Read the Experiences-As-Artwork

2/11/21

Anthony kane
Portland, OR

One Day of School
Cloverdale Middle School, Cloverdale, CA
2003
Collaboration between Tony Kane and H., Christopher, et al.

My entire education was unusual. Perhaps the whole thing was a work of art, but if I have to pick something unusual, it would be the one day I spent doing the “usual.” Homeschooled from grades 2-11, I had a “well-rounded” education; every single free-entry day at museums, zoos, historic sights, parks, tours, you name it. Elephant seals in mating season? You bet. Every Spanish mission in California? Been there. My siblings and I learned languages through Pimsleur audio programs from the local library: intermediate Spanish, introductory French and Greek.

Sounds cool? One catch: the term “home-schooled freak” was definitely a thing before Mean Girls. I’d been briefed, and primed on how to react.

This all figures into my most unusual experience in early education: the solitary day I spent in a brick and mortar middle school. I went to visit a friend from summer camp who lived in another city for the weekend. I had to take several busses that didn’t run on weekends, and I’d arrive too early on friday for his parents to be home, so I had to make arrangements to get a pass to join my friend at school that day. His class did a team building exercise, a coded test-prep scavenger hunt game. The “code” was plain phonetic Greek. I was nervous, knowing that everyone might find out I was a freak, but after watching the other kids flounder for a while, I suggested what I already knew, decoding a clue to prove it. We won the game, and nobody thought I was a freak. I learned two things that day: I’m not a freak, and worrying is a waste of time.

“I don’t worry ‘bout nothin’, no, because worryin’s a waste of my time.” ~Axl Rose

2/10/21

Ni Made Maya Sutriasa
Portland, OR

One Thousand
The Willow School, Vero Beach, FL
2008
Collaboration with K-8 students and faculty at the Willow School

In 6th grade, I had a younger classmate who got leukemia. As she spent lots of time away from class, the whole school got together to make one thousand paper cranes for her. We learned about a Japanese belief where if you make one thousand origami cranes, you will be granted a wish. We spent most of our recess making those cranes and dividing them into bags of one hundred to keep track of them all. As we made those tiny paper cranes, I found myself wondering what my classmate would wish for once she received them all and tried thinking about what I would wish for. That was the first time I wrestled with existentialism. It wasn’t the first time I had an experience with death like that, but it was the first time experiencing it with someone who was younger than me. In the end, I never knew what her wish was or if it ever came true. That was the first time my friends and classmates worked together to accomplish something so meaningful. I felt really proud of my peers. It showed me that we all really care about each other. I can’t remember another time where the whole school got together to accomplish something of that caliber.

2/10/21

Andrea Hernandez
United States

The Box that Made Things Happen
Beach Elementary School, Portland, OR
2005
Collaboration with Ms. Burnham and classmates

A teacher I can remember around learning outside the lines would have to be my science teacher Ms. Burnham. I remember having many endearing memories of her. One of which occurred when she dressed up as Medusa on Halloween. I remember Ms. Burnham entered the room dressed as Medusa, and how she would be our substitute teacher for the day. At first, we were a bit confused, and we all shouted it's you, Ms. Burnham! She responded no I am Ms. Burnham’s twin sister. I would also remember writing notes and placing them in a suggestion box. Ms. Burnham would pick one suggestion from the box each week, and have it be an activity on Friday. This suggestion box was of significance to me because everyone who wrote a note got to choose what we did on Friday. I remember my note, which was to dress up as any character we would like and have it be a play. I also remember the day it happened she brought us a box of costumes and we chose our costumes. There was no script or anything we just made things up as they happened. Below is a picture of that memorable day, also I am the one wearing a white silver mask. She was a teacher that made things happen, and that is something that really stood out to me as a kid.

2/7/21

Kimberley Vu
Salem, OR

Taking Charge
Juniper Elementary School, Bend, OR
2008
In collaboration with my fourth grade teacher and my classmates

My fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. Speed comes to mind as someone who has left an impression on my educational experiences that is still embedded in my memory. Her class was very different in how she decided to operate her classroom. She was a very loving and caring teacher who made extra efforts to enhance our learning. Apart from class movie time when our class accumulates a certain amount of tallies from being well behaved, she incorporated important skills such as money management and giving us the agency to make our own choices. She explained to us beforehand how this process would work in our class and how we were able to earn class money. As a class, we were all very excited about the idea. The idea that we get to have control of our class money and that we could save up to spend on class goods. As a class, we designed our class currency. We voted on the designs on the currency for the different money bills (ten dollars, twenty dollars, hundred dollars, etc..) I recall them being colorful. There was a green, a blue, pink, and orange money bill that were assigned by their values. An example would be the pink bill that represented the fifty dollar bill while the orange bill represented the hundred dollar bill and so on. Once that was established, she also explained to us the billing statement process. At the end of every month, we would earn our class money by receiving a billing statement where we can later claim our money after all of the bills were deducted. Our paycheck would be earned by attending school, completing homework, and participating in our designated clean-up area. Then in our statement, there were also bills that we had to pay with our class money, such as the water bill, electricity bill, and our desk which served as our house and property. The desks were rented out until we decided to choose to save our money to buy our desk. As a class, we would check our balances on our statement. It also gave us an opportunity for practicing some mathematical principles such as adding and subtraction. Once we have calculated how much we had left and how much we should be receiving, Mrs. Speed would call us in groups at a time to make our way to her desk so she can check our statement of how much we should be getting. Once the statement and the process of checking and balancing were checked and confirmed, we were able to receive the remainder of our income that would be put into an orange envelope along with our bank statement. It was a very different experience in which we were given choices in how we decided to handle our money. She applied similar real-life situations that were essential for preparing us in life and applied them to our learning experiences.

2/4/21

Tenzin Tardiff
Portland, OR

When Math Could Fly
Turner Elementary School, Turner, ME
2013
Collaboration with the fellow participants of Ms. Dougay's GT program

I suppose I had always been able to pass by in the standard forms of education, my specific presentation of neurodivergence lending itself to absorbing information and laying it out on a test for everyone to see. This is what initially landed me in my new elementary school's "gifted and talented" program for math and science.

It was in this program that learning took on a whole new meaning. It was more than tests and memorization, of which we did not have to do either, but instead about experiential learning. I found a love of learning that would carry me all the way through middle and high school, based on this one year in this program.

The day that truly set things off was the day we were learning how to use math to calculate the dimensions of the perfect paper airplane. So there we were, a small group of sixth graders sifting our way through different papers, pulling out our pencils and rulers, folding and cutting away. And at the end of it all, into the hallway we would file ourselves where we would then get to throw airplane after airplane in order to gather the data on which designs flew the farthest. Experiential learning felt like a key to joy and knowledge combined into one. The tactile component to seeing, hearing, and doing was marvelous.

Looking back to it now, it was something I wish more students would have been able to engage with inside the standard classroom. I have to wonder how many more students would be able to be in a "gifted and talented" program if they were able to learn the way we got to in the first place.

2/3/21

Nayomi Morita
Portland, OR

You make me frown
West Sylvan Middle School, Portland, OR
2013
Collaboration between Myself and Mr. Gilley

In middle-school backpacks were banned in the classroom, so I made a box to carry my things that’s face depicted a frown made of frowns. It got me a lot of attention and the next year a teacher asked if it could be used for the syllabus for the year. I was very excited until I was asked to remake it as a smile by Mr. Gilley. Of course, I did it but I felt I had sold out, as my original message of misery in school due to bullying/home life was lost. I'd call this out of the ordinary for my schooling at the time because no art classes were offered in middle school, so I had to do my own self-guided projects.

