Expeditions in Learning

STEVENSON, Washington—Nearly 200 years ago Wishram, Wasco, and Chinook Indians watched incredulously as Lewis and Clark's dugout canoes plunged through several falls of the Columbia that even today's avid whitewater thrill-seekers would avoid. The final long chute near present-day Stevenson, Washington, was so rough and rocky the expedition had to portage boats and baggage around it.

Most students at Stevenson High School have grown up along a much lazier Columbia River, tamed by dams built by their grandparents. So when a new two-credit interdisciplinary course called The Lewis and Clark Expedition was listed in the 2002-2003 curriculum guide, it sounded like a no-brainer, easy-elective-credit yawner.

Yet, as the school year is ending this spring, student Expedition members and their teacher-captains are feeling much like the original Corps of Discovery as it headed down the Columbia Gorge toward the Pacific: whiplashed by unanticipated whirlpools, yet full of anticipation and still headed downstream toward their goal.

DISCOVERY BY DESIGN

Located an hour east of Vancouver, this rural district is still transitioning from a timber-based economy. The upscale Skamania Lodge and nearby Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center have helped make the town a tourist destination, but without replacing high-paying forestry jobs. Some families, including teachers, have lived in the area for several generations, loyal to the lifestyle of the Gorge and its legendary scenery and outdoor attractions.

Thanks to a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Stevenson High School is engaged in a wall-to-wall reform effort. It launched the Expedition course to test the notion of project-based learning as a strategy for raising academic achievement. The grant also provides scholarships to students from low-income families. The Gates Foundation, through the Washington Education Foundation, gives out 500 scholarships to students at "Achiever" schools around the state—each scholarship is as much as $8,500 a year for five years. For students in a town rebounding from the loss of its timber economy, the scholarships improve their college prospects considerably. As have their successes in the project-based Expedition course.

While Lewis and Clark hand-picked their Corps members and ordered lashings for rule-breakers, Expedition teachers Bill LaCombe, Craig McKee, and Jill Neyenhouse accepted all 70 students who "enlisted" in the course and expected each to give his or her best effort. Though course requirements are both academically and physically challenging, most students—even those who usually struggle—are discovering that they can do serious academic work and meet the exacting standards of the "real world" beyond the school walls.

Looking back, the three teachers admit they did not anticipate the wide range of issues they'd face—from securing Native American blessings for canoe building to finding camping sites for the "final exam": a river trip down the Columbia in June. Students have been involved in every phase of the course, in the detailed planning and communication—even making presentations to the school board. For McKee, this required a transformation in his teaching style. Accustomed to having his physical education students follow set routines and procedures as a group, he now had to coach kids on a variety of projects.

"The Lewis and Clark Expedition class definitely pushed teachers and everyone out of our comfort zone," says Sergio Fossa, principal at Stevenson High School for 10 years. He believes the Gates school redesign project will prompt more project-oriented learning at the school.

The Stevenson-Carson School District framed its school redesign efforts around the work of Theodore Sizer and the Coalition of Essential Schools. Staff members received training in seven key elements of school restructuring: personalized learning, technology as a tool, common focus, time to collaborate, respect and responsibility, high expectations, and performance-based instruction and assessment.

"We want to create an environment where we are meeting more students' needs and are sending a greater number of kids on to college," says English teacher Neyenhouse. And Fossa says that students who've received Achiever scholarships are staying in college at greater rates than in the past.

The Journals

If Jefferson had not required the officers to document each day of their journey, the Corps of Discovery would have been just another campfire yarn passed down by trappers and traders. Thanks to their million-plus words, students now have access to the same raw material that scholars use. In time for the bicentennial, the most comprehensive collection of the writings of five Corps of Discovery journal keepers is available both in paperbound book, The Definitive Journals of Lewis & Clark, Gary E. Moulton, editor (University of Nebraska Press, 2003), and online at http://lewisandclarkjournals.unl.edu/.

These are not just primary sources for studying history. Teachers and students are already dreaming up dozens of ways to use them in the K-12 classroom for reading and writing—particularly for lessons around grammar, spelling, and punctuation. They also are seeing how the journals can serve as models for poetry, drama, personal reflection, and scientific notation. For a reality-based lesson on the importance of careful spelling, punctuation, complete sentences, and capitalization, some teachers ask students to edit a daily journal entry into today's proper English.

The Corps of Discovery journalists had no spell checker. Webster's dictionary came 25 years later. The captains themselves had received limited formal education, though Meriwether Lewis had access to Jefferson's legendary library at Monticello and rubbed shoulders with visiting scholars and artists at the White House. The men were, shall we say, phonetic spellers.

As they study the journals, students often discover that their own excuses for sloppy writing or late assignments don't compare to the hardships faced by the Corps of Discovery. These officers kept writing night after night despite lurking grizzlies, rain, sleet, subzero temperatures that froze the ink for their quill pens, and other better reasons for skipping a day of journaling.

—Larry McClure

WRITING TO LEARN

Writing is a big component of the Expedition course. Students receive an English elective credit, as well as a credit for PE or Occupational Education. Teachers use the journals of Lewis and Clark as the foundation for student reading and research. Students, however, are held to much tougher writing standards than were the spelling-impaired journal writers of the Corps of Discovery. Students' reports must be on time, revised often, and spelled correctly. In the process, students soon learn to appreciate how note taking, drafting, and revising are easier with keyboards than with quills.

