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W hen writer Paul Gruchow was a boy, he took two years of high school biology. "But I never learned that the beautiful meadow at the bottom of my family's pasture was a remnant virgin prairie," he recounts in Grass Roots: The Universe of Home. "We did not spend, as far as I can remember, a single hour on the prairie-the landscape in which we were immersed." Nor did he learn, until long after he'd moved away, that his town's leading banker was also a botanist. "I can only imagine now what it might have meant to me— a studious boy with a love of nature—to know that a great scholar of natural history had made a full and satisfying life in my town. Nothing in my education prepared me to be interested in my own place. If I hoped to amount to anything, I understood, I had better take the first road out of town as fast as I could. And, like so many of my classmates, I did." Hearing his story, I can't help but wonder where my oldest son's future will take him. This fall I helped Dan pack up his stuff and move into a college dorm, hundreds of miles away from the Cascade peaks that have watched over his first 18 years of life. It was an exciting rite of passage for both of us. But driving back home in an empty van, I found myself wondering about the road ahead. Will he return to Oregon, eventually? We'll see. In the meantime, I know he has a good sense of the place he's left behind. Outdoor School and summer camps and family hikes have grounded him. Wherever his dreams may take him, he'll know the feel of home beneath his feet. Across the Northwest, schools are finding compelling reasons to teach young people not only about the geography of home, but also about the threads that hold our communities together. They're immersing students in the kind of education that only happens if the walls between schools and communities come tumbling down. This issue of Northwest Education takes a look at what researchers are loosely calling school-community collaborations. These new partnerships can take many forms and serve many purposes, from academic enrichment to economic development to better delivery of social services. But they grow from an idea that's as old as civilization itself: Communities are places where people care for one another. And in most communities, schools still sit at center stage. Many of the remarkable programs featured in this issue take place in communities that are struggling. In distressed rural areas and impoverished inner cities, citizens aren't waiting for experts to ride into town and fix what ails them. Instead, they're using their own talents and initiative to reweave the threads of their communities. In the process, they're creating a lifeline strong enough to pull themselves, their children, and their communities into the next century.
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Date of Last Update: 9/28/01 
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