12/3/20

Natalie Prasad
Portland, OR

A class full of students and 1 sewing needle
Chief Joseph Elementary School, Portland, OR
2009

When I was in 3rd grade, one day when person X’s mother showed up to class and told us about a little project that we would be spending the next month on. As a 3rd grader working on a 1 month project seemed like it was going to take forever. So on the first day person x’s mother gives us a brief history on their Native American history and how the project we will be doing together as a class was a representation for their Native American Past.

Persons x’s mother sat in the back of the classroom while each of the 30 3rd graders were facing the front of class waiting to see who would be picked first to go to the back and work on this mystery project. One by one a new student was called to the back to help with the project, and finally my name got called so I walked to the back to see something partially sewn together. I was asked to sit down and x’s mother started slowly teaching me how to sew something onto fabric. As i’m sewing x’s Mother starts talking about her cultural back ground and how this project was supposed to help us one learn how to sew but also how even though we all took turns creating something we can all work together to make one amazing piece. The project was quickly completed and had given all 30 of the 3rd grade students in my class a new perspective on working with others to great an art piece that represented someone’s culture.

12/3/20

Janetmarie Fields
Oregon

Creative Research and Presentation
Green Valley Christian School
2014
In collaboration with Miss Solberg

Miss Solberg’s seventh grade classroom was unlike any I had been in or seen before. There was a liveliness to the atmosphere and ingenuity to her teaching that was inviting, exciting, and different from any other educational experience I had before.

A bright, inviting environment was made even more fun with Miss Solberg’s conscious choice to use creativity as a learning tool. I remember reading Shakespeare plays out loud in class, as if we were putting on our own performance of the works. For each character, she would find a celebrity, musician, or pop-culture icon that we recognized that somewhat fit the characteristics of the characters in the play so that we could better connect with them, and then she would choose new students to read the parts each day. A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Hamlet remain two of my favorite Shakespeare plays to this day and I still remember the plots vividly and with fondness.

Each one of her assignments and projects seemed geared toward engaging her students in the same creativity that she exuded so perfectly, but the project I always remember was the book reports. There was no specific book assigned - her only rule was that it was age and learning level appropriate - and when we were finished, she supplied us with a truly enormous list of options for the report itself. Even then, I remember recognizing that she had given so many options, making sure that there would be one for each and every one of her students, no matter their interests, strengths, or limits. She would accept an essay, of course, but she would also accept a myriad of other things - a poem, a song, a skit, a speech, a powerpoint presentation, a poster, a homemade movie or commercial, a fake interview with the characters, a comic book, a letter to and from the characters, a news article - the options seemed endless. For one book report assignment, I wrote and illustrated a children’s book, meticulously drawing and hand lettering a condensed and child-friendly version of the book I had read. Another time, I made a very elaborate diorama about Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland with hand sculpted clay rabbits and pocket watches and a table full of tea, food, and decor for the Madhatter’s tea party.

As a student who loved art and working with my hands, this project was my dream come true. Miss Solberg provided so many choices for all of us to present the material we read on our own, in a way that made sense to us and also made it fun for us. It was the first time in my educational experience that I was able to pick my own assignment and participate in the execution of what I had chosen. The freedom with this project really allowed me to invest in the project because it was something that I was excited about. I didn’t realize it then, but the process of getting to make my own choices at every point of the project and being an active participant in the research, creative process, and presentation of the material I learned, taught me valuable skills and practices that I have returned to time and time again not only throughout my educational career but also in my own practice as an artist.

12/3/20

Hailey Hunt
Milwaukie, OR

Adventure and Exploration
Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR
2014
In collaboration with Ms. Gill, my Middle School Art Teacher; Kenny Cassidy, my friend; Kazan Hoots, my friend; Nolan Riordan, my brother

This was my last year in Middle School. Graduation was just around the corner, and I was apart of Ms. Gill's "Advanced" art class. That whole last term in her class had been an absolute blast. Anything that we did inside of it could be considered out of the ordinary, as far as standard classes go. We left our mark on the school by painting murals, we were constantly roaming the school trying to find places to work that weren't our classroom. And the cherry of it all, we took a giant class field trip to the art museum in downtown Portland. This was the first time I even remembered entering the city - let alone going to an art museum. But there we were, all getting off the Trimet that Ms. Gill had specifically arranged for our transportation there. I had ran and hopped up onto my friend Kenny's back, clinging to the giant boy as we made our way up to the museum. I distinctly remember a glass exhibit being displayed at the upper floors of the museum - something about the artist having lost her arm, but still having created these wonderful works of blown glass. It was the most thrilling field trip I've had. Seeing all the different types of art that had been created - the varieties of what could be considered art. It opened my eyes and provided this, enthralling experience. Ms. Gill always taught us about the different types of art - she also always tried to push us to create whatever we wished (just as long as it fell into the assignment guidelines). We also had a little journal, that we documented our progress or ideas in. Often times I was just found doodling in it, however.

I remember, after this field trip had ended, we were given the assignment to recreate one of the works, or to incorporate it into something that we wanted to do. Something we took inspiration from, and wanted to make personal. I remember I saw Van Gogh's Lily Pads painting, and knew I wanted to incorporate it with something I was watching recently. It was a web-based show called Bravest Warriors - I wanted to do an outline of the character Catbug, but have it overlap the recreation of Lily Pads that I was doing

10/26/20

Safiyah Maurice
Milwaukie, OR

Hot Glue Guns & Wooden Wagons
View Acres Elementary School, Milwaukie, OR
2002
In collaboration with my 4th grade classmates

I lived in the surrounding neighborhood; only a short bus ride away. Most mornings were the same, I vividly remember yellow lined asphalt roads, sticky leather seats, uproarious engine sounds, and the sway of bus brakes. From my window, I enjoyed observing the wide-ranging grass fields, cement basketball courts, muddy creder chip playgrounds, and the uniform White suburban neighborhoods. I could feel the familiar warmth of day break, sunrise kissing my face, temporarily blocking my vision of the nearing speckled brown and tan school bricks. I could hear the nostalgic hum of crowded hallways, and feel the comfortable rhythmic tapping of my weighed down bag against my back. Classrooms were bright, busy, eurocentric spaces of enforced patriotic White american pride. I found solace in the blood pumping ritual of our mandated recess breaks. My learning was often segregated; broken up into useless cycles of sweaty anxiety. Over the years, the types of classrooms I’ve existed in were hierarchical spaces that were structured to favor White students that could test well, they were deemed ‘high achievers’ also known as normative learners. When I reflect on my early elementary school experience it’s important to note that the rapid federal mandated shifts in the standardization of the American education system was a form of structural racism. This led to lasting trauma and negatively impacted my relationship to higher education. With that in mind, I've found comfort in memories of curriculum that involved participatory and kinaesthetic learning. More specifically, I’ve learned to appreciate the 4th grade. My teacher at the time, Miss Bade, was an educator that valued visual arts and making. Having the opportunity to make art, build, and craft lightened the overwhelming toxic shame of being a Black Neurodivergent learner, or better known as a ‘lower achiever’. As a 4th grader, I remember actively not caring about expected learning objectives that translated into tests; my attention was in the feeling that drove my curiosity, creative expression, and visual imagination. My favorite project that year was recreating a Oregon Trail Wagon with wooden sticks and a hot glue gun. I remember taking pleasure in the process of gathering materials, and the immediate sensenation of joy and purpose from the act of creative movement and creation. I learned for the first time within a classroom environment I wasn’t a ‘lower achiever’ but a young gifted Artist. 

