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Thinking About Hunger, Acting Against Hunger

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Thu, 07/05/2012 - 2:38pm
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From the Summer 2012 Caller

By Christa Kaainoa

About 50 of us are on the yellow school bus on a Wednesday morning in April—45 students and 5 teachers—headed to the Oregon Food Bank for our monthly Middle School service day. On the way, students shout out guesses about what we’ll be packing: onions, apples, cereal, potatoes, rice, granola bars . . . we’ve packed them all before and wonder what this day will bring.
 
We arrive at the Food Bank and are ushered in to a large, clean workspace, where Kyle, one of the friendly volunteer coordinators, welcomes us and explains our project for the day. We don hairnets, aprons, and gloves, then assemble in small mixed-grade groups around five workstations and begin our work.
 
On this particular day, I stand shoulder to shoulder with a 6th grade girl, at the edge of a waist-high vat of dry oats. I grab a plastic bag from a stack and peel it open. I hold it open for her, and she pours in two heaping scoops of oats. Peel, open, scoop, pour. Peel, open, scoop, pour. Then I hand the bags to another student for weighing, he passes them on to two others to be twist-tied, they pass them to an 8th grade girl who packs them into boxes, and then another student seals the boxes with packing tape and finally hands them off to a group of three 7th grade girls who stack the boxes, seven layers high, onto palettes. We operate like a machine, filling and passing the bags, packing and stacking boxes, and all the while, students socialize with each other and with their teachers. Conversations shift from weekend plans to class assignments, and sometimes, even, to the value of our work at the Food Bank.
 
I like working next to this particular student on this particular day because she gets tired early on, and I love that because I am her partner, she feels pressure to press on, scoop after scoop.
 
“I’m hungry!” she tells me. “I know, me too!” I answer, “And just think, there are kids in Oregon who feel this way EVERY DAY, and what we’re doing RIGHT NOW will end their hunger for a whole meal! Isn’t that cool?!” The student doesn’t really know how to respond to my enthusiasm, but she smiles, and then she leans down and starts scooping again. We’re both hungry, but we’re in it together, and what we’re doing matters.
 
After two hours of work, it’s time to clean up. We put supplies away, push tables to the side of the room, sweep the floors, and assemble to hear our grand totals for the day. We packed 5,610 pounds of oats. That’s 5,178 meals! Kyle explains that individually, each of us packed approximately 208 meals. We all clap and cheer, and exchange high fives. We say goodbye to Kyle, and file out the door and back to our school bus, proud of our accomplishments, and ready to come back and do it again next month.
 
Christa Kaainoa has been teaching 7th grade English at Catlin Gabel since 2004. Her daughter Amare ’24 just completed kindergarten at CGS.
 
For more information about the Oregon Food Bank, check out this video.

 

The Advocate Who Makes a Difference

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Thu, 07/05/2012 - 2:25pm
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Curt Ellis '98 works to educate about food policy--and bring healthy food to children nationwide

From the Summer 2012 Caller

By Nadine Fiedler

Curt Ellis ’98 changed the national conversation about food and agriculture with his film King Corn. Now he’s set in motion a new national organization, FoodCorps, that will improve children’s access to better nutrition and school food. He’s idealistic, determined, and a great collaborator. With enthusiasm and humility, Curt Ellis faces big challenges—and gets things done.
 
Curt began his work as a food and agriculture advocate as a student at Yale University. “Something felt strange to me about graduating from college with an understanding of philosophy, science, and history, but knowing nothing about the food we eat,” he says. “The more we learned about the way food is grown and produced, and its impact on land and people, and the decline of health in Fast Food Nation, we came to feel that the system was not serving people well.” He and his friend Ian Cheney engaged the campus community with actions that were hard to ignore: they filled a kiddie wading pool with manure, stocked the quad with sheep, and brought in renowned chef and food activist Alice Waters to cook a dinner with food from local farms.
 
