Taking Learning Outdoors Students from Merlo Station Night School study the geologic features of the Klamath Basin area, which includes dramatic Petroglyph Rock just south of the Oregon border. A bitter dispute over water in Southern Oregon becomes a firsthand lesson in history, ecology, and local culture

Story by Catherine Paglin / Photos By Bruce Campbell

Beaverton, Oregon— With his back to the camera, a boy launches himself off a craggy rock. The shutter catches him midair, arms spread up and out, before his cold plunge into Crater Lake's blue waters.

Water: its history in the Klamath Basin, who has it, who doesn't, who controls it. Thirteen students at Merlo Station Night School dove deep into these issues last summer in one of the alternative school's six-week, year-round sessions designed for kids who need to make up missing credits. Led by instructor Bruce Campbell, students camped, hiked, and toured through Southern Oregon's Diamond and Crater Lake areas; along the Wood, Williamson, and Lower Klamath rivers; and into the Tule Basin. Their journey took them over the California border to the Lava Beds National Monument and Captain Jack's stronghold, site of the U.S. Army's 1873 siege against the Modoc chief.

Along the way, the students interviewed ranchers, farmers, wildlife biologists, park rangers, and members of the Klamath and Modoc tribes about the area's geology, ecology, and history. A farm family welcomed them with open arms and fed them hamburgers from homegrown beef. A member of the Klamath tribe showed them how to weave baskets from dried nettles and throw the atlatl, a type of spear. Gathered around a nightly campfire, they discussed the beauty and mystery of the earth with a local archaeologist. They talked to these people and others about what a New York Times editorial called the Klamath Basin's "overstressed ecosystem." They immersed themselves in the water crisis that is pitting sucker fish and coho salmon against crops of hay, alfalfa, and potatoes; Native Americans' water rights and the Endangered Species Act against the local farming economy.

Despite its name and its official hours from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m., the Night School program (one of many housed at Merlo Station) often spills over into other hours where its regularly offered project-based classes are concerned. Campbell uses summers in particular to take learning outdoors 24 hours a day to places such as the Tillamook Burn, Newberry Crater, the John Day Fossil Beds, the Columbia Gorge, and the Wallowa Mountains. In the summer of 1999, Campbell and 10 students trekked through five states, following the tragic trail of the Nez Perce tribe's flight from the Army in 1877.

The five-day trip to Crater Lake and Klamath Falls to learn firsthand about the area's ongoing water controversy was the longest of many field trips under the six-week session's overarching theme of Oregon Walkabout.

"For me, there's no greater authenticity than the outdoors," says Campbell. In the outdoors, he finds, students start thinking and feeling things they haven't thought or felt before.

Keen For Relevance

But being outdoors is not enough for a successful project. "It has to be about something. It has to tell a story," says Campbell. "The students are really keen about what's relevant and what's not. Particularly if it's about people in a struggle, they can relate to that. And then I can sneak in all the other things I really love about the geology and geography."

To prepare for the Klamath Basin trip, students read and discussed Campbell's collection of newspaper and magazine articles about the water crisis. They watched videos about the Klamath area. They did some map work. "They give you enough information so you can learn, but not so much that it overwhelms you," says Jeremy Hopper, a senior at Beaverton's Southridge High School who attended Night School last summer.

Students stretched their minds around different perspectives as well as new information. "On every field trip that I can, I contrast the Native American world view with the scientific world view," says Campbell. "On the Klamath Basin trip, we would read scientific materials about the water, the fish, the plants. And then we would read a Native American story from the Klamath, the Modoc, or the Shasta about a similar topic. Then we'd say, "How do we know which one's right and does it even matter?' or, "Are there some connections between the two? Is it possible to believe both things at the same time?'"

To ensure a smooth and productive trip Campbell—as he always does—went over the route ahead of time in person. He talked to the people the students would meet and visited the campsites. At school, he and the students talked about the field journals they would keep on the trip, the photographs they would take, the video footage they would shoot, and the clothing and equipment they would bring.

A Larger View Of Life

Along the trail, students became engaged in a way that would have been unlikely back in the classroom. In a desert basin that once brimmed with water, rushes, and migratory birds, they asked Campbell, "Where did that water go?" They talked about how the Army Corps of Engineers drained Tule Lake at the turn of the last century so that the fertile bottomland could become farmland. Only a small remnant of the lake remains.