10/05/20

Cristina Plesa
Portland, OR

The Notebook
Gilbert Heights Elementary School, Portland, OR
2003
Collaboration between school friends

Around 6th grade my friends and I started writing together in a journal. This collaborative work was interesting because of how informal and fun it was. The group included three of my 6th grade friends and I. The group was split evenly, two girls and two boys.

Each week one of us would take the journal home and it would be up to us what we would do inside the pages. Often the individual documentation could include personal experiences, fantasy stories, comic strip sketches, doodles, or could even include our hopes and dreams. As the journal got passed around we would have a chance to read through our friends' previous entries.

I remember specifically my two male friends would often tell stories of how they turned into a vampire or werewolf and battled their enemy in the streets. The stories were so fascinating and I believed them to be real. I wanted to be a vampire too!

The doodles we would create were funny too; stick figures battling it out on lined paper.

Sometimes my entries would not be so fantastical and upbeat. I would write about sobering family life experiences and how I wished for something more. I grew up an immigrant child feeling divided between family life and the American culture my friends thought normal. The other girl and friend in our group grew up with some similar circumstances. Her immigrant family is Hmong and she came from a larger family like mine. We connected and bonded over these shared experiences.

Overall because this collaborative art piece was only between friends, we were able to express ourselves freely and be as creative as we wanted. Our curiosity flourished. This led to a long-term collaborative artwork that I will always remember as a vital part of my childhood.

10/04/20

Violet Burell
Portland, OR

The Many Uses Of Stinging Nettle
Maplewood Elementary, Portland, OR
2007
Collaboration with a classmate and the classmate’s mother

In fifth grade, my class had a field trip where we visited a local trail in a larger forested area of Southwest Portland. My classmate’s mother, who happened to be a friend of my mother and therefor someone I knew in a distant, second-hand sort of way, was a volunteer chaperone. I was put in her group to walk around the trail, noting different creatures and plants we saw along the trail from a worksheet. My classmate’s mother noticed some stinging nettle off the trail and explained to us the different uses. Stinging nettle, despite its irritating effect on the skin, is: Full of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, amino acids, reduces inflammation, a delicious sautéed green, and makes a fine soup.

She wanted to collect some of the power-house plants to bring home for those very reasons. I, on the other hand, was quite interested in a slug that I found on a loose rock. Absorbed in my slug discovery, I did not notice that my chaperone and the two other members of my group had left the trail. My classmate’s mom called to me to catch up, and looking up I noticed they were about 15 feet off. I ran to catch up and did not notice the metal signpost that had been cut down, assumedly an attempt to remove it, but left as a sharp metal piece sticking up about two inches from the dirt. I tripped on the post, cut a hole through my shoe and into my foot. Shoe and sock full of blood, we trudged back to the teacher and was driven back to school to the nurse’s office. I did not try any stinging nettle soup, and I have not to this day.

07/17/20

Lexie Harvey
Canton, NC

Bats
St. Marys Elementary School
1999
Collaboration with Mrs. D and other kids in the class; bats

In the fifth grade our entire classroom was moved into the science lab because bats were living in the ceiling. I didn't even know we had a science lab. I don't remember hearing the bats, but someone must have, and they supposedly smelled something awful, too. I just remember getting to learn in the science lab with all the things that were typically reserved for older kids, or teachers, or just were there to make the school look more like a school. Microscopes. Test tubes. Beakers. Walls of metal shelves full of transformational, foreign, and dangerous looking things. We had big, new desks and chairs. New seating arrangements. We were more together than apart.

06/07/20

Lo Moran
Portland, OR

The Locker Room
William J. Johnston Middle School, Colchester CT
2003
Collaboration with Ms. Taylor the Art teacher, Erik Peterson and other fellow students

In middle school I was starting to discover that I liked drawing and painting and that I was really drawn to making art. One of the experiences that really encouraged me on this path was being in Ms. Taylor's art class in 8th grade. The school was running out of classroom space (and certainly not prioritizing space for art classes) and so Ms. Taylor's art classroom was located in an old boys locker room down a dark hall in a forgotten corner of the school.

Being in a locker room gave the class a feeling that was a bit otherworldly, out of a setting we were used to in an ordinary classroom. I remember there were some augments to make the room a classroom, like tables, but it still really felt like a locker room. We would laugh and joke as we cleaned our paintbrushes in the urinals. To make it feel more like a space for art, Ms. Taylor had each student paint one of the tiles on the wall. Turning the walls into a collaborative artwork made the room a colorful patchwork we all felt ownership over, somethings that I hadn't experienced in a typical classroom.

At the time I was going through a lot of transitions with friends, I was starting to feel my weirdness and was feeling left out by some (former) best friends who wanted to be more popular. Ms. Taylor would let students eat lunch in her classroom and out behind it where there was a secret little patch of grass, and I started to eat lunch here often. There I began to form the friendships that would last me through high school and up to today. We kept up the tradition of eating lunch together in art classrooms all through high school. It was the first time I started to feel belonging as an "art kid" and now I look back at it as a safe space that was made for all us Queer misfits who didn't know we were Queer yet.

I remember one time Ms. Taylor brought in photographs she took on a road trip with a friend, one of which I borrowed to make a painting from. It was a painting of Black-eyed Susans growing on the side of the road, with the road leading off into the distance. I remember being excited about the idea of driving across the country with friends, and seeing it as a small window into the possible freedoms I could have if I continued on an unconventional path offered by art. I think The Locker Room also influenced my affinity for art that grows in alternative, scrappy spaces where one might not traditionally see art.

06/07/20

Sharon Fantl
Brattleboro, VT

Whale Sale
Riverdale, NY
1986
Collaboration with 4th grade project, in collaboration with all 4th grade classes

When I was in 4th grade the combined 4th grade classes (possibly more of the school) participated in a Whale Sale project where students crafted/stuffed/decorated felt whales to exhibit and hang from the ceilings (perhaps the walls too) in our classrooms and eventually to sell in a school fundraiser to a Save the Whales cause (via WWF or Greenpeace I think). I haven’t thought about this project in many years and I don’t have any documentation of the exhibition, but I recall it was one of the first school experiences I had that sparked a variety of my interests. I loved whales. I was really interested in learning about various whales, and my curiosity on this topic helped me transcend some challenges I had adjusting to school expectations the previous couple years. It spoke to my creative side- I enjoyed participating in a collective art project that had a direct outcome- money that we could donate to a cause I cared about. It offered me an early experience of how creative processes or practices can work on different levels- something that still motivates me to this day.