After graduation, Curt and Ian kept telling the story of the state of food and agriculture. They co-produced a documentary film called King Corn, released in 2007, which chronicled how Curt and Ian grew an acre of corn in Iowa for a year. Ian, Curt, and the film’s director, Curt’s cousin Aaron Woolf, produced an engaging, funny, and deeply serious film that brought to life their concerns about how food systems undermine health and fill markets with unhealthy food such as high-fructose corn syrup and confined, corn-fed beef
 
Curt and his collaborators weren’t content to stop at the making of the film: they wanted to bring its message to as wide an audience as they could. They used King Corn as a vehicle to change minds by screening it in Congress during deliberations about the Farm Bill and showing it in church basements and colleges in the Farm Belt and around the country. They worked with journalists to get them involved, and they connected with people at the grassroots level working on the issues. “The King Corn distribution blitz was a great, crazy adventure. We poured blood, sweat, and all our credit cards into King Corn, so it was a relief to know people other than my mom were watching it,” says Curt. Their efforts paid off: King Corn has had a powerful effect on the way Americans now view food policy.
 
“We’re still small potatoes in the world of blockbuster Hollywood movies, but King Corn reached several million people who saw the whole film, and many millions more who heard about it from the media and started getting educated on the issues. Film is a conversation starter—it’s not the last word. We got people talking, and that led to real change,” Curt says. After PBS aired King Corn in 2008, he and his crew were honored for their efforts with a Peabody Award.
 
Curt and Ian followed up with the 2010 film Big River, another collaboration with Aaron Woolf, about the effect of their acre of corn on downstream waters, and it was shown on Discovery Channel’s Planet Green series. They then embarked on the Truck Farm public art project, growing food on the back of a pickup truck in Brooklyn. On a road trip with the Truck Farm, Curt saw how magical it was for schoolchildren to see food grown in a strange place, and how it perked up their interest in fruits and vegetables.
 
With the experience he gained in making and marketing King Corn, Curt began conversations in 2009 with a group of five other advocates to figure out how they could accelerate the changes they wished to see in the national food system—in particular, with children in communities where obesity and hunger are significant challenges. Their idea, which is completing its first year on the ground, was FoodCorps: a national nonprofit, a “Teach for America for healthy school food.”
 
“There’s an inspiring generation of young leaders interested in food and agriculture,” says Curt. “FoodCorps gives them an opportunity for one year of paid public service. We thought it would work. We made it possible and paved the pathways.”
 
In an open planning process, the New York-based FoodCorps group solicited applications from organizations at the state level that were already doing work of this kind to be FoodCorps partners, and to work with the service members. They felt that working with local organizations and agencies, which are attuned to their local cultures, was key to success.
 
More than a thousand people applied for the 50 open positions as FoodCorps service members. “It’s not easy work. The service members earn a poverty-level wage, and they donate all their time and talent to make change possible in the world. The good news is the hard work is incredibly rewarding,” says Curt. Service members, who are also members of the AmeriCorps national service network, are working right now in 10 states, including Oregon, concentrating on three areas:
 
+ Food and nutrition education. They show where food comes from, in the classroom or in the garden. They talk about why fruits and vegetables are good for you in a way that sticks.
 
+ School gardens. This may be the students’ first time tasting healthy food. Because they’ve grown it, they can take pride in it. It’s a way for kids, parents, and community members to get their hands in the dirt side by side with their neighbors.
 
+ Access to good food, and a chance to eat well. FoodCorps members involve food service staff and chefs to get healthy farm-to-school food on school lunch menus.
 
Many FoodCorps service members have told Curt about the positive reactions they get from the schoolchildren. One stationed in Arkansas told about a day she did a pesto taste test with the kids, and a girl said, “I’d rather have this than a cookie.” A kid said to one member in Maine, “I never knew you could eat green leaves grown in the dirt!” And one member in Des Moines reported that a kid said to him, “You’re just like Justin Bieber, but for vegetables.”
 
In its first year, FoodCorps has shown remarkable results. “We’ve worked with 42,000 kids in the nine months we’ve been active. We’ve recruited more than 1,100 local volunteers to join in the work and help sustain it. We’ve built or revitalized 323 school or community gardens since August of 2010. We’ve donated 7,465 pounds of extra produce to needy communities,” says Curt. FoodCorps hopes to double the number of service members next year, and to keep growing.
 
Reflecting on his time at Catlin Gabel, Curt sees the value of a close community. “People care about each other at Catlin Gabel, in a way that sometimes feels like it’s missing from our culture at large. Our food culture can be brutally unfair: people who are not affluent often don’t have access to healthy, high-quality food. We’re not farming sustainably or looking out for our kids’ health. It’s a short-sighted view, when you think of the long-term consequences to the environment and health. My teachers at Catlin Gabel did an amazing job helping all of us to learn to take the long view. We were always asked to look outside ourselves, and to think how we can contribute, individually and as a country.”
 
