adult enrichment classes – sessions on everything from art to Zumba, mostly taught in the evenings from September through June – the program’s reach extends much farther.

Moorhead Community Ed, the director explains, includes a vast array of learning opportunities developed for different age groups outside school hours, separate from regular K-12 education. In addition to ECFE, which she went on to manage in 1988, much of its focus is directed toward after-school and summer camps for children from elementary through high schools, ranging from sports and fitness to art, STEAM and Spanish.

Adults can enroll in basic education and English-as-a-second-language courses. Other sessions are designed for adults with disabilities, including cooking, fitness walking and social experiences. AARP’s SMART Driver classes for aging motorists are on the schedule, too.

But it’s clear that adult enrichment classes are near the top of Lauri’s list of favorites. Since taking over the reins of Community Ed in 1999, she’s continued predecessors Rose Andersen and Mary Davies’ tradition of recruiting hometown experts to instruct their neighbors in whatever piques their curiosity: Art and crafts, from quilting to calligraphy, sketching to woodcarving, knitting to knife-making. Cooking, of course – crockpots to cake decorating. Computers. Personal finance. Local history and heritage. And then, too, there are surprises like Beatbox 101 and chair yoga.

Lauri is especially proud of the caliber of her teachers. Asked to compare the local program with the rest of the state’s, she simply states, “We’re the best.” (Then she laughs. But she’s not really kidding.) By year’s end, around 140 men and women will have worked with some 6,500 students enrolled in enrichment sessions.

“I’m exceptionally proud of our district. We have a mind-boggling embarrassment of riches,” she says. That includes not only individuals willing to teach the classes, but also local businesses who cooperate with Community Ed for strictly noncommercial learning opportunities either in the schools or at their places of business, as well as community groups and institutions like the Rourke Gallery.

Community Ed operates under the auspices of the school district and its board, but it’s separate from Moorhead’s K-12 schools, with its own $1.5 million annual budget. A small part of its funding comes from the state, based on $5.42 for every local resident. Private and public grants help underwrite certain initiatives. The largest share of revenue is funded through a separate line of the local school tax levy.

The final substantial chunk comes from the tuition fees charged for adult enrichment classes. Unlike ECFE, ESL and adult basic education, the “fun” courses are required to be entirely self-supporting. Lauri notes that, while all involve tuition plus fees for any necessary supplies, the local cost is far below those charged in the Twin Cities and many other school districts.

While she’s passionate about the pleasures of leading others to learn, Lauri is an omnivore herself when it comes to subjects that excite her. During her two terms on the Moorhead City Council (2001-2009), she was as famed for her clicking knitting needles as for her work on projects that still make her proud, like the city’s nonsmoking ordinance and development of the Bluestem Center for the Arts. She quilts, reads voraciously and loves to travel with husband Jim Miller, a database designer for Medtronic who telecommutes from their Moorhead home. She has two children, David, 32, Fargo, and Helena (named for her teacher great-grandmother), 27, St. Peter, Minn.

And more. Lauri has sung and danced in the F-M Community Theatre’s Silver Follies and other productions. She just completed her second term representing the northwest on the Minnesota Community Education Association. She serves on the boards of River Keepers and the Heritage Education Commission. She is a member of the committee organizing “One Book One Community” and a past member of the Moorhead Library and Lake Agassiz Regional Library boards.

Still, she says the greatest passion of her life is mentoring other women, passing on the support and encouragement her two predecessors gave to her.

“I’m endlessly grateful for what other women have done for me,” she says. “Rose Andersen and Mary Davies, the two who held this job before me, made me the person I am today, both personally and professionally. My daughter tells me, ‘Things started to happen for you when you met Rose,’ and she’s not wrong. I can’t overemphasize what a difference those two made in my life, in my goals and aspirations and what I thought I might be able to do.

“Most of us are fortunate to have even one mentor in our lives,” she says. “Lucky me! I had two.”

For more information on Community Ed’s fall classes for students, families and adults, go to moorheadschools.org and click the community tab. A catalog of all offerings is mailed to everyone in the district three times a year; to request a copy, call 218-284-3200.