06/07/20

Spencer Byrne-Seres
Portland, OR

Utopia Tour
New Mexico
1998
Collaboration with Mrs. Crawford’s 4th Grade Class

How do kids practice radical autonomy? How do we convince adults to give us money, food, shelter, and mobility, in order to go wherever we decide? Utopia Tour was a week long experiment in kid-led social organizing, that moved through the State of New Mexico on a rented “Tours of the Southwest” charter bus. The group lobbied for resources and support to devise an exploration of the area surrounding Santa Fe, NM. Kids in Mrs. Crawfords 4th grade class hosted bake sales, solicited donations from parents, and tapped into resources from the school to plan and embark on the trip, where they collectively decided where to go, what to eat, how to set up their tents, and what they wanted to learn. Together they explored how societies function, from basic everyday needs, to creating culture through music, art, and conversation. The group chose to include three “chaperones”—representatives of the established order in which Adults have control—to act as administrative support for the trip. The group of kids foregrounded their trip in the histories of the places they passed through, learning about indigenous history and current affairs, ecology, geology, spelunking, in addition to practicing group work and collective decision making.

06/07/20

Leah Maldonado
Portland, OR

School Newspaper
Chapman Elementary, Portland OR
2003
Collaboration with Mr. Jean's 5th grade class

I struggled with reading and spelling during elementary school (I still do!) and so I found myself relying more heavily on visual communication than my peers did.

In 5th grade when our teacher asked us to start a student newspaper I felt scared about how I would participate. I felt scared to write articles because writing was something I really struggled with. When I told Mr. Jeans about my fear he helped me understand that journalism was about more than just writing. He asked me to look at a newspaper and find all of the elements that weren’t text based. I circled photographs, graphs, cartoons, lines, boxes, and ads. Mr. Jeans then asked if I would like to be the art director of the newspaper. I felt extremely proud to have a leadership position on a project where I previously felt I could not equally participate.

In my role as art director I led a team of artists and designers in illustrating elements for each of the articles. We were also in charge of laying out the information and determining a hierarchy of information. Under my leadership we created illustrative borders around each of the pages that responded to the content. I wanted us to do this to help the younger grades who were in the process of learning to read quickly understand the news too. Because I struggled with reading I was able to more empathetically design for others that struggled too. I felt extremely engaged in this role and am thankful to Mr. Jeans for helping me navigate feeling afraid. He showed me and others a different entry way to participation.

As an adult I remember that lesson when I am challenged with something I feel I do not have the skills to participate in. And I actively work on helping others look for entry ways that make sense to them.

06/05/20

Christian Orellana Bauer
Portland, OR

Construction through Community
Portland, OR
2003
Collaboration with students at Atkinson Elementary

When I was in elementary school (I can't remember which grade specifically) I recall there was a big multiple year project that was announced for an outdoor garden and classroom space that was going to be developed so teachers could use it to teach children a little more about natural science in a hands on way. The announcement itself didn't stick in my memory very well but there was a community aspect to the development of the project that I never forgot.

Every single class (or at least what felt like every single class to my small self) took part in the construction of the outdoor seating space. There was a wall and some benches which were made of straw clay that we helped to mix and form into bricks together. We all got out onto the playground in the drizzly Portland weather class by class and took turns helping to create the material that would be used to build the structure. At the end we each wrote some sort of personal note which we put into the bricks as a form of recognizing our contribution to the project. I think we might have read them later when we were graduating from the school but to be honest I don't remember what I wrote or if I ever actually read the note again. The biggest thing I remember about the experience was that it felt bigger than us, like there was a greater good we were working toward. All these little children out in the cloudy weather with their raincoats on helping to build something we would all be able to use once and benefit from once it was finished. Of course looking back now we most likely played a small part in the actual development and construction of the structure but at the time for a small human like myself it felt like a big deal to be out with all my classmates working toward something bigger than ourselves. I was not a very present child for whatever reason and in fact to this day many of my memories of early life elude me. However the ones I do remember often carry these common themes of doing something physical, working as a community, and working toward something that would ultimately be used, seen, and hopefully benefit ourselves and others. I hadn't thought much about that before trying to find a memory to write about for this. It's kind of an interesting and nice thing to recognize about the early memories of my education. Community today, community forever, we can always change the world, but only together.

06/03/20

Bonnie Paisley
Portland, OR

The Gully Man
Walking home from Gove Middle School in Denver, Colorado
1988
In collaboration with Unknown Local Man, 2 Friends, & Myself

When I was in the 6th grade I would walk to and from school with 2 or 3 of my friends. We would walk a fairly straight route down 14th Street to Gove Middle School. The city side walks were uneven and narrow and in the fall, flanked with lots of dead grass, dry skeleton like trees, and red brick houses. The street names would come and go—Fairfax, Elm, Eudora. In between the blocks there were narrow alleyways that had entrances to backyards and garages. You could look down the alley and see glimpses of gardens and trees spilling out over the tops of rickety fences.

We would often see a man dressed in white coveralls sweeping the alleyways and gutters with a long broom. He would step off the side walk to let us pass and nod his head. We probably didn't say anything but may have made eye contact because we were awkward pre-teens. I don't recall being aware of the gaze of strange men and what that could mean at the time.

We saw him frequently enough, always sweeping the bits of trash that would collect in the corners of the sidewalk and alley, that we started calling him "The Gully Man." I don't recall who came up with that name, or if we even knew the correct origins of the word "Gully," but I think we thought it was another word for "gutter." We never said that name to his face, but we would see him in his white coveralls from a distance and say, "there's the Gully Man again."

One day, as we passed him on our way home, he asked if we would like to come and see something. There were 3 of us, and I don't recall any of us hesitating to think about going with a total stranger to "see something". He was a familiar part of our school day by now. We followed him down the alley, I don't recall him talking about anything in particular, and then he stopped and pushed on a large wooden fence gate. When he stepped aside and we could see into his backyard it felt like that moment when Dorothy steps from her black and white world into the technicolor Land of Oz. He had constructed his entire backyard--trees, bushes, flowers, paths--from bits of trash that he had presumably swept up from the street with his broom. The trees towered above our heads and branched out in a skeletal way similar to the trees that lined the streets. I don't remember going very far into the yard, but maybe we walked a little way in and were surrounded by his trash garden which seemed on the verge of swallowing up his old house. I have no recollection of what my friends thought, but I remember this as one of my powerful "art encounters." I remember feeling like we had been transported to another planet, and being struck by the beauty, ingenuity and humble nature of this man's creativity. As an adult, and a mother, this sounds like the beginning of a cautionary tale for young girls, but the memory ends like a beautiful dream.

05/28/20

Lydia Matthews
New York, NY

The Lilac Mud Kitchen
Merrill Junior High, Des Moines, IA
1974
In collaboration with Claes Oldenburg, my Art Teacher, Ann Matthews, Jonny Gaskell, Anna Gaskell, B.T. Express, the lilac bushes and flower garden

When I was in 8th Grade we got to work with clay in my art class. The name of the teacher escapes me but I remember her vividly because she seemed young and cool and liked astrological references and psychedelic fashion. She showed us images of Claes Oldenburg’s “The Store,” prompting us to make food items out of clay. I got really excited about trying to create an alternative world that mimicked familiar things in our daily environment. That afternoon when I got back home I had to babysit the two kids who lived next door, Jonny and Anna Gaskell (yes, the famous photographer), until Mrs. Gaskell came back from work. The kids were about 3 and 4 years old, and I was 13 at the time. I remember it was a warm spring day and I told them that we were going to make a new kind of kitchen outside so we could cook a make-believe meal together. We went next door to my mom’s kitchen she let us put a bunch of canned goods, pots, pans, kitchen tools, a jug of water, a tablecloth and 3 dinner place settings into a wheel barrow. We rolled it down into the front of the yard where there were dense purple lilac bushes in full bloom--I remember it was a lot of stuff so we had to make a couple of trips back and forth. If you bent down you could literally crawl into the bushes and it was if you had entered a shaded, organic dome created out of thick branches and blossoms (that was a favorite space of mine because it was totally private and the scent was intoxicating.) We unpacked the wheel barrow and transformed it into a makeshift kitchen, deciding where to put everything. Then we went over to our flower garden and started digging up some dirt, brought it back into the lilac bush kitchen along with cut grass and little cut flowers, mixed the black soil with water until the mud resembled clay. The kids filled a cupcake pan with the mud and decorated each “chocolate” cake with petals and leaves, and using a rolling pin they made a pancake shape that we cut up in order to make their favorite food, french fries. We took the mud out under the sun to cook for a while we placed the table settings on the ground inside our lilac bush kitchen. I lit a tiny candle and turned on the transistor radio to KIOA to create some ambiance, and “Do It (Til’ You’re Satisfied)” came on--which I loved-- so I turned it up really loud until the kids were doubled over in laughter. Finally, I dished the mud creations onto our plates and we celebrated our feast for the eyes.