“FoodCorps is all-consuming for me. I work long days, but I love my job,” says Curt. “It’s different from making films, but is actually a better fit for my interests and skills. Making films, you get to tell stories about people making a difference—but now I get to be part of getting things done myself.”
 
Nadine Fiedler is editor of the Caller and Catlin Gabel’s publications and public relations director.   

 

Why Garden in School?

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Thu, 07/05/2012 - 12:28pm
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From the Summer 2012 Caller

By Carter Latendresse

During the fall months in our 6th grade classes, my colleagues and I teach gardening, ancient flood stories, contemporary dystopian literature, and ancient Mesopotamia. We ask our students to look backward to identify essential characteristics of the first human civilizations, so that they might look forward and imagine remaking Western civilization in the 21st century.
 
During these lessons, my history teacher partner, Ann Fyfield, focuses on the development of agriculture in the Neolithic Age (8000 BCE to 3000 BCE), the rise of Sumerian city-states, the four empires of Mesopotamia, and the characteristics of ancient civilizations. In my English class, the curriculum parallels and interweaves with that of my colleague at crucial points, especially around issues of soil, water, food, climate, environmental justice, and the stories we tell ourselves as humans to orient ourselves to Earth, to one another, to other animals, and to the cosmos. We can often be found outside during September and October, harvesting apples, grinding wheat, learning about bee keeping, planting overwintering lettuce, or baking pita bread in the garden cob oven. Several people have asked, “What does the garden have to do with English or history class?”
 
Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe, in their seminal curriculum design text, Understanding by Design, show that while the best teaching prepares students for college, it is also rooted in solving today’s problems and celebrating today’s wisdom. The garden is our place of intersection for the teaching of ancient history, the novel, writing, economics, politics, anthropology, religion, myth, and science.
 
We have many reasons for teaching the Sumerian empire in our organic garden behind the Middle School building. These reasons grow out of the four enduring understandings we want our students to chew on for the rest of their lives.
 
The first enduring idea or understanding is that the aims and desires of most people on Earth have been fundamentally similar since hunter-gatherers first domesticated crops and animals in Iraq 10,000 years ago, and we can empathize with those people because we too desire, at bottom, the same things, which are connection and belonging. Focusing on new research involving empathy, mirror neurons, the lives of women, the colonized, and ordinary people throughout history, we unearth, as historians such as Howard Zinn, Winthrop Jordan, and Riane Eisler have done, representative stories of everyday people that could stand for the great silent majority of human history. We also presuppose, along with Jeremy Rifkin in The Empathic Civilization, that the deepest unconscious desires of Homo sapiens include companionship in towns that provide nutritious food, clean water, and safe homes for our children. By studying Mesopotamia, we get a snapshot of people putting these desires into action when they created the world’s first cities.
 
At the same time, I try to show that balanced relationships pervade, indeed define, naturally occurring ecosystems and gardens that are intelligently designed with permaculture principles. We try to dispel centuries of fearing dirt and insects. No topsoil, no life, we tell students, and No honeybees, very boring food. We teach them about life cycles, collecting seeds, planting and transplanting from the greenhouse, companion planting, pollination, mulching, rain gardens, bioswales, native plant diversity, harvesting, cooking, eating, flower arranging, good table manners, composting, and the symbiotic relationships that pervade the cosmos. Reconnecting to the first civilization in ancient Iraq, with their reading, writing, gardening, food preparation, and eating, our students embody the oldest desires of civilized humans striving for community.
 
Our second enduring idea that we want our students to return to throughout their lives is that a phalanx of interrelated environmental problems faces the human species today, each of which is exacerbated by overpopulation. While these global issues may feel both overwhelming and unapproachable, during the autumn of the 6th grade year, we teach that these problems are linked, while several are causal, one giving way to the other, and all have their roots in practices found in Mesopotamia.
 
First, I share excerpts from both J.F. Rischard’s book High Noon and Jared Diamond’s history Collapse. These texts detail mutually supporting environmental troubles (Rischard lists 20; Diamond 11) that work today in a kind of grim synergy: global warming, deforestation, biodiversity loss, fisheries depletion, and water shortages, among them. Then I share excerpts from Clive Ponting’s A New Green History of the World, in which he argues that each empire, whether Sumerian, Egyptian, Roman, or Mayan, follows the same paradigm during its downfall: first they clear the land of trees, then erect massive irrigation systems, then they farm monocultures, which leads to erosion and overwatering of inadequate soils, then desertification follows, and eventually the empire collapses.
 
