At a crossroads, teachers create new school
After Crossroads school closes, new Hera Community School begins
By Ellen Spitaleri
The Oregon City News, Jul 30, 2008
Ellen Spitaleri / Clackamas Review
From left, Anna Meyrick, Carol Hohman and Carol Whitten inside the Oregon City house that will be the home of the newly formed Hera Community School.
It was a bad-news, good-news situation for a group of parents, students and staff, when they learned that Joey Zarosinski had decided to close the Crossroads Alternative School in Oregon City.
When she heard about the closure, Kelly Bissett said, “It was really upsetting. My son Shane will be a junior next year ... I had no idea where he was going to go.”
The good news is that after parents and students contacted the Oregon City School District, the Hera Community School will open this fall.
The Crossroads School was a non-profit alternative school, serving grades seven through 12 – students had to be referred by school counselors.
The closure left about 16 students without a place to go.
Anna Meyrick, the art teacher at Crossroads who had been there for 10 years, is the driving force behind the opening of the new school.
When she learned that Zarosinski was retiring, she was worried about her own job prospects, but more than that, she was worried about what would happen to the students.
So she made an appointment with Roger Rada, the Oregon City School District superintendent, to talk about options.
“In the meantime, parents were calling the superintendent telling him there is no place for their children to go, and some of them have severe problems,” Meyrick said.
Even former students expressed concern about the school closure.
“I had attended Crossroads for three years and [students and staff were] like my family to me. I didn’t want them to get split up and go to different schools,” said Ashley Osborn, a June graduate from the school.
The process begins
By the time Meyrick met with Rada, he told her the district was already looking at alternatives, and said if she could come up with a non-profit organization, the district would support her efforts to start a new school.
Meyrick already had a non-profit called Hera International Community, and Oregon City administrators helped her find the paperwork to file an order to get a provisional education license for three years; she sent the paperwork in and is now forming a board of directors.
She and the other two staff members, administrative assistant Carol Hohman and English and social studies teacher Carol Whitten, are anticipating that the school will open in September.
“We haven’t worked out the details of the contract. For now, I think you could say that we’re anxious to get the school up and running and will be developing a lease that will meet both our needs,” Rada said.
The formation of Hera Community School is good news for Bissett and her son.
Shane has Tourette Syndrome and had experienced problems early in his freshman year attending Oregon City High School, she said, adding that when he enrolled at the much smaller Crossroads School, it “turned out to be the best thing that ever happened. [Meyrick, Hohman and Whitten] care so much about the kids – to do this is amazing. I want to thank all of them for caring about our kids and potential students.”
Shane has gained confidence since attending the Crossroads School, Bissett said: “Everybody is like family; everybody accepts everybody.”
Hera school
Meyrick said the school district has been “helpful and supportive” in her effort to set up the new school, which will be located in a house near the old high school that was formerly home to the Sage School, an alternative school.
The house is small, but Meyrick, Hohman and Whitten believe the environment will work well for their students. Meyrick anticipates morning and afternoon session with fewer than 15 students.
Potential students in grades seven through 12 “have to talk to their counselors at their regular schools” to be referred to the Hera Community School, and districts pay the tuition for each student, Meyrick noted.
“When we get kids from [school districts] there is something going on; either they are lacking credits or they have been expelled or there are behavior problems. We get them after things are not working at a public school,” Meyrick said.
The curriculum will be “art-based and project-based,” Meyrick said, adding that the theme this school year will be Oregon’s 150th anniversary as a state.
“A key component is literacy and there will be a lot of integrated instruction and a lot of writing. We’ll be doing some public ceramic work and quilts and some video essays with local cable access television,” she said.
Future of the school
Meyrick said she picked Hera as the name for the school, because it is an African name that means “teamwork,” and teamwork is something she, Hohman and Whitten plan to integrate into the curriculum.
“I want to see [the school] expand and get more involvement with the community – we want to partner with the community; we can learn from the community,” she said.