05/28/20

Gabriella Solti
London, Ontario, Canada

Corn, weed and labour
Somogyi Bela Elementary School Budapest, Hungary
1975
In collaboration with classmates and Agricultural Cooperative workers

At the end of the school year of Grade 8, when I was 14, my whole class went to the countryside to spend two weeks at a socialist youth labour camp. This was not the first time I was away from home in a camp, but this time it was not like scout camp. The purpose of the youth labour camp was to provide necessary and useful work as seasonal workers at an agricultural cooperative. We worked seven hours each day and lived in spartan accommodation. The first day we were directed to work in an apple orchard, but we did not take the work seriously enough. Our performance, as well as some damage we left behind at the end of the first day, convinced the Cooperative’s leader we should learn how to work, and learn the hard way.

From the second day on, each day early morning we marched to the cornfield carrying a heavy hoe on our shoulders. Then for seven hours in blazing sunshine, interrupted only with a short lunch break, we bent forward or crouched in the corridors of the cornfield and tended to stalks and removed the weeds between stalks. The corn was still young and I had a hard time to see the difference between the weed and the corn. They were both green and looked the same. But we had to learn quickly to differentiate between them and to use the hoe properly to completely uproot the weed. The Cooperative’s workers who worked alongside us checked on us regularly examining the quality of our work and pushing us to work faster. I was amazed at how the old women and men from the village worked so fast.

It was backbreaking labour. I could hardly stand straight after the end of our shift. My back was hurting and my skin burned to red from the sun. My hands were covered with blisters and calluses from holding the hoe all day. My classmates and I were quite sombre thinking of the leafy apple trees and their cooling shades and how we squandered our opportunity to work in the orchard the day before. But for the next two weeks, our fate was the sun, heat, and cornfield. We got better and faster every day and we certainly learned to appreciate the labour that goes into producing our food.

I immigrated to Canada 20 years ago. Canada relies on seasonal migrant workers every year on its farms to plant, tend to and harvest the produce we eat. Whenever I read about them in the news, about the often exploitive ways they are treated or the justification of “unskilled labour” for the meagre pay they receive, I think of my experience on the cornfield and remind myself that the work the migrant workers do is both hard labour and requires considerable skill.

05/26/20

Leigh Williams
Poughkeepsie, NY

Air Raid/Hair Band
Groveland Elementary School, Minnetonka, MN
1964
In collaboration with Mrs. Brunswick's 2nd Grade Class

Two memories twisted together:

1.) A siren sounds over the school loudspeakers. We're ushered out of the classroom, into the windowless hallway, into a wide space between two banks of lockers. We all crouch down, close to the ground. We have to stay down and cover our heads and wait. It's a long time.

2.) Marla Michaels is wearing the headband I lost last week. I see it there on her head while we are hunched in the hallway. I tell her it's mine. She tells me I'm wrong. It's not my headband; It's hers. I explain again; It's definitely mine. No, she says, it's not. I know I'm right, but don't know what to do about it. I spend the rest of the drill and the day feeling cheated, frustrated, embarrassed. I know this is unjust, but there's nothing I seem to be able to do about it. That day I stop being friends with Marla. I burn with a terrible feeling about the hair band.

05/26/20

Carolyn Tertes
Walnut Creek, CA

Friday Afternoon Creativity
Southeast Elementary School, Newington CT
1962
In collaboration with 20 second grade students

In the ‘60s Curricula were less standardized than they are now. I was participating in curriculum development in Math and decided to try my own experiment in Art and Creative Writing, subjects I found lacking. One Friday afternoon I closed the door and we wrote stories and did art projects to our hearts content. Friday afternoons quickly became our favorite time.

Until on day. During an art lesson I was sharing with the children how to splash our papers with color using toothbrushes dipped in paint. In order to put the paint on the paper it was necessary to run your thumb on the toothbrush towards you. This felt wrong to the kids and so they ran their fingers away from themselves, thereby painting their bodies in globs of paint.

And then.....the fire alarm bell rang for a fire drill......and 20 seven year olds ran out of the building , dragging their hands all over the walls as they ran. Is there another way to walk when you’re in second grade?

The children got an extra lesson, in cleaning up. But the principal liked my experiment. She said, ‘In the future let me know when it’s art and I’ll schedule fire drills for another time.’

05/14/20

German Sanchez De La Paz
Tualatin, OR

The Funky First Collage
Hazelbrook Middle School, Tualatin, OR
2009
In collaboration with classmates and chefs

When I was in eighth grade I was told by my teacher that we would be doing a collage based on what we learn throughout our 3 years in that middle school.I talked to my art teacher and eventually got the ok of instead doing a the regular end of the school year collage book ,I will be doing one that involves art and talks about my life. That was an amazing experience. Another thing that I got to do that school summer was telling my teacher that I wanted to make a surprise painting for my mom in the next year's mother's day. So she gave me all the materials and i eventually finished it on time. I made a painting with a blue background and red flowers.

05/13/20

Weston Chapman
Portland, OR

The Apple Bees Experience
Hosford Middle School, Portland, OR
2012
In collaboration with classmates and chefs

Starting in kindergarten, I was in the Mandarin immersion program. The goal was to have everyone go from k-12. One of the big highlights with the program is going on a class trip to China in 8th grade. Leading up to that, you and your classmates do a lot of fundraising so that by the time you reach 8th grade the cost of the trip is pretty low.

In seventh grade, we got the opportunity to have a breakfast fundraiser at Apple Bees. There was a breakfast that consisted of two eggs, two pieces of sausage, and two pancakes, all for $8. Our class was divided into cooks, cleaners, and runners. It was my first experience working in any sort of environment. While looking back at it now I would think that we weren’t really doing too much, at the time I thought what we were doing was kind of difficult. I really remember running back and forth when I was delivering food to people. I think my whole class was surprised by the number of people who showed up. A good third of the people had no collection for our class at all.

All in all, I think our class got a lot out of all the fundraising we did, not just the breakfast fundraiser. I think it made us appreciate our trip a lot more. A lot of fun times were had on that trip, that was the last time I was in China. I would really like to go back someday!