Another issue we want our students to investigate, as part of this second enduring understanding, is that these difficulties are mutually supporting spokes of a wheel that continue today to roll over the backs of billions, especially in the Southern Hemisphere. “It is wrong to grow temperate-zone vegetables [as monocrops for export, such as bananas] in the tropics and fly them back to rich consumers,” Vandana Shiva writes in Soil Not Oil, articulating some of the sometimes hidden interplay between injustice and ecology. “This uproots local peasants, creates hunger and poverty, and destroys local agrobiodiversity. . . . Since vegetables and fruits are perishable, transporting them long distances is highly energy-intensive, contributing to climate change.” When lands are cleared for these exports, pesticides and inorganic nitrate fertilizers are typically poured into the diminishing soil, which then invites pests and disease—as monocultures have easier genetic codes to crack than biodiverse fields—which in turn increases the need to clear and deforest more land for cultivation. Healthy economies and ecosystems overseas are compromised, even ruined, by the industrialized global food system.
 
Instead of simply cataloging wrongdoing across the world and assigning blame, though—which in the end is counterproductive to the empathic civilization that we hope to create—we 6th grade teachers like to move quickly to our third enduring understanding, which seeks to empower the students with problem-solving strategies.
 
The third enduring understanding we unpack for our students is that just as the current global crises are interwoven, multiple solutions will be employed this century on an international scale, but we, paradoxically, might most easily help on campus by studying local, organic food, responsible water use, and enlightened community engagement. If we grow organic vegetables at school in raised beds using low-evaporation drip irrigation, using seed we’ve collected from the previous year, and then we later harvest and eat that produce at lunch in our salad bar, we show the students how to support healthy, local, biodiverse economies—and overseas farming economies, by extension, who might convert their fields back to feeding their own people—while also reducing the use of inorganic fertilizers and pesticides, as well as diminishing global warming that follows energy-intensive global packaging, refrigeration, and shipping.
 
It’s our job as educators to resist dichotomous, simplistic, silver-bullet thinking; rather, we strive to admit the complex truths and to problem-solve collaboratively across coalitions and issues. We resist cynicism, hopelessness, and paralyzing guilt as we explore these topics with our students. When we look to the past with our students, we can see the choices our ancestors made when they settled around reliable food sources in the Middle East at the end of the last ice age, building the world’s first cities, and we can imagine remaking our future cities this century with smaller carbon footprints.
 
Our fourth enduring understanding is that the stories a culture tells itself about its origins, its purpose, and its future will determine to a large extent that culture’s ability to survive the tests of time. I find that I am able to present both the intersecting predicaments of our contemporary world and the possible solutions by retelling the oldest stories humanity has told itself about its creation, its place in the cosmos, its meaning and purpose. I therefore teach Gilgamesh, the first of all written stories, from Mesopotamia, as well as Genesis, perhaps the world’s most influential narrative, plus a host of Greek myths, from the beginnings with Gaea and Uranus, through Cronos to Zeus, Prometheus, and Pandora, ending with Deucalion and Pyrrha. Similarities jump out when the three narrative strands are laid side by side: gods create the world, including humanity; humans either lose or try to gain eternal life and fail; gods become displeased with humans and send a flood, killing all except for a favored few, who survive in a boat and then go on to repopulate the world with the gods’ blessings. The fact that the oldest stories all focus on an ecological catastrophe similar to the ones featured on our contemporary nightly news is not lost on our students. They see, for example, that global warming is melting the polar ice caps today, threatening coastal civilizations with flooding. If the ice caps melt, our students know, hundreds of millions worldwide will become ecological refugees. Studying the ancient stories in the contexts of both the founding of human civilization and our current ecological predicaments makes sense, then, as we want the students, ultimately, to imagine new narratives for the coming century that will help them create a just global village.
 
In addition to studying the world’s oldest stories, I also teach contemporary dystopian literature (titles include Shipbreaker, Hunger Games, and The House of the Scorpion) to explore a number of possible reactions to our numerous ecological predicaments. Further, I pair the dystopian novels with nonfiction reading of four National Geographic articles on the first civilizations, food insecurity, topsoil loss, and water scarcity. We direct students to identify reasons for civilization collapse in their novels and articles and to imagine resurrections based on sustainable principles involving soil, water, food, housing, and energy production. In groups they create their own civilizations in this century, given certain definitions for advanced civilization, while also not ignoring the ecological challenges we are facing right now.
 
