Back to School wit' Youse!

This is not against the rules. It is considered an indigenous form of alternative transportation.















We love our school, Metropolitan Learning Center. It's a small, alternative K x 12 school of about 500 students within the Portland Public School System. It's been around for 30+ years in a old brick building up against a small city park. It's a gentrified urban neighborhood of old apartments-turned-condos, beautiful foursquares with no yard to speak of, victorian multiplexes, and a couple of commercial streets which mix corporate whoremongering with old school funkyness in a charming war of mercantile philosophy.

MLC uses the Experiential Learning model, which means that the kids are constantly out in the
thick of it, learning on their feet. Parents and friends teach elective classes to 1st x 8th graders in areas like lego robotics, knitting, capoeira, songwriting, theater, every kind of art imaginable, film, and classes with names like "VOLCANO!"














Each month features an All School Gathering led by one of the grades, in which they explore via songs, skits or readings one of the school's character traits (which sort of stand in for rules- like, there is no rule against fist fighting per se, but as it does not display Courage, Compassion, Discipline, Integrity or Respect, you shouldn't do it. Duh.) Community building traditions are also strongly held, such as all-school picnics in the fall and spring in which the whole school walks a mile uphill to spend the day together in one of Portland's largest city parks; Solstice celebration, a secular, suncentric spazz-fest written and performed by students and involving much teenage interpretive dance; Renaissance Faire, Egg Drop, No Ivy Day, etc.

Kay began attending in the 8th grade, and for 3 years she, Irene and Calipso all went to the same school. I still refer to it as "the kids' school" and then feel silly since there's only one kid there now.

From kindergarten on, students keep a portfolio of their best work in each area of study, as well as reflections on their process for each assignment or experience.

Instead of finals, high schoolers must present their portfolios to a panel of community members whose minds end up like so much egg salad after intensely reading, hearing and thinking about 5 (potentially wildly different) kids, their unique learning strategies, accomplishments, failures (yes, enthusiastically documented) and general state of meta-cognition (their words). (I coped via exhaustive use of post-it notes.)

The younger kids present portfolios to their parents at an open-house style gathering with cookies and sparkling water. Much easier on the brain (mine, anyway).

They also paint murals. No wall is safe.

Last spring MLC turned up in a district newsletter as the high school with the best graduation rate, 96.8%. (Students at every level also excel in all the no-child and state testing nonsense.) See there, skeptics! It works to know all your teachers by first name. For the student population to be so small that the VP knows you by not only name but personal hobbies. To have no letter grades, but 30 hours of community service required per year. Not even a real liability to be known as the Gay/Punk Rock/Aspergers High School.

There are down sides to a small school- no IB or AP classes, and the lack of grades may have been the difference between Kay getting waitlisted instead of accepted at Reed last year. But for kids who prioritize community (either because they aren't headed for academia or because they aren't sweating the fact that they will succeed in getting there) MLC is... well not a U-topia, because this is a public school and they are teenagers after all, but a topia at least, a place where all your freaky quirks are tolerated and in many cases embraced. (Gay, punk rock, and Aspergers-identified are almost passe. Transgender, synaesthesiac, and can't-remember-my-textbook-reading-unless-I-listen-to-the-same-music-as-when-I-read-it are well represented. There are even a few jocks.)

I often forget that not all schools are like MLC, or diminish in my mind the differences. Then I will talk to a friend who has recently toured the place, and hear them compliment the well behaved unattended 3rd grade book groups in the hallway, or the art (I mentioned the walls?), or the fact that the high school lockers are purposely located in the kindergarten hallway, and I remember how great the place really is.

Again, not perfect. I do not relish the 20 minute commute, and am biding the time until Irene can manage the bike ride there so that I can assuage some serious driving guilt. I grudgingly accept that PTSA meetings bizarrely take place on Thursday nights, so that working parents can attend while not interfering with the Jewish Sabbath. The parking is ridiculous, using the playground blacktop and hence no parking stripes, leading to a barely contolled state of anarchy which occasionally leaves someone blocked in indefinitely. And yet, the natural parking tradoff, a school garden, is also absent (on the top of my rabblerousing list for this year, however.)

















This year Irene is in 4th grade, officially a BIG YEAR. They take class upstairs. They have proper
homework. They take a couple of week-long trips to far-flung, exotic learning locations (but still in Oregon...) It is going to be something.














