Life Studies

here are few life-forms in North Portland that George Middle School kids haven't touched, tested, planted, tagged, tended, and observed.

For these urban middle schoolers, life studies start in the classroom with a collection of caged creatures that students feed and befriend. They extend to the schoolyard, where student-designed gardens showcase Northwest plants that beckon migrating birds. They reach into the neighborhood, to the rivers and lakes that George kids help to clean up. And next year, they're going global. Through an international computer link, George kids will trade data on bird migrations with students in Guadalajara, Mexico.

Wrapping curriculum in nature and neighborhood enhances learning for the complex life-form known as the middle school student, says longtime educator Jane Arkes. As principal of George Middle School, Arkes oversees the most economically disadvantaged middle school population in the Portland Public Schools.

"In some respects, kids this age are a lot like kindergartners with long legs," says Arkes. "They aren't ready to do a lot of abstract kinds of thinking and activities. They have to touch and feel things. They have to be actively involved."

That active involvement might mean caring for the squawking, cooing, slithering, snuffling creatures that inhabit George's animal lab. Every morning at 7:45, the student caretakers are hard at work cleaning cages and filling food trays for a hamster named Murphy, a boa constrictor named Big Ben, a pair of cockatiels named Holly and Polly, and other miscellaneous reptiles, birds, and mammals.

One recent morning after showing a visitor the proper way to serve birdseed and vitamins to a dove named Ringo, sixth-grader Andrew Hayes raised his hand toward classmate Shannon Ginocchio. "High five!" he says. They slap their palms together. "We do that when we accomplish stuff," Andrew says. "We love our job that we do."

Like many learning opportunities at George, the animal lab goes beyond the chain-link fence that separates the school from the traffic roaring down Columbia Boulevard, the major thoroughfare for trucks carrying goods to and from the Port of Portland. As participants in George's applied learning program—one of two alternative-education programs within the school—students like Andrew and Shannon transport their noisy menagerie to elementary schools in this industrial neighborhood. There, they share with younger children what they've learned about each animal's behavior and habitat. Some of the other applied-learning projects that have reached deeply into the community are:

Naturescaping project—George joined the National Wildlife Federation and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife in a statewide effort to increase habitat for migrating birds by planting native vegetation in empty or landscaped lots. With the help of AmeriCorps volunteers, the middle schoolers worked with the district architect, school custodian, natural gas personnel, and various agencies to design and install a garden and stream in the school's courtyard. Students make public appearances to share their expertise in natural landscaping.

Columbia Slough project—When state and local officials commissioned a study of pollution in the Columbia Slough, which runs through North Portland, George students helped scientists gather and test samples of water and fish. The students also conducted a neighborhood survey to find out who fished in the slough, what kinds of fish they caught, and how many fish they ate.

Smith and Bybee lakes project—When Metro, the regional government for the Portland area, began developing a pair of neglected urban lakes for public recreation, George students took monthly counts of waterfowl and made an inventory of species—information they entered into Metro's database. The students also helped publicize the new parks. Working with Metro and the National Wildlife Federation, they created a mural depicting lake wildlife and canvas banners announcing "Nature in Your Neighborhood." The signs were posted in local businesses.

Sauvie Island project—As part of the five-year Urban Ecosystems Project of Portland State University, George's bilingual students next year will work with college students to band migrating birds at a wildlife refuge on Sauvie Island in North Portland. Other students will raise native plants in a greenhouse. The students will share information in Spanish with Mexican students over the Internet. The project, supported by a $1.8 million U.S. Department of Education grant to the university, aims to improve math and science curriculum and integrate it with social studies at George and two other North Portland middle schools.

Ramsey Lake project—Along with students from two other Portland schools, seventh-graders from George recently helped plant 1,500 seedlings—red alder, Oregon ash, black cottonwood, Sitka willow, and other species—at nearby Ramsey Lake. The planting is designed to create wetlands that will filter pollutants out of storm runoff and, ultimately, keep them out of the Columbia Slough. The city's Bureau of Environmental Services led the student planting as part of the university's Urban Ecosystems Project.

PARTNERSHIPS PRESENT OPPORTUNITIES
George's applied learning wasn't always so tightly connected to local issues and initiatives, admits Ginny Rosenberg, the teacher who coordinates the program.

When it began eight years ago, the program focused on using field trips to show kids how their classroom studies applied to real-world problems and solutions. But on field trips, Rosenberg notes, students are observers instead of doers.

Rosenberg joined forces with agencies such as the National Wildlife Federation, Metro, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife. Through these partnerships, Rosenberg has discovered ways to involve students more fully, both in learning and in life. "It was one of those minor shifts that changes your whole perspective," she says. "It just opened everything up. I began trying to get the students involved in real issues. Now they can see that their mission is to become functioning members of society."

Keeping projects and students on target is a challenge. "It's like leading a 10-ring circus, making sure every act knows what they need to do," Rosenberg says. "The goal is to let the kids take charge. Then, if the tiger suddenly moves left instead of right, the kids will know how to handle it."