Taken together, these four enduring understandings undergird our reasons for teaching in the garden. We want to provide students with the backstory for how we got to 2012 as a human species, emphasizing that the study of human history should elicit our empathy rather than condemnation. We also want to provide our students with interpretive lenses through which they can analyze both our current human impact and utter reliance on Earth. Last, we want to offer students the schemata to remake a more sustainable, just, and enjoyable civilization for the world’s citizens in the 21st century.
 
Carter Latendresse has been teaching 6th grade English at Catlin Gabel since 2006. He is also a husband, the father of two including Emma ’20, and the garden coordinator on campus.
 
You may also like to read the full text of this essay.

 

The Pitchfork to Plate Journey

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Thu, 07/05/2012 - 12:02pm
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5th graders learn about food systems--and much more

From the Summer 2012 Caller

By Maggie Bendicksen

Seven years ago, our 5th graders weren’t as engaged in social studies as much as we would have hoped. Unlike the 3rd grade Lewis & Clark curriculum, there was nothing for the kids to see, hear, taste, or smell about our study of colonial America. In their reflections, students often remarked that social studies was their least favorite subject. This seemed like such a shame, as social studies can be the backbone of an engaging, integrated, and progressive curriculum. Something needed to change.
 
At the time, in early 2005, the West Coast was abuzz with a curiosity about the food we eat. Alice Waters (of Chez Panisse fame) started the Edible Schoolyard in the Bay Area, and Eric Schlosser had recently published Fast Food Nation, followed soon after by Chew on This, a corollary for children. Next up was Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and the New York Times re-discovering Portland as the food capital of the country.
 
People were talking about how our food moves from pitchfork to plate, and we were intrigued. Could this be our new focus? After carefully reviewing national social studies standards, we realized that we needed to include a “system” of something being produced from start to finish, as well as a significant and developmentally appropriate global connection for the kids to explore.
 
Once we had a basic framework in mind, we gathered together all of the history teachers, grades 6 to 12, and asked for their blessing to make the change. I remember Upper School history teacher Peter Shulman asking if we would still teach the kids how to question, research, analyze, and synthesize. We answered yes, and our pitchfork to plate journey began in earnest.
 
At the same time, the school hired a new food services director, Hen Truong, who was interested in reshaping the Barn’s offerings. We quickly partnered with Hen to discover what the school community’s “dream Barn” might look like.
 
The timing seemed perfect.
 
After a busy summer of planning and with the help of David Yudkin (father of Koby ’11 and Sadie ’12, and co-owner of Hot Lips Pizza with wife Jeana Edelman ’77), we began to develop a list of essential questions, as well as a conceptual framework and skill benchmarks. We decided to focus on helping students understand how food moves from farms to farmer’s markets, processing and packaging facilities, warehouse distribution centers, supermarkets, and restaurants, and ultimately to our plates. With so many resources just a bus ride away, the students would be able to experience firsthand this complex and fascinating set of systems.
 
We kicked off the study in the fall of 2006 with a string of field trips so the kids would be immersed in the pitchfork to plate process. We visited a wheat farm in Eastern Oregon, an organic family farm near Hillsboro (where kids munched straight from the vine), the Portland Farmer’s Market (to stay within a budget and interview farmers), the Wheat Marketing Center, where we studied the science, trade, shipping, and economics of different varieties of wheat, and Norpac, a massive conventional food processing and packaging facility in Salem. We challenged ourselves to plan, shop, and cook a 150-mile lunch for Valentine’s Day, a difficult task in Oregon in February! We also visited restaurants for behind-the-scenes tours and to discover the many decisions restaurant owners make when purchasing food, designing menus, and serving the public.
 
Over the years, we have modified the curriculum. Some field trips have been added, others dropped. More age-appropriate nonfiction materials have been published, which has made researching easier for our 5th graders. When What the World Eats was published in 2008, we added it to our curriculum and created a fully integrated research project, with the help of librarians Lisa Ellenberg and Dan Woytek, that focuses on how different cultures approach food production and consumption. When something relevant bubbles up, we make room for emergent “real time” action projects. The students threw themselves into the One Ounce Campaign, which challenged each person on campus to reduce daily waste by one ounce per day to meet the school’s “zero waste” goals.
 