05/13/20

Maddie Fitzpatrick
Happy Valley, OR

Flying Eggs
Happy Valley Middle School
2011
In collaboration with My Lovely Teacher Whomst for the Life of Me I Cannot Remember the Name of

When I was younger I was the kid that was constantly doodling or reading or being generally fidgety and spacey in most of my classes, except for art. That was always the space where I was able to do all the things I loved and knew I was good at, and so I was always doing art instead of my actual work in my other classes because I wasn’t inspired or able to be creative in the way that I needed to. In my 7th grade math class, one day we all piled in to see that our teacher had pushed all of our desks against the walls and was sat on the floor with big coffee filters, rubber bands, a few dozen eggs, and bins full of art supplies! I remember immediately being so excited I was practically bouncing off the walls as our teacher explained to us that we’d be designing our own parachutes and throwing eggs off of the roof of the school in the hopes that whatever unit we had been working on had taught us enough about how to design something that would keep an egg safe. To be honest I have literally and absolutely no idea what concept that she had been trying to get across to us, and I’m grateful that she allowed us to think about math and design in a new way that put the end result in our hands in a real and physical way. We all divided up into teams and set to work on figuring out how to keep our flying egg babies safe after falling four stories to the field below before climbing up to the roof as a class and chucking eggs off the roof for a full hour in the name of math. I remember self-proclaiming as the group artist and hoarding coffee filters to draw on, I must’ve made at least 10 of them I was so hyper focused on being able to finally do what I wanted to do in math !! Thinking back, this was a super influential experience for me in my early education just because of the fact that it got me thinking about learning things that I didn’t really have any interest in at all, in an artistic sense. Being able to apply problem solving skills towards a task and learning to use an artistic eye within my own education outside of the art classes themselves has been something that I’ve carried with me and used to make the things that I have to do in my daily life more enjoyable and genuinely just fun. That teacher forever has my gratitude for waking up one day and deciding it would be a good idea to let 12 year olds chuck eggs off of our school roof in the name of math, and by doing so inspiring me to look at all of my work as artwork as well as something to be proud of.

05/13/20

Shaun Cubie
Seaside, OR

Stock Market
Landon Middle School, Topeka, KS
2005
In collaboration with Mr. N and his 8th grade history class

Normally, in my 8th grade social studies class, we would discuss American, WWI, and WWII history in a lecture format. One day, my teacher, Mr. N., had us start playing this virtual stock market game. Apparently, he had his whole class play this every year, and the winner would get some prize (that I can't recall at this point). The game took in real-time information from the actual stock market, and everyone started out with the same amount of virtual dollars.

I can't remember what I invested in, but I do remember how it had all of us 8th grade students excitedly discussing the stock market, of all things, at the start of every class. I remember that I would get up before school and check my stocks, and then I would research which stocks were on the rise (and if any of mine were starting to fall). I would look at their recent changes and make educated decisions on whether to buy in or move on to a different stock. I ended up starting out in the bottom-half of the students, but I managed to climb my way to first place before the game was over. I remember how shocked my friend was when I won because he had held onto first place for the majority of the game.

On the surface, the game was nothing like the rest of his class. However, I can look back now and see how Mr. N. was teaching us the importance of research (to avoid bad investments) and studying history (looking into the recent changes in the stocks). Unrelated to history classes, the game taught us how to make informed financial decisions (considering when to buy or sell a stock to make the most profit).

I might not be taking part in the stock market as an adult, but the importance I place on research and delving into the history of a topic has been, and will continue to be, instrumental in my work as a graphic designer.

05/13/20

Garrett Stewart
Portland, OR

Baby's First Pyramid Scheme
Portland, OR
2005
In collaboration with my entire 3rd grade class and some dude with a microphone.

My entire 3rd grade class was ushered into the auditorium for an assembly one afternoon. There we saw a colorful presentation set up of toys, a suspicious amount of gift wrap, and a man with a microphone. We sat there excited, curious and susceptible. The man began to speak in a charismatic manner asking us obvious questions like, “Do you kids like candy? Skateboards?? MOTORSCOOTERS???” The energy in the room was like a shaken jar of soda. The excitement of every kid was seeping out of the auditorium on screams and chants. For the next hour, us 3rd graders were being pitched a pyramid scheme to “win prizes” by selling the most gift wrap.

Reminiscing on this experience makes my stomach clench. Suspicious child labor aside, it’s terrifying to see children learn how to get their labor exploited by a company. While I’m sure the money was being fundraised for the school, I know for certain that 100 boxes of giftwrapping paper do not equate to the value of a game of Monopoly. It was an early exposure to the control capitalism has over our system. At first, it begged me to think about why our school needed us to make them money and why the government would allow something like this coercion before simply granting them more money.

It also exposed me to systemic wealth. Those who had the richest parents always sold the most, since their parents would bring order forms to work and their rich coworkers would buy in abundance. Meanwhile, kids without a relation to nepotism had to actually work to sell their giftwrap. Otherwise they were excluded from the prizes and had to watch everyone else enjoy their new toys.

This experience did not teach me anything as I anxiously solicited every adult in site to buy giftwrapping paper (in the middle of March might I add). It has taught me a lot now as I have grown older about systemic oppression, wealth inequality and the ways this country educates its youth. It’s a reminder to participate in things that I research first, and not to be exploited by materialism.

05/13/20

Melissa Kilgore-Marchetti
Portland, OR

Remembering Auschwitz
Auschwitz, Poland
1983
In collaboration with my 7th or 8th grade classmates, teacher, and Department of Defense Schools Systems of Europe

I grew up in a military family, later joining the military myself. My oldest daughter even serves. Our family has a strong line of military and first responder service. I know that my life was changed by an experience in 7th or 8th grade. After all this time, the exact dates are a little fuzzy. I do recall it was 1982or 1983. We lived in Bitburg, Germany in the military housing area for the Air Force. My father was in the service, my mother worked and both my brother and I were being schooled in the Department of Defense Schools System Europe (DoDDS-E). We had recently moved from a small village in England called Horseheath and were adjusting to being in a much larger town and school. We also were in a way adjusting back into the housing area and military installation life having gone to regular English public schools. There as a day when I was still 12yrs old. So many things you remember from your childhood get harder to focus on as you grow older, the fine details get lost. But it was a warm day because I know I didn’t need a coat. We took a field trip to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in Poland. The bus ride was long and I didn’t have my mom or dad with me. Just my classmates and teacher. There were so many trees and green landscape different than how it looks in England. More like the pacific northwest, where my family is originally from in the United States. We had sacked lunches with us and I wasn’t the kind of kid that socialized too much as I was very shy. The day was warm and the air felt good and fresh, like being in green space does with not a lot of traffic.

I don’t remember how long we were at the concentration camp, but I remember the entrance had one of those very military looking barrier bars that swing up and down to bar the way in or out. There were wooden structures on one side and trees on the other. I was excited to see something new and learning about history. Something that I have enjoyed my whole life. Even traveling to a new place is a part of the whole experience for me. I recall feeling very insecure and worried when we learned about what a concentration camp was. It made me also feel a very overwhelming sense of sorrow for all those people who died. It was as if I could feel their fear and pain in the place still lingering. I also remember the sense of relief I felt when we left, and that it was like we were being watched as I left. I had a strong imagination then, and I still do today.

I think the most important thing I learned that day is that difference is not something to fear. I learned as well that tolerance is something to strive for every day. Our differences are what makes us so wonderful as a species and can bring us awe and great joys. But I also learned that if we are not careful things like Nazi concentration camps will happen again. We can never forget so it won’t happen. Lastly, the most beautiful thing I took away from Auschwitz, is the complete sense of peace I felt in the wooded area and still feel today when I am in the woods.