Happy first day of school everyone!

Object #1

An actual Found Object. Beautiful 3' x 6' quilt with both Moorish and Celtic motifs. Sadly I had to leave it where it lives and just take this photo.

Revolution Nine

When you turn nine at our house you receive:

Ear piercing
One dozen books
Weaponry

Free Will Rhubarb

This rhubarb cutting has been living in a scrunched up plastic bag on the back my kitchen counter for more than two weeks. Amazingly, instead of turning to sludge or, alternately, a dry husk, it has simultaneously composted itself and sprouted new leaves. In honour (British spell-check, remember) of its will to live I will now go plant it in some actual soil.

'K, bye.

It's a Family Affair

Last weekend we drove south to La Pine, Oregon for a reunion of my mom's side o' the family.

The best incentive to make the trek was to get to know my brother's new family, a 3-for-1 pack of beautiful blondes who we immediately loved. You just can't see well enough how cute Lisa is in this photo with Darrel (nice knees though); that one of Julia is pretty darn clear, however.



























See that tent behind my mom? If they had known about the 5am near-fistfight amongst my 20-something cousins, they would've backed it into the woods further. Ha!

Jessica (blonde #3) is 15 and a good
conversationalist, but kept
hiding from the camera (fortunately the hood didn't work...)

New favorite
cousin, Sabrina.
Why?
Because she
repeated all of
Edward's
statements in
an annoying
voice. Then
started calling
him Mr. Shirleypants.
I think she might be
trouble but
I like her anyway.


Most of the activity seemed to consist of making, eating, and cleaning up after food, which seemed perfectly natural. Later there was also a Jagermeister component which Edward wisely sidestepped. May have contributed to aforementioned 5 am shouting match. Perhaps.







(I don't think those are Shirley Pants,
but the concept is still unclear to me. Not Edward wearing them, either-
my cousin Brett who had never eaten
hummus before [he liked it.])


There were MANY aunts, uncles and cousins (1st, 2nd, and variously removed from each other) present whom I had not seen in some time, plus more who had married in, or been relatively recently born, or had aged enough to be interesting to talk to.

Unfortunately my cousin Austin, who was recently hit by lightning, came by Friday, so we missed him. (This online paper makes some woefully unsubstantiated claims that he now has super-powers, which I was curious to investigate.)

Old Favorite Cousin, her mom, and siblings were also sadly absent. I was not planning to re-enact the disco choreography (+ cartwheels!) that we forced the families to watch when we were... 8? 10? 12? ...but I was disappointed anyway. Well, you snooze, you lose Tina! Got me a New Fave Cuz now!

Hats off to Carol and Gordon, who hosted/tolerated the shindig in their house (no shoes! unless you're 2!) and cool land abutting a state park (birds of prey in the back yard! fawns in the road!) Many thanks!

Pie Day

Not Pi Day (that's in March, silly)

We have this many marionberries

You know it's Pie Day when you can't eat them fast
enough to prevent this tragedy

No, this is not enough

Secret Ingredient: if you know what this is, put it in your pie

Mmm, sugar drifts

Too pretty to wash

Gluten free crust is an ugly medium. Eat it quickly.

Retrospective

From maybe three years ago, when we were all making art cards
together. In sharpie marker and mixed media.

mine:

rockwell kent woodcut inspired

irene as lucy in the sky?

text says "This is JOSEPHINE the average American female - and JOE jr a typical 6 year old"

fairbanks in my mind

teeming humanity w/ symbols of abundance? ???




from the kids:

think was by calipso... a self portrait with apocalyptic back porch

one of my all times faves by irene


ddr + glbt = k


woodcut inspired rainbow? wtf? (must be irene)

cat ear in grass- calipso? kay?

Postscript: First the Musick, Then the Geisha

There was a bit of a funny story regarding our drive up to the Musick Guard Station, but I haven't quite figured out how to make a real tale of it. Suffice to say that we had the written directions in our car, and they had the pamphlet with the map on it in their car. So we came at the last winding maze of forest service and private access roads from two very different states of understanding. After several stops in the middle of the road to palaver, and more than one doubling back (and tripling forward, if there is in fact such a thing), we did arrive at the intended location, but not until after a mile or so detouring up a secondary road which we later discovered was labeled not only "unmaintained road" but also "not fit for passenger vehicles". Needless to say, on the way out Edward insisted on driving a ways back up this road to see what we could see.