What has remained the same is our commitment to helping this age group (situated at the fascinating crossroads of concrete thinking and abstract thought) engage in true social studies, nudging them to see not only the facts and history of food, but the many shades of gray that go into how families make the decisions they make. It would be easy for the kids to take an all good/all evil approach to the organic/conventional debate or the whole/local/slow food vs. fast food conversation. What’s harder and far more interesting is to try to understand why people make the decisions that they do and how economics, culture, and practicality figure into the equation.
 
After our trip to New Seasons to shop for our 150-mile lunch, the kids reflected on how surprised they were at all of the 87 (and counting) considerations we brainstormed about that consumers go through when buying food for their families— including price, availability, seasonality, taste, packaging, and whether it is prepared or not.
 
One part of the curriculum that we’ve kept is Chew on This, an extremely opinionated and sensational “history” of the fast food industry. Kids are fascinated and repulsed, then fascinated some more by this book. The quote, “A single fast-food hamburger now may contain meat from hundreds or even thousands of different cattle” catches kids’ attention, as does the section that describes the bugs that create the color additive that makes McDonald’s strawberry shakes pink. It’s not hard to grab the 5th graders’ focus with factoids like these, so we run with their interest while taking the opportunity to talk about the author’s intent, sources, and persuasive techniques. We also examine how advertising and marketing affect our choices, whether we realize it or not. One of our favorite things to do when kids tell us they aren’t affected by advertising is to ask them to pile all of our shoes in the center of the room and sort them by brand. “Oh,” is the collective response. “Maybe the ads do work.”
 
In honor of Michael Pollan’s now-famous quote, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants,” and to balance Chew’s negative bent of what not to eat, we started a series of Wacky Wednesdays, a chance for parents to bring in a whole food that kids might not have tasted before and to share a personal connection with it and fascinating facts about the plant. Students have tried jicama and lime, starfruit, unsweetened coconut, edamame, and other delicious and appealing treats they might have balked at if served at the family dinner table.
 
Throughout the five years, we’ve tried to be mindful of creating room for hope in the curriculum. Our study can be heavy and frightening at times, filled often with what not to do instead of what to do. At the close of Chew on This, we team with art teacher Peggy Schauffler ’78 to dream about what kids can do to create a more hopeful future. We’ve made a hope quilt, hope prayer flags, and t-shirts that we hope will spark conversation.
 
We also often end the year with an action project so the 5th graders feel they are capable of having an impact on their own community— part of the school’s mission of supporting “inspired learning leading to responsible action.” Last year, for instance, Spring Festival coordinators came to us with the challenge of reducing the number of disposable water bottles at the festival, a real problem the kids decided to try to solve. Leslie Stiff Arm ’18 remarked, “Honestly, I have learned so much about sustainability that sometimes my head hurts thinking about it. Like the fact that the 5th grade got the whole Lower School to participate in a contest to keep plastic water bottles from going to the ocean. It wasn’t a huge impact on the earth, but hey, every act counts. Also, I have started being more aware of composting and recycling as much as I can, without going insane.”
 
One spring, we teamed with Hen and facilities director Eric Shawn on what we called the “blue plate special,” a research project that helped the school decide to move from disposable to reusable plates. For another year-end project, we received a grant to seed various student proposals, which included an anti-idling campaign for cars on campus, planting the Lower School garden, and creating sustainability presentations for other schools.
 
Matthew Bernstein ’15 felt that the action projects helped him want to be a part of positive and significant changes in the world around him. He wrote, “I now live and breathe sustainability! We are next-door neighbors with my grandparents, and I am teaching them about sustainability. This has been a great year for me. I really enjoyed learning about all of the large and small ways to improve the health of the planet. I was encouraged to do lots of little projects on my own, and I have liked that.”
As a teacher, there is nothing better than witnessing students realize they are capable of changing the world, even one water bottle or ounce at a time. I am so grateful to work in a school that encourages teachers to take risks and to create meaningful, relevant curriculum with children. It truly doesn’t get any better than that.

150-mile Lunch: In February?