PROVIDING A SENSE OF FAMILY
The shift from field trips to field studies is just one change that has provided George students with a more engaging and meaningful education. Another happened four years ago when Principal Arkes divided the 580-student school into two smaller schools, called "houses."

"We have a real at-risk population," says Arkes. "Many of them don't have real stable home situations. We were struggling to help give a better sense of family. I felt that to really change the culture of the school, to give students a sense of security, to have adults that they trusted, we needed to build a sense of community."

Within each house, interdisciplinary teams of three or four teachers work with the same 90 students all year. Team teaching and student grouping open the door to integrated curriculum and flexible units that don't fit neatly into 40-minute blocks, Arkes notes.

Next year, sixth- through eighth-grade students will be grouped together and will stay together throughout middle school. To help teachers prepare for the multiage classrooms, Arkes has built in extra time for preparation and—with Portland Public Schools facing deep cuts in funding—has found local and federal grant money to pay for it.

George not only blends ages in its classrooms, it also blends all kinds of kids. Students with special needs—disadvantaged kids and those with mental, emotional, or physical disabilities—are mainstreamed. And teachers often pair students in applied learning with kids in the regular program for projects.

Kids with serious behavioral problems are served in another alternative education program within the school. "This is the category of students who have trouble accepting authority, following the general kinds of rules you need in any community of people living and working together," Arkes says. "They're resistant to conforming. They try people's patience because they push and test all the time, and they tend not to be academically motivated."

Without help with basic social skills, many of these kids are headed for expulsion. Although they are blended into the regular program, they move in and out of that program depending on their conduct. Three times a day, they check in with their teacher, who guides them through crises and pinpoints problem areas. If the students are disruptive, they're moved to a separate classroom until the episode passes.

George is also the ESL center for the North Portland cluster, and enrolls almost 200 language-minority students. Those students—mainly Hispanic, Southeast Asian, and Russian—are mainstreamed when their English skills allow them to keep up academically. The ESL teachers and aides monitor the classrooms to check students' progress. Sometimes, they teach alongside regular staff. Next year, one student grouping will blend native English speakers with native Spanish speakers for bilingual instruction.

GIVING TEACHERS AND STUDENTS ROOM
Arkes is quick to credit teachers for initiating and carrying out many of George's innovations. Sometimes, she plants the ideas and watches to see if they take root. If they don't root, she says, they probably weren't very good ideas to begin with. Other times, she nurtures teachers' ideas and encourages them to take the steps necessary to make them real.

It is Arkes' willingness to take risks and give staff lots of latitude that has given George room to grow, according to Rosenberg. "How many principals," she asks, "would let you dig up the cement in the courtyard and drag wheelbarrows and mud through the building? And she's a tidy person. Most principals would say, 'Good idea, but it's impossible.' She says, 'Let's find a way.'"

The students, too, need room to stretch, says Arkes, who serves as president of the Oregon Middle Level Association. "They're learning how to be adults," she says. "To do that, they have to explore and experiment, and they make mistakes. You have to maintain an atmosphere that helps them understand what they've done wrong, but you haven't destroyed them as a person."

George students have ample opportunities to lead and initiate. For example:

Shannon developed a passion for dahlias after she visited a dahlia farm. "It was something I was really excited about," she says. "I thought it was something I could make a project about." Shannon researched the fine points of growing dahlias, even phoning a bulb company for information. Rosenberg found a spot for Shannon's dahlias beside Arkes' office. In May, the bulbs went in. Says Rosenberg: "Kids have these great interests and ideas, and people say, 'Oh.' The answer isn't 'Oh,' it's 'Yes, and what else?'"
When student George Cha was invited to talk about the slough project at an educators' conference two years ago, Rosenberg arranged for him to get a stipend for his presentation.
When visitors want a tour of George's naturescape, eighth-grader Josh Fortier, official spokesperson for the garden, is tagged as guide. He points out native plants such as lupine and Ponderosa pine, and explains that they attract orange-crowned warblers and black-headed grosbeaks. He describes how the students worked in groups to study soil and pH, native plants, and neotropical birds. He tells how they mapped the courtyard and wrote letters to solicit funds. He points out the circulating stream and the student-built birdhouses. And, he says, he personally watered the garden two or three times a week over the summer.
When a community member at a student presentation suggested that the pump circulating the stream water was wasting energy, Rosenberg kept quiet. After mulling it over, the students decided to look into converting the pump to solar power.
When several seventh-graders were assigned to map and tend a new triangular garden behind the school one drizzly April morning, teacher Eric Bennett popped his head out a couple of times to check on progress. The students, rain dripping on their compasses and notebooks, were absorbed in their work, conferring on angles and spreading compost.

"This is a really hard age group," Arkes says. "Their educational needs really do get overlooked. They have all these explosions going on inside them. You can see the variation in size, from little tiny petite things to kids who are tall and well developed. And their maturity levels go that full span."

To the full-throttle flux of early adolescence add poverty and family discord, and you get an educational challenge something like shooting rapids in a canoe. Only the most skilled teachers keep the boat upright, says Arkes.