Summer lineup: art, social studies, English
Roots in Mexico - Canby High students join a program that goes beyond the classroom
Thursday, July 31, 2008
JANET GOETZE
Special to The Oregonian
CANBY -- When Sonia Lopez, 16, began designing her art project at summer school, she blended a love of music, sports and her family in her mixed media work.
Jose Cabello Ledesma's love of soccer and admiration for the Brazilian athlete Pele led him to design a mosaic depicting the natural beauty of Brazil.
Sonia and Jose are two of about a dozen Canby High School students attending summer classes in English, social studies and art. The high school program is new this year, but summer courses have been offered for several years to Canby elementary and middle school students.
Such courses are paid for by a variety of funds, including federal money for students whose parents meet guidelines as migrant workers.
The high school program was developed this year after two artists, Anna Meyrick of Oregon City and Sher Davidson of Portland, received a $2,848 grant from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.
They proposed summer art classes at Canby High, where English teacher Annie Wolfe and social studies teacher Robert Hammitt developed a curriculum combining the three subjects.
The high school teachers wanted their students, who all have family roots in Mexico, to explore the history and culture of the country through research, essays and creative expression, said Wolfe.
The program will go beyond the classroom. The student artists will show their work in a "First Friday" event from 5 to 9 p.m. Aug. 1 in Wallflowers Gallery, 288 N.W. First Ave., Canby.
Other nearby shops will be open for the event, which will include music and refreshments, said Pam Casciato, the gallery owner.
"I'm excited about the community connection," said Anna Haberlach, Canby High's art teacher, who was a summer school assistant. "This is special for the students to have their own show and a special medium."
The special medium is the glass mosaics that Meyrick uses in her own work and in other teaching positions. The small squares of glass are applied over paintings, magazine pictures or copies of photos that are meaningful to the young artists.
The artwork of Melinda Duran, 16, features copies of family photos, including one showing children in bright costumes at a festival. "It's on the street where my grandma lives," she said, recalling her family's visits to her grandparents' home each December.
Many of Canby's students visit family members in Mexico during December, Haberlach said, but some trips last longer than the school district's vacation period. Teachers try to help students get caught up after the holiday visits, Haberlach said, but some students struggle through the school year.
The summer program is intended, in part, to help students catch up in their studies and to keep them in school through graduation, Wolfe said.
Duran recognizes that the summer classes are insurance that she will have all the necessary credits to graduate in another year, then attend Clackamas Community College. In addition, she's pleased that her artwork will be in the gallery exhibit.
"I'm really excited about having people see what I do and where my family is from," she said.
Janet Goetze: jgoetze@earthlink.net
Art teacher, students piecing together world
Mosaics - Artist Anna Meyrick inspires Crossroads students to aid the needy
Thursday, March 01, 2007
JANET GOETZE
OREGON CITY -- Anna Meyrick believes in making life a work of art, and in using art to make connections with people in other cultures.
Meyrick, 37, of Oregon City, has been making art most of her life, and mosaic -- usually the arrangement of small pieces of rock or glass of different shapes and colors -- is her medium. It's also the medium she teaches her students at Crossroads Alternative School who have been collecting information about people in underdeveloped countries.
Using paper and paint as well as glass, the students are creating mosaics indicating what they have learned about the needs of people in Africa, Central America and North America. They have researched clean water and sanitation, food security, health and wellness, education and income-generating activities.
Crossroads' 28 students in grades seven through 12 will exhibit their mosaics, in conjunction with a show of Meyrick's art in the Carnegie Center in Oregon City. The show will open with a reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
In addition to their art, which will be for sale, the students will display a chicken coop they made to show how they hope to help a group of widows in Mombassa, Kenya, become self-supporting by raising chickens.
A percentage of proceeds from their art sales will become seed money for small loans offered to the widows through Hera International Community, a nonprofit organization Meyrick started. Hera works with the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute, Meyrick said.