05/08/20

Kaya Lathrop
Portland, OR

Traveling Home, School, and Everything Else
Throughout the USA
2010
In collaboration with The Lathrop Family: Kayti, Sean, Tierra, Tupelo, Seneca, & Haven

I always considered my family one to move around a lot. By the age of 10, I had already lived in four different houses in two states while the majority of children my age still lived in the home they were born in. Yet once again, I found myself packing my things and leaving everything I knew behind but this time it was different. This time we wouldn't have a new house to move into, instead just the cramped camper in our driveway that my parents had somehow acquired. Actively ignoring the damp mildew smell and their children's opinionated comments, my parents planned a six month excursion across the country to find a new place to live.

Within the first two weeks of our travels, my dad lost control of the camper and it swung around. My siblings and I ended up with shattered glass from the car window on top of me. Everything fragile in our “home” was broken to pieces with the camper completely totaled and all I could do was cry on some strangers front porch while they called 911. We had no home to go to and our trip had only just started but my parents did not miss a beat. After three short weeks we had acquired another camper and other essential supplies that had been ruined and continued towards our next destination. That forced resilience is a trait that has assisted my life in many ways since then. Having the ability to adapt to unexpected and stressful things with more ease than most people helps me stay calm during situations where I have lost control. I discovered how a traumatic experience can actually have a positive lesson embedded within it.

While travelling, my parents wanted to be sure our traditional education was not slipping so they created the Ice Cream Sundae Party bribery. They developed a program where my siblings and I would study a specific subject until mastering it in their eyes. Our motivation would be an ice cream sundae party for those that actually learned the information. One topic I remember memorizing during this time was every state capitol. This information does me no good now, but I was thrilled to practice often because I always wanted that ice cream sundae. Not even a fancy one, just Kirkland signature vanilla and sprinkles but I was thrilled. In retrospect my parents were genius to give us an incentive when we had little to no objects in our day to day lives. We blindly participated in typical school learning while being convinced that we weren’t doing school at all. When we finally did get our ice cream sundae, learning seemed much more fulfilling to me as a young child.

Our travels included camping at beaches, campgrounds, trailer parks, Walmart parking lots, weekend music festivals, and anywhere else a camper can legally rest overnight. We formed unexpected friendships at almost every place due to our lack of social interaction otherwise. One time in particular, I remember my parents became so close to our campground neighbors that they invited us to park our camper in their yard for a few days. Surprisingly, my parents took these complete strangers up on their offer and we spent the next few days getting to know them. Completely disregarding our safety and honestly common sense my parents trusted these people with literally everything we had including our lives. Something my parents definitely taught me during our travels was to trust not only in people but in our overall path. Luckily, that time my parents trust worked in our favor but sometimes that trust backfired big time. Often the places we slept felt very unsafe and it felt as though my parents ignored those vibes. I spent a whole night sitting up listening to some man yell vile things about murder into the abyss. Crying into my sleeping bag I listened hoping he wouldn't direct such violence at anyone in real life. I wished we had real walls, a deadbolt, or at least our own property to protect us.

While my 2010-2011 school year curriculum included no forms of typical school learning, almost every aspect of traveling with my family became a learning experience. This trip really brought us together, shaped our family values, and taught us about cultures and lives different from our own. I learned about the world, my family and most importantly myself. Without direction naming it so, my parents created the most out-of-the-box educational time period of my life. These stories are only the beginning.

05/07/20

Patrick Riggs
Portland, OR

Nature, The Original Drive-Thru
Baumholder, Germany
1981
In collaboration with parents, teachers, classmates, Nature

When considering experiences that are “not your average ways of learning”, I keep thinking of a trip our class took when I was five or six. I remember that not only did the whole class go, but we all brought other family members too. There were so many people! I remember both my mom and dad came, I remember how tall my dad was next to me, too tall to see to the top, it seemed. We all went on a field trip into the woods, just walking, walking, walking on a bright sunny day. I remember feeling very free, safe and fun. During the walk we were picking up leaves, or bushes or weeds, as far as I knew. I was too concerned with running and playing to be bothered to hold and look at the greenery, until later, when we all returned to the school, the leaves, herbs and veggies were turned into a big salad. I was so impressed that what we were eating had just come from outside where we had just been. I had remembered seeing and helping to pick them but paid not enough attention to realize what it all was. I still don’t know exactly what I saw and ate, but it opened up my eyes in a way that connected the classroom to the kitchen, school-life to homelife; I realized that the forest was kind of magical and more alive than I had thought, that food lived outside too, not just in the fridge.

05/04/20

Michelle Swinehart
Portland, OR

Shel Silverstein Poems
Union Ridge Elementary School
Ridgefield, WA
1988
In collaboration with classmates

In the third grade we got to choose a Shel Silverstein poem from Light in the Attic to memorize and perform at an evening gathering of parents and families. I picked “Backwards Bill” which is about a man named Bill, who does everything literally backwards. For the performance, I borrowed a cowboy boot from my grandpa to wear on my head like the poem’s illustration. I also remember that I sang the poem with a ‘southern’ accent which really made the audience laugh. I can still recite the poem to this day.

05/04/20

Nicolette Hall
Portland, OR

What a Parrot Can Teach You
Welches Elementary School
Welches, OR
1992
In collaboration with sister and parents

When I was 12 years old my parents decided that they would take my sister and I out of school for a different kind of educational experience. The amazing thing about learning and memory for me is how and what we remember. I don’t remember much about most of my 12th year, but the gift that my parents gave to my sister and I, that was an unforgettable experience.

The gift came in the form of a suitcase to both of us; we were given the gift of my parents taking us out of school to travel down to Costa Rica. I remember how excited I was and how exciting it was to get on a plane for the first time. Costa Rica is the home of some amazing people, five different kinds of Rainforests, beaches, active volcanoes, a democratic government that chose to have a Department of Peace. I spent what I remember as 3 months of time with my family learning about amazing wildlife, community and culture, rainforests, beaches, cities and jungles.

There was a point in our travels where we spent several nights in a hotel where our room was a tree house, our beds were hammocks, and our personal guide for our stay was a wild parrot who I felt was the best ambassador.

Our travels included school work from our teachers that we spent maybe an hour or two on a day, my sister and I learning Spanish from just stumbling through it with the people we met, learning about the Elusive Sloth- that everyone could seem to find except my family, being caught in monsoon type rains in the cloud forests, how to photograph Fred the grasshopper that was as big as my mom’s had.

In the end my sister and I each created an amazing Art Travel journal that we used to share what we had learned on our trip with our classmates. We returned to school being ahead of our classes in regard to the standard assignments and having an unforgettable 4 weeks (my mother recently told me that our trip hadn’t lasted the months that I remember, but 4 short weeks). As I look back on this memory and others from my earlier schooling it has become clear to me that my most important educational experiences have always been what a parrot can teach you about time and Learning Outside the Lines.

05/04/20

Lisa Jarrett
Portland, OR

Mr. Krenzer’s Kernels
Thornell Road School
Pittsford, NY
1988
In collaboration with Mr. Krenzer and my 6th grade classmates

On Tuesdays (or maybe Fridays) my 6th grade class ran a business from our classroom. Once again, I was the new kid in a new town and, as usual, had no idea what to expect from school or what I would learn. On my first day there I learned that teachers weren’t always women along with the usual lessons about mean girls and how to be unpopular. I inadvertently made the mistake of inviting the other new kid, Hannah, to sit at our table. She seemed shy and scared but the girls at my table shook their heads and stopped talking to me after I waved Hannah over to the only empty seat left in the classroom. I ignored those girls until high school but Hannah and I became fast friends on that day. Other than that, it seemed just like every other boring school I’d ever attended.