Senior Tyler Blaisdell particularly liked researching and writing a children's book for third-graders at Stevenson Elementary School. Knowing that real people would be reading his book was a big motivator, says Tyler, and he put more time and care into this project than any other during his years at Stevenson High.

"My book received many compliments from the third-graders," he proudly notes. The younger students partnered with their high school mentors in developing the books. "It was actually pretty cool to see the children's faces when their own original ideas became a great work of art," says Blaisdell. "I think they were also impressed that we older kids took time to be with them."

Tyler and fellow students went through a three-stage production cycle with their third-grade partners: finding out what these youngsters would like to know about the Lewis and Clark party and the Indian tribes they met; sharing a rough draft with the kids to see which words were difficult for them; and reading their final creations aloud.

Each student is completing a showcase project for display at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center, Skamania Lodge, or at the Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in The Dalles. Students wrote three drafts of a 10-page research paper that is the foundational piece of their projects. This spring they are wrapping up their products, including such things as a Claymation™ of Lewis and Clark, a Columbia Gorge topographical map, bullet bags displayed in a shadow box, a Lewis and Clark board game, arrows and quiver, and a hand-finished cedar-strip canoe.

Student Crystal Helkey, whose heritage is Minnesota-Chippewa, is creating a jingle dress, regalia worn by Native American dancers. The designs of the jingle dresses convey important knowledge from tribal elders to newer generations. One challenge: getting the right tobacco tin lids from adults in the community. Brett Yeadon's project required building a custom-designed steam chamber to soften a six-foot hickory cutout he molded into a high-performance hunting bow. Senior Josh Maxwell, who works part time in the woods as a timber feller, is building a log entertainment center that Lewis and Clark would have wanted during their long, rainy winter at Fort Clatsop.

PASSING MUSTER

LaCombe, the school's technology education teacher, is particularly excited about an authentic dugout canoe students are making in the style of canoes made by Chinook Indians two centuries ago. The first major hurdle was securing a large-enough Western red cedar log, now rare and expensive. Thanks to the U.S. Forest Service, a prime log was delivered to the school parking lot in late fall. Next was the challenge of locating tribal experts to show students how to proceed.

One of the first cultural protocols students and teachers learned was the tribal blessing of a fallen cedar tree that must take place before transforming the log into a canoe. Students in this community that depends so heavily on natural resources are being reminded of the "circle of life" philosophy of Native American people—sustainable resources are part of millennia-old ways of life.

Students divided themselves into groups with specific assignments. The "legal team," for example, has been researching river safety issues with the Coast Guard as well as liability insurance for the June river trip. Other teams are responsible for handling district policies, field trips, safety, publicity, liaison with the community and elementary school, design of a Web site, and documenting class activities for posterity. Presentations to the school board were important milestones along the way.

Teachers draw on their particular expertise: Neyenhouse sets criteria for student written work; McKee oversees physical conditioning, CPR, boat handling, and safety skills; and LaCombe advises students on construction technologies. In June, students who've passed muster throughout the course will make a four-day paddle journey down the Columbia to Astoria, using the two boats they've made themselves, as well as other boats supplied by willing parents. Along their route, they will camp near historic campsites of the Corps of Discovery. And it doesn't escape some of the students' notice that they are about the same age as the teenage Sacagawea when she made the same trip in the fall of 1805.

Dramatic Action

Five Stevenson High School students with an interest in drama and playwriting took on the daunting task of researching and writing a play on the theme of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

Ben Bliss, a senior who plans to study art after graduating, said the team was attracted to the "ballot," or vote, that determined where the Corps of Discovery would spend the winter of 1805-1806. Now covered by asphalt east of the Astoria-Megler Bridge, Station Camp was the site where Sacagawea, a Shoshone woman, and York, Clark's slave, had their votes recorded along with the other Corps members.

That event foreshadowed dramatic changes to come, though it would be nearly 60 years before slaves were emancipated, 115 years before women got the vote, and 160 years before the Voting Rights Act assured all citizens the right to cast their ballots.

In the play, a woman is selected by Thomas Jefferson to write a popular narrative about the Lewis and Clark journey for the general public (a task Meriwether Lewis never finished). As was done in those times when women's contributions were minimized, she's told her name can't be listed as the author. This becomes the central dramatic conflict: Shall persons be judged by the merit of the gifts and talents they bring or by traditional social status and stereotypes?

Though they didn't all study drama in high school, all five of the student playwrights—Ben and classmates Darby Roeder, Crystal Lopez, Ryan Accetta, and Sarah Davis—are good writers, says English teacher and drama coach Doug Johnson who serves as their senior project mentor. Thanks to a grant from the Washington State Arts Commission to the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center in Stevenson, Portland playwright and actor Lorraine Bahr was commissioned to advise the students during the eight months of play development that took place after school.

"I was tremendously impressed with the hundreds of hours of historical research the students did," says Bahr, who advised the playwrights on conceptualizing and building the drama from scratch. "They have developed a thoughtful, wonderful play which the community deserves to see," she said.

Students pored over Lewis and Clark literature, visited museums, heard presentations by historians and other experts, and went to see the National Geographic Society's IMAX film on the Lewis and Clark expedition. Johnson says the students have become their own "corps of discovery," learning what it takes to become a team, meet timelines, use primary sources, work with adults they would never have met normally, create art that must meet community standards, and be historically accurate while interpreting the story with today's eyes.

The playwrights hope to stage a public reading this spring, and next year's drama students could decide to mount a full production. And who knows, if all goes well, maybe a theatre company will produce it as part of Washington's Lewis and Clark Bicentennial Commemoration.