"I want to involve students in real-life projects," Meyrick said. "I believe art has a meaning and a message, and it can help students learn social responsibility in ways that fit their individual learning styles."
In past years, Crossroads students, who are referred by five contracting school districts because regular classrooms don't fit their learning styles, have raised money to travel to Latin America.
Working with Tigard-based Northwest Medical Teams (which recently changed its name to Medical Teams International) they helped build classrooms in Honduras in 2004 and pour concrete floors for squatters' dwellings in Mexico City in 2006.
Brittney Kassahn, 16, of Oregon City, who went to Mexico last year, is researching African health issues this year, and the mosaic she worked on provides information about them.
"The awareness level is very low on what AIDS is and how to prevent its spread," she said. "The information we're going to put out, hopefully, will inspire people to do more about this."
Art is one way people can absorb information, said Meyrick, who works with this philosophy: "Make your life a work of art. Make it count." Janet Goetze: jgoetze@earthlink.net
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Art at the crossroads
A local alternative school tries something different this year with relavent art... and chicken coops?
By Ellen Spitaleri
Chicken coops and art may seem to be unlikely partners,
but Anna Meyrick has found a way to bring them together.
Meyrick, the art teacher at Oregon City’s Crossroads School, and her students will host an art show, opening on March 6 at the Carnegie Center.
Featured at the show, which continues throughout the month, will be a student-built chicken coop, student art based on the theme of “Global Community,” and Meyrick’s art, which will be for sale.
Why chicken coops?
Crossroads students usually go on a humanitarian-aid trip every year, often in conjunction with Northwest Medical Teams, where they assist in building schools and housing.
This year, because of a variety of issues, there will be no field trip. Since students still wanted to do something to help, they have chosen to get involved with the Chicken Coop Income Generating Project in Kenya and Mexico.
Meyrick explained that the project raises money to give to women and children in developing countries, so that they can build chicken coops and raise chickens.
The women, often widows, form co-ops, and together sell the chickens and eggs to generate an income for themselves.
“This empowers the women and can pay school fees for the children,” Meyrick said.
She noted that the chicken coop project provides loans to the women, and when they pay the loans back, that provides “seed money” for the next group of women.
Meyrick said she chose to work with people in Kenya, because one of the young men helping with the program there started out as her daughter’s pen pal.
“He has to work three months, picking coffee beans, to earn $40,” so he can pay school fees, Meyrick noted.
“I wanted my students to see how hard other kids work to go to school,” she added.
Kathi Gerspach, who teaches environmental science, cultural awareness and health at Crossroads School, also is involved with the chicken coop project.
In fact, she is going with a group of Clackamas County residents to Uganda in June to work with the Invisible Children project.
“They are refugees from the war in Sudan – we are taking money and they will build chicken coops at the orphanage,” she said.
“The chicken coop project is a cool project. A family can raise eight to 10 chickens and improve their own nutrition, and they can sell the excess [eggs or meat] and bring in money,” she explained.
Studies have shown that the chicken coop project “radically changed the quality of life and improved the health of children,” Gerspach added.
She also said that the project provides plans to build the coops and veterinarians are on-site to make sure the chickens are healthy.
“It’s a good practical way to help someone in a developing country and provide a way for them to have better nutrition and an income,” she said.
Crossroads students are building a coop for display at the Carnegie Center, and they are making posters to explain to visitors the benefits of the chicken coop project.
One of the builders is Kelly Gooderham, a senior.
For him the benefit of the chicken coop is it “makes the family self sufficient and gives them a way to create their own resources,” he said.
Mosaics on display showcase student talents
Meanwhile, back in the art world, Meyrick has asked her students to design mosaics around the theme of community building.
They are focusing on five areas she said: clean water and sanitation, food security, health and wellness, education and income-generating opportunities.
She hopes visitors will come to the opening of the art show on March 6 and chat with students about their projects and their art.
Students will also be serving a barbeque meal, with all proceeds going to the chicken coop project.