The next day when we came into the room and it smelled like the movies. There was popcorn popping in the corner and all kinds of other things I’d never seen in school before. Mr. Krenzer was wearing an apron and maybe a cap and he said, “Welcome to Krenzer’s Kernels. Today we are starting a popcorn business.” I remember feeling excited and confused. He explained that on Tuesdays (or Fridays) we would become a team working on making and selling popcorn to the whole school, or whoever ordered it that week. It felt chaotic and exciting. Together we filled small brown bags, labeled, and delivered them. I think it cost 5 cents a bag or something. The room was lively and we learned that the money we made was used to get more supplies for the next week. We also learned how to organize, count money, add, plan orders, and collaborate but it all felt like play. Everyone in class was having fun and being nice to each other. People seemed to forget who was (or wasn’t) popular. There were more important things to focus on. Later on that year I started my own business in my basement making hair accessories and trying to sell them at local boutique stores in the village. I knew exactly what to do and felt smart doing it.

Looking back, I realize how much that experience fundamentally shaped my perspectives on education and people. It was the first time something truly out of the ordinary happened in a classroom setting. I learned by doing rather than by listening and/or repeating. Other than the mean girl lesson, it’s also the only thing I remember learning in 6th grade.

04/30/20

Molly Sherman
San Antionio, Tx

Japanese Omelets 
James Knoll Elementary School 
Ortonville, MN 
1995 
In collaboration with classmates and a visiting instructor 

I went to a small rural elementary school. In 4th grade, a visiting instructor from Japan, who had just completed an internship at a nearby school, proposed to teach a Japanese culture class at my school. It was the only afterschool program offered to me during my K-6 experience, and the only class that focused on an international learning experience. I signed up with three of my friends, and it ended up being just the four of us in the program. It was the highlight of every week to meet with the instructor. We learned about Japan and how to speak Japanese through games, art projects, and language activities, as well as a play that she directed and we performed for the school. One memory that stands out to me from this experience was when the instructor walked us to the high school home economics kitchen and taught each of us how to make a Japanese omelet. It was the first recipe I learned and practiced how to cook on my own, and the first time I experienced cooking as part of a classroom activity at school. I remember being excited to prepare the recipe for my family and teach them how to make it, too. Since then, this experience has informed my interest in experiential education, and I continue to make Japanese omelets to this day.

04/27/20

Amanda Leigh evans
Portland, OR

Science Textbook
Cornerstone Middle School
Grass Valley, CA
2002
Participatory project with students in Mr. Sween’s science class

When I was halfway through 7th grade, my science teacher had to leave the school unexpectedly. The administration decided to replace him with someone who had been a professor and researcher in the agriculture sciences at UC Davis. I’m still not sure how or why he ended up with the job, but all of a sudden he was there, instructing horrified 7th graders how to “preg check” cows (which, luckily, I never had to do). 

He did not like our textbook, or any others he could find, so he announced that we would each be making our own. Each student received a white 3-ring binder and blank paper. Our job was to make drawings and notes of lectures he gave during class, and by the end of the year we would have a textbook that traced the journey of energy from the sun to our bodies.

The textbook begins with energy generated by nuclear fusion inside the sun, which travels through our atmosphere as light, is absorbed through photosynthesis by plants, is eaten and broken down in our digestive systems, is delivered by our circulatory system to our cells, and is finally converted through cellular respiration into the movement of muscles in our bodies. The textbook ends with a personal reflection on the meaning of the experience.

By the end of the project, we each had over 300 pages of drawings, computer graphics and printed handouts to explain the energy we had used to make the books. Through this experience I realized that there are real people working at textbook companies who are deciding what children learn. In making my own textbook, I discovered the power in finding information for myself, and I have continued to carry this value with me throughout my life and work as an artist.

04/21/20

Harrell Fletcher
Portland, OR

New Shoes
Miller Street Elementary School
Santa Maria, CA
1977
Collaboration with anonymous group of college students and students from my elementary schoolI was in the 4th grade when a group of visitors showed up at my school.

They were theater majors at the local community college, Allan Hancock College. The town I grew up in, Santa Maria, California, had very few cultural institutions or actives going on, but there was a surprisingly good theater program at Hancock College called PCPA, which somehow is the acronym for Pacific Conservatory Theater (I’ve never quite understood that, but I just looked it up online and still didn’t clear anything up, maybe the PA part stands for Performing Arts, but I couldn’t find anything to confirm that on the website). One claim to fame about PCPA is that Robin Williams was a student there but got kicked out, I’m not sure if that is true though (and I’m not going to bother trying to look it up either). Anyway, these theater students came over to the school and did some improv for us and then individually worked with students from some of the classes (including mine) to fill out questionaries that they had put together. The questions included things like "what’s your pets name?” “what’s your favorite food?” and "where can you find new shoes?" etc. I remember thinking that the college student who assisted me seemed very adult and sophisticated. I came up with various answers to the questions and recall in particular that my response to “where can you find new shoes?” was “on feet”. The experience was fun and sort of exciting, but I didn’t think much more about it until a few weeks later when the students came back to our school to put on a performance. All of the kids at the school assembled in the cafeteria. When the performance started, it slowly started to dawn on us that the things the college students were performing were based on the questions we had answered. At some point one of the performers shouted out “new shoes are usually found on feet” and everyone laughed. It was exhilarating to know that my contribution had been included and was being appreciated. After the performance all of my friends talked about similar moments that they experienced with their own answers being performed. I think that experience changed the way that I thought about the possibilities of participation in art works that continues to impact me and the work that I do.

04/20/20

Roz Crews
Portland, OR

Fake Reading Rainbow Videotape
J.J. Finley Elementary School
Gainesville, FL
1997
Collaboration with anonymous group of second graders, their parents, and teacher Mrs. Davis.

In second grade I had a very experiential reading class. We did a lot of engaging projects including: designing a comic book character and writing/illustrating weekly strips about their life; writing an adventure narrative based on a true story from our lives and then illustrating it in an empty hard-cover book; creating a similar poetry book filled with poems we wrote throughout the year; and building room-sized train box cars out of cardboard to create comfortable areas where we could immerse ourselves in The Boxcar Children book series.



One of the most involved projects was when we collectively created a “Reading Rainbow” style video tape. Each student chose a favorite book from the library, and then they made a diorama recreating a scene from the book. Once that was done, we crafted costumes for ourselves from a box of adult clothes to embody a character from the story. In character, standing next to our dioramas, we read sections from the book in front of a video camera. As I remember, some people did performances in addition to reading. Two girls picked the same book, Strega Nona, centered around a magic pasta pot catastrophe, and in their section of the video, they worked together to act out a scene from the book employing a real pasta maker as an actor. 



All of this activity happened in the back closet of our classroom over several weeks, and when recording was over, our teacher cut the film together to make a tape that was copied and distributed to all the families in the class. In my dreams, these types of enrichment classes would NOT be a deviation from the “regular classroom,” and they would be made available to all students without opaque and inequitable barriers to access.