It turned out to be a lovely area surrounding the Geisha Girl mine (the Umpqua is riddled with claims by apparent hobbyist miners, who are shockingly! politically incorrect in their appellations).

We just sorta poked around looking at pretty streams and photographing alien looking fungi while the dogs frolicked in what was a canine heaven (except for the one large truck which trundled slowly by, yet petrified Mabel to the point of inaction. Like, deer-in-the-headlight inaction. Or, my dumb dog stopped in the middle of the road until I physically drag her out of the way of the kindly hobby miner inaction.)

It was quite fun, and presented no obvious harm to our humble passenger vehicle. Win-win!

Officially Summer

Yes, the solstice has come and gone (Irene is pleased because it will be getting darker earlier, and hence less torturous for her to go to sleep at a decent hour). School has let out. The college student is retrieved from the dorms. But mostly, we went on a camping trip, here:

We got a late start looking into Forest Service cabin rentals (apparently the informed traveler starts in January, even before booking summer camps for the kids, which I have previously regarded as the most inappropriate late winter ritual), but luck shined upon us and we happened on what had to be a cancellation for this past weekend at the quaintly named Musick Guard Station, a few hours southeast of Portland in the Umpqua National Forest. Amazingly, it sleeps 10, the precise number of the combined Martin-Wickwire-Sackinger-Joughin-Andrews menagerie. And welcomes dogs.

Both Kay and Corinna have already blogged about the trip, so I am in the curious position of having to consider whether my memory has been coloured* by their recollections. I shall endeavour* to keep myself honest and only steal ideas that I would have had on my own anyway.

*For some reason my spellcheck is British, and I am helpless to resist it!

Camping, even in a cabin, always leaves me feeling more than a little untethered. Perhaps it is the cramped sleep, the over-abundance of fresh air, the wild pendulum of too-hot and too-cold temperatures both indoors and out. This feeling was magnified by the constant fog and drizzle which for a brief time on our last morning even turned to snow, and by the great hairy sheaths of Old Man's Beard on the tall trees surrounding us. The Dickensian piles of kids and dogs left sprawled about between forays into the woods (unaccompanied except by other kids or other dogs and possibly a walkie talkie if they remembered to turn it on and had the opposable thumbs to do so) completed the experience. When we were unceremoniously deposited from the Hollywood freeway exit onto Halsey Street on Sunday afternoon (it is always alarming to drive I-5 for hours only to exit essentially in the midst of our neighborhood, with only the 65 to 35 mph slowing of the offramp to ease the transition), it was hard to believe we hadn't been on another planet entirely.

The highlight of the weekend was following the kids out as a group to survey the wonders of their prior unchaperoned adventures (Open Mine Shaft! Wrecked Car!) We were pleasantly surprised to find that they had indeed discovered an old mine, and that the dangerousness of its disposition had been greatly exaggerated. It was closed, but the tailings were full of interesting mineral detritus. The hike immediately became a rock hounding pursuit, with folks looking constantly at the ground, comparing finds, and making lots of impressed "ooh"s and "oh yeah"s at each other. The kids quickly zeroed in on what to look for and found many good drusy quartz caves within the large, rusty rocks strewn about. Breaking them open by dropping an even bigger rock on top of them was obviously a big hit.

Of course there was much reading, card playing (and comparisons of which card games were played whilst camping in our youth), a round of bb gun shooting, roasting marshmallows in the wood stove (not recommended), drinking of Barenjager* with various mixers (recommended), and continuous eating, preparing food, stoking the fire to make food, heating water for tea/food/barenjager mixers, fending children off of food, dispensing appropriate snacks, fending dogs off of food, and of course negotiating over flavors of instant oatmeal and their relative availabilities. You know, camping stuff.

*Barenjager is a honey liqueur that seems made for drinking in the out-of-doors. However, the logo is not representative of our camping activities.

While I was charmed by the Musick Guard Station in the fog, I would love to return in July when there is a chance of sunbreaks as well. (I suspect it is never perfectly hot and clear up there at 5000 ft.) The site can accommodate a few tents, and there is a great old barn that Edward nearly slept in one night (always hard to keep him from sleeping outside with a dog or two.) With any luck we can arrange for an extended stay next summer and invite a few more folks to share the space, as it is defintely a more=merrier kind of spot, I think. I will mark my calendar in January...