"You have to be good to work in this kind of school," she says. "You have to have a certain kind of commitment to be effective and not burn out. You have to be able to deal with some fairly heavy issues with students without getting yourself emotionally involved. There's a real fine balance there, instructionally."

Photos for this story by Rick Stier, Lone Pine Photography, Portland, Oregon.

SCHOOL HEALTH CLINIC
LOOKING BEYOND THE TUMMY ACHE
Last year, a George Middle School student died from inhaling butane. In another incident, four boys burned their legs with a fungicidal spray, hoping to scar their bodies to deepen their bond of friendship. And a play called Secrets, based on true stories of young AIDS victims, raised many questions from students during a Q&A session.

Drug use, self-mutilation, unprotected sex: These are among the grim but critical issues dealt with at George's health center, one of the first two school-based clinics in Portland middle schools. After the butane death, the school's crisis team worked one-on-one with students who were troubled by the tragedy. The boys who turned up at the clinic with ulcerated legs received counseling in identifying healthier ways to bond. After the Kaiser-sponsored AIDS play, students swarmed the clinic asking for HIV screenings.

"Kids have to know the risks that are out there," says Principal Jane Arkes. "These are not little-kid things. These are life-and-death issues."

Based on its 10-year experience operating clinics in Portland high schools, the Multnomah County Health Department knew that the risky behaviors that threaten high schoolers' health typically begin in middle school, says community health nurse Lori Koch. Last year, the county set up the city's first middle school clinics at George and Portsmouth middle schools. The schools are located in the St. John's neighborhood, an economically and culturally diverse area in North Portland where health-care services are scarce.

"One-third of the population here in St. Johns has not graduated high school," says Koch, who works full time coordinating services at the clinic. The neighborhood has the city's highest percentage of people over age 25 without a high school diploma, according to data from Portland Public Schools and Metro. "You have a very high population of parents who are undereducated, underemployed, and, therefore, underinsured."

Sniffles and sore throats, headaches and lice, immunizations and sports physicals are the routine reasons kids come to the clinic. But when a student shows up again and again, clinic staff look behind the ailment of the day.

"After you've seen a tummy ache two or three times or a headache two or three times, you know something else is going on," says Koch. "We're able to talk to them and route them into some form of help."

Denise Chuckovich, who manages school-based health centers in Multnomah County, says: "What's really happening is that students are checking the place out—Is this a safe place?"

Alcoholism and sexual abuse—problems that often crop up in struggling families—are common in St. Johns, according to Koch. Kids in alcoholic or abusive homes frequently visit the clinic with minor complaints.

"We see them for the sore throat, the earache, the sprained ankle, the period cramps," says Koch, who works with a full-time mental health consultant, a half-time pediatric nurse practitioner, and a senior office assistant. "They usually present with fairly small things. By the third visit, we do a risk assessment, where we look at everything." The thorough checkup provides a full picture of the person, including where they live, what their lifestyle is like, substance use, sexual history, medical history, and psychosocial history. "We identify risks and then work on a care plan around those risky behaviors," Koch says. A care plan can include individual, group, and family counseling, as well as referral to outside agencies. A key clinic goal, Koch says, is keeping kids in class. For example, a child with an upset stomach may be reacting to a stressful situation at home. Before the clinic was established, the student would report to the office; if the school nurse wasn't in, the student often was sent home. Now, Koch says, clinic staff can diagnose and treat the illness and its underlying causes, while keeping the child in school and then returning her to class.

Kids can't get condoms or birth control at the clinic. But they can get information, counseling, and exams for family planning and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

"Eighty-five percent of the family planning counseling I do is on abstinence," says Koch. "Our focus is not talking about birth control. It's talking about choices. It's talking about what you want to do with your life, what your goals are, and how early sexual involvement changes that."

If students want birth control or condoms, they are directed to county clinics outside the school. By law, kids don't need parents' permission to get family-planning counseling, birth-control devices, or treatment for STDs. Clinic staff strongly encourage students to involve their parents. But kids often are reluctant or unable to discuss the subject at home. Parents, too, sometimes shy away from the topic, Koch points out. "The beauty of it is that many of the kids who have not been able to talk to their parents about sexual issues have a safe place to come and get information," Koch says.

Except for family-planning and STD services, students need parental permission to access medical or mental health services at the clinic. About 80 percent of George students have permission to use the clinic—a percentage that Koch expects to increase when non-English speaking parents begin receiving permission forms in their own language. The county, Koch says, is working on translations.

The angry objections some Portlanders raised when the first school-based clinics opened in Portland in 1985 have given way to strong community and parental support, says Chuckovich. "Once we get in and start delivering services, people see what a valuable resource it is," she notes.

In a typical month, about 250 students—half the student body—visit the clinic. Many go in more than once. Services and prescriptions are free, although Medicaid and families' insurance companies sometimes are billed, says Koch.

Sexuality issues are only one small piece of the clinic's work. Less than 10 percent of the services provided at George relate to family planning, Chuckovich says. "We really want to look at the whole picture of what's going on with that person and respect them as a person," she stresses. "They feel very comfortable here."
—Lee Sherman Caudell

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