The students asked a lot of questions: "If it's farmland, how come it's so dry now and there's nothing but sagebrush and dirt?" They talked about how Egypt's fertile crescent became a desert through environmental abuse.

"We get the kids to a point where they'll say around the campfire, 'I never realized' or 'I'm really thinking about,'" Campbell reports. "Those kinds of statements show they're relating their experience to a larger view of life."

"Before I went, I figured, that's kind of stupid, why don't we give water to the farmers?" says Chad Jansen, who recently graduated from Night School. "When I got there, I realized Native American people need fish, and the sucker fish are going to die. And it's a long drawn-out process that doesn't have a good answer."

"The whole hands-on experience was a new concept to me. We got to imagine it and then go see it how it really is," says Jeremy. "The day I learned the most and got the biggest emotional hit was with the farmers —hearing how they were losing their whole life due to no water."

These students' moments of understanding are documented in the pages of their daily journals:

Ross Owen wrote: "The most emotional day for me was visiting the Lower Klamath Basin and seeing all the water gone. I saw pelicans and other birds dying. Seeing all that suffering made me realize what loss of habitat really means."

Sara Hardman: "Looking across the desert floor of what used to be Tule Lake made me understand that a whole culture once lived here, fishing in the lake and raising children."

Jimmy Alexander: "Crater Lake was so beautiful and pure. I'd do anything to protect that water so I could swim in it again. I think the Indians and farmers feel the same about their own water issues."

Jeremy Hopper: "Captain Jack was fighting against the Americans so he could protect his land and family. There was this memorial to him at the Stronghold where people had tied all sorts of stuff onto a wooden pole. Seeing that memorial made me think that maybe our own culture might be here for an even shorter time than the Modocs were. The Indians knew how to conserve their resources—we don't."

When Jeremy returned to a regular high school in the fall, his science class included a unit on the Klamath Basin water crisis. He was struck by the difference between his firsthand experience and the detached attitude of his new peers. "To hear and see people blowing it off after all I went through was really surprising," he says. "They just sat there and obviously didn't care. Except for the straight-A students, most kids sat in the back and didn't talk or raise their hand."

A Balanced Viewpoint

The firsthand experiences students had in the Klamath Basin didn't end when the field trip was over. The Night School instructors don't give tests. But they do require "a creative synthesis" that conveys what the student learned. "We emphasize that you had this great experience; you loved it. Now you have to share it with a wider audience," says Campbell.

Requirements for the Klamath Basin project included completing an evaluation paper and a photo essay consisting of 15 to 20 photographs mounted on a three-panel display board accompanied by a title, appropriate journal excerpts, and illustrations. Students could earn additional course credit by helping to edit a documentary video from footage they shot on the trip. At the end of the term, as at the end of every term, students summarized their work orally in a Night School tradition known as presentation night (see Essential Questions About Love).

"The presentations that we do, it's a really scary thing," says Campbell. "You invite the community, you invite parents, school administrators, anybody. Sometimes we have 100 people in the room."

At the presentation night for the summer session, Principal Janice Adams was impressed with the students' balanced viewpoint. "No one was raving and ranting about a particular side of the issue," she says. "Students were aware that what they read in the paper or see on TV is not necessarily the whole story. They got a glimpse of different people's perspectives."

"When you see things on the news it's easy just to judge something and you think, that's easy, I could solve that," says Chad. "When you actually get into it there's so many different viewpoints and it affects so many different people. It's just crazy."

Adams believes that having the "higher-stakes audience" of presentation night can make the work more real to students and enhance the quality of their efforts. "Kids don't always do their best work just for the teacher," she says.

But with high school students nothing is predictable, and project-based learning comes with risks. "Sometimes the presentations are brilliant and you're all swelled up with pride. And sometimes they're just embarrassing, even though the kids have worked really hard and you've coached them," says Campbell.

Campbell recalls one student who worked and worked on his presentation and then bolted on presentation night. "Even his mom couldn't keep him, he was so terrified," he recalls. "That's the kind of thing you leave yourself open to when you do the things that we do."

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