My teaching partner and I, aided by the custodial, tech and maintenance folks, have been planning and working hard this week to get ready for the opening of the Wahtonka Community School - an alternative high school located in the Chenowith Area of the Dalles, Oregon. We are going to be working with two other awesome staff, our secretary and an ESL (now termed EL) assistant. Our school will host 55 students, many of whom have had a tough go at regular school. We will be using Place Based Education as our guiding light - with elements of Service Learning, Project Based Learning, use of mentors from the community, using the community and surrounding area as our textbook (sorry Texas, no paycheck - we are keeping our dollars local).
Many community volunteers, including parents and future students, helped us to get our raised bed garden-farm built and ready for planting a few months ago out at the Petersburg School Tennis Court out of town - a gorgeous site with high fencing, water and ample sunlight - thanks to our partners at Mid Columbia Council of Governments, the STRUT Program, and Dufur School District for making it happen. Our plan is to have each student show up the first day of school (July 7th - we are 4 days a week year round!) and get introduced to their 4 foot by 4 foot square garden plot, which thanks to a group of students has been planted and tended the past two months. Produce from the plots will be sold starting in August in the neighborhood of our school.
The computer lab should be done by tomorrow, and our Patrons from East Cascade Electric are donating their time to get the Maker Lab wired up and ready for use.
I am hoping you will find our journey - mistakes, blunders, discoveries, joys, pains, and lessons learned - useful and inspiring. The seeds for this school were planted for me 20 years ago when I started teaching in a public high school, and felt like I was wearing a suit three sizes too small - from the bell schedule to the irrelevance of much of what I taught kids - I knew that there had to be something better (at least for me - there are many great teachers in our public high schools - it is the system in which they work that needs total re-creation). I have been guided by the thoughts and passions of many great educators - among them Greg Smith from Lewis and Clark (a national treasure, author, mentor and synergist for PBE), Michael Becker and Patrick Getchis from Hood River (former The Dalles High Teachers who did amazing things with project based learning and kids, and Stanley Felderman (our Data Guy) who is very much like the janitor from Dilbert. I also want to give a blanket thank you to all of the offers of help from the community - it has been overwhelming the amount of aid we have received in getting this new adventure up and going.
Stay tuned for updates - the best ones I am sure will be coming from our students as we take out our electrician's pliers and snip away their expectations of what schooling is, and then allow them to re-wire their circuitry in a very different learning environment.
Thursday, June 26, 2014
T Minus 2
My teaching partner and I, aided by the custodial, tech and maintenance folks, have been planning and working hard this week to get ready for the opening of the Wahtonka Community School - an alternative high school located in the Chenowith Area of the Dalles, Oregon. We are going to be working with two other awesome staff, our secretary and an ESL (now termed EL) assistant. Our school will host 55 students, many of whom have had a tough go at regular school. We will be using Place Based Education as our guiding light - with elements of Service Learning, Project Based Learning, use of mentors from the community, using the community and surrounding area as our textbook (sorry Texas, no paycheck - we are keeping our dollars local).
Many community volunteers, including parents and future students, helped us to get our raised bed garden-farm built and ready for planting a few months ago out at the Petersburg School Tennis Court out of town - a gorgeous site with high fencing, water and ample sunlight - thanks to our partners at Mid Columbia Council of Governments, the STRUT Program, and Dufur School District for making it happen. Our plan is to have each student show up the first day of school (July 7th - we are 4 days a week year round!) and get introduced to their 4 foot by 4 foot square garden plot, which thanks to a group of students has been planted and tended the past two months. Produce from the plots will be sold starting in August in the neighborhood of our school.
The computer lab should be done by tomorrow, and our Patrons from East Cascade Electric are donating their time to get the Maker Lab wired up and ready for use.
I am hoping you will find our journey - mistakes, blunders, discoveries, joys, pains, and lessons learned - useful and inspiring. The seeds for this school were planted for me 20 years ago when I started teaching in a public high school, and felt like I was wearing a suit three sizes too small - from the bell schedule to the irrelevance of much of what I taught kids - I knew that there had to be something better (at least for me - there are many great teachers in our public high schools - it is the system in which they work that needs total re-creation). I have been guided by the thoughts and passions of many great educators - among them Greg Smith from Lewis and Clark (a national treasure, author, mentor and synergist for PBE), Michael Becker and Patrick Getchis from Hood River (former The Dalles High Teachers who did amazing things with project based learning and kids, and Stanley Felderman (our Data Guy) who is very much like the janitor from Dilbert. I also want to give a blanket thank you to all of the offers of help from the community - it has been overwhelming the amount of aid we have received in getting this new adventure up and going.
Stay tuned for updates - the best ones I am sure will be coming from our students as we take out our electrician's pliers and snip away their expectations of what schooling is, and then allow them to re-wire their circuitry in a very different learning environment.
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