Anthony Akins, a senior, will exhibit his mosaic of a cow, to showcase his project on food security.
“Students should know more about how we get food and how in other countries kids are starving – that needs to be more publicized,” he said.
Meyrick will also show her own art, and will display a large mosaic piece she calls a “Tree of Life.”
This piece came into being during her visit last summer to the international AIDS conference in Toronto, Canada.
She set up a “global village” at the conference, and brought in art supplies. She then collected leaves designed by people from all over the world and attached them to the tree.
“The purpose of the tree is to symbolize the way we are all connected in a global community. I designed the piece, and my students are helping to fill in the glass,” she said.
The piece incorporates 24,000 BB’s, and there are images under the clear glass tiles, Meyrick noted.
She added that she has set up a non-profit organization to “assist with community development projects locally and globally.” Her website can be accessed at www.herainternationalcommunity.org
The “Tree of Life” will not be for sale at the Carnegie Center show, Meyrick said, because she plans to take it with her to the international AIDS conference in Mexico City in 2008.
The Big Read drawing to a close
Groups across the county will discuss "Fahrenheit 451" this week
By Ellen Spitaleri
The Clackamas Review, Feb 26, 2008, Updated Feb 26, 2008
Clackamas Community College instructor and set designer Chris Whitten built a giant replica of the book ‘Fahrenheit 451’ to be burnt as part of the ongoing Big Read event.
Chris Whitten / Clackamas Review
Students in Anna Meyrick’s art classes and Carol Whitten’s English classes have been discussing free speech issues since September, so The Big Read “tied in so nicely with our subject matter,” Meyrick said.
The Crossroads School students are reading “Fahrenheit 451,” discussing it and making mosaics on some aspect of individual and intellectual freedom, she added. The Big Read is a month-long program in Clackamas County with events and readings centered around the book.
Whitten, who just started teaching at the Oregon City school in September, said she likes the flexibility of an alternative school curriculum, so that she can ask students to tell her what they think is important.
“We’re teaching students to think for themselves, and that is what ‘Fahrenheit 451’ is all about. Reading is in decline and information is so condensed — I want students to take a look at the world around them and ask themselves if we are getting the whole picture,” she said.
Student opinions on book
Justin Smith, 15, said his favorite part of the book is the realism.
“Stuff in the book has happened, or is happening. We have TV’s the size of walls and people aren’t reading anymore,” he noted.
“A lot of people [today] depend on technology in their everyday life instead of going out and exploring the real world,” said Brittney Kassahn, 17, pointing out the similarities in the book to today’s world.
“It’s a good book to compare how society is today — it is strange how he [Ray Bradbury] predicted things,” added Kayla Simmons, 15.
Both Amanda Heil, 17, and Allison Hill, 13, pointed out how the book portrays news as focusing on entertainment value, and that same focus exists today.
Ashley Osburn, 17 agreed, and added, “All this fake stuff on the news is not important — we should focus on what’s going on around us. Just watching TV is not a life — we should make our own opinions, not just listen to other people’s opinions.”
Meyrick said that the student mosaics will be on display at the Carnegie Center on Saturday, March 1, from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m., during the BBQ and silent auction fundraiser for the Crossroads School’s trip to San Jose del Cabo. The cost is $25, and the money will enable the students to travel to Mexico, where they will “build a shade structure for handicapped children, pour a concrete floor for a handicapped woman and work with handicapped children doing art projects.”
For more information, call the Crossroads School at 503-655-2755.
Final events for The Big Read of Clackamas County:
Feb. 27 — A “Fahrenheit 451” discussion group will meet from 7 to 8 p.m. at Barnes & Noble in Clackamas Town Center.
Feb. 28 — A movie viewing and book discussion will take place at the Gladstone Library at 6:30 p.m.
Feb. 28 — Join a book discussion with facilitator and teacher Mark Flamoe, who has a background in teaching “Fahrenheit 451,” at the Oak Lodge Library at 6:30 p.m. |