We had a challenge, a yummy challenge. The 5th graders had to make a palatable lunch for Valentine’s Day from ingredients that all come from within 150 miles of Catlin Gabel. The menu: leek soup, salad, baked potatoes, apples, and pears. We went shopping, we prepared, we cooked, we did everything ourselves. And we had a good time! Here’s how we did it. We hopped on the bus to New Seasons, and entered en masse (much to the terror of innocent shoppers), each got assigned a product to buy, and spread out in small groups, taking a tour and picking up items along the way, considering price, quality, past experience, packaging, and how far away the food was grown. Eventually we finished and headed home. Cooking commenced immediately. Everyone pitched in and with minor adult supervision we shredded, dried, sliced, smashed, cooked, and served. And boy, was it worth it. Try it sometime. I dare you! —Rowan Treece ’19

Maggie Bendicksen has taught 5th grade at Catlin Gabel since 2002. Her sons Jacob ’16 and Liam ’18 survived 5th grade and its pitchfork to plate curriculum, and no longer beg for McDonald’s French fries as they drive down Burnside. Burgerville is another story.
 
 

 

Use it Up, Wear it Out, Eat it All

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Thu, 07/05/2012 - 11:34am
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From the Summer 2012 Caller

By Lark P. Palma PhD, Head of School

Over the sink in our South Carolina home hung a small green sign that embodied one of my mother’s strongest beliefs: “Use it up, wear it out, eat it all!”
 
We had fresh free-range eggs and chickens, an old-fashioned ice box on the back porch filled with local fruits and vegetables, bushels of blue crab claws, flounder, and bass that we gathered ourselves or that were given to my physician father as payment for medical services. For some people these gifts were the only way they had to pay the doctor, so we happily accepted the fishermen’s and farmers’ bounty.
 
My childhood shaped my attitudes about food. It should be enjoyed with lots of people. It should take some time to prepare. It should be as delicious as possible and be provided from the closest sources that the season provides. Because of my early exposure to good food, my life habits were set.
 
In this issue you will read many examples of curricular depth in interdisciplinary and experiential studies of food and nutrition, from social science, to health and PE, to science, math, the humanities, and languages. Our students study food as culture in modern languages, and read Jared Diamond’s Collapse in 9th grade history. As the students get older their learning circle expands to particular communities in this state (Oregon is one of the hungriest states in the country), other states with similar statistics, and countries all over the world for whom food insecurity is a chronic problem. The effects of famine, soil erosion, deforestation, and political control of food to subdue or exterminate groups of people create debilitating diseases and high childhood mortality. We acknowledge that if we teach our students to understand their relationship with food, they will be better be able to study and understand the conditions of people in communities not like ours.
 
Our students come to recognize these disparities, and with compassion and resolve volunteer with local agencies that work against hunger. We have the good fortune to have 60 acres in which our students run and play, participate in athletics, and develop their own personal fitness goals, allowing them to develop healthy habits from the earliest age.
 
The way the school supports, reflects on, and models the way we should think about food lends complexity to something that might seem simple at first. And should you come to Catlin Gabel’s campus, be sure to stop by our Barn, the center of our food service, and see how that has changed, with its emphasis on fresh, local, and healthful foods. It’s a representation of our seriousness about nutrition, health, sustainability, and global awareness. In recognition of wider realities, we really do “use it up, wear it out, and eat it all.”  

 

Graduation 2012 Photo Gallery

Submitted by Karen Katz on Mon, 06/11/2012 - 3:27pm
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After a week of steady – sometimes torrential – rain, the weather brightened on the class of 2012. The sun came out just in time to catch photos of a great group of seniors just before they became alumni.

Click on any thumbnail to start the slide show, and see larger and downloadable images.

application/pdf iconDr. Brian Druker's graduation speech
















































































































Video: We Love You, Seniors

Submitted by Karen Katz on Thu, 06/07/2012 - 3:44pm
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Thoughts from the community on the class of 2012

Video produced by junior Cody Hoyt. Props also to Jesse Kimsey-Bennett '11, who filmed many of the interviews. Jesse is a film major at USC.

 

Video: Senior lifers' advice to Beehive students

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Mon, 06/04/2012 - 11:49am
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Graduating seniors who had been at Catlin Gabel since 1st grade or before give advice to preschoolers and kindergarteners at the June 2012 Lifers Celebration.

 

Video: Pirates of Penzance rap and song

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Thu, 05/31/2012 - 3:16pm
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The class of 2016 presented a dress rehearsal of Gilbert & Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance" in late May 2012 before heading out on their trip to the San Juans. Here's their original rap introduction, and a rousing opening pirates' song.

 

Senior Mariah Morton wins long and triple jump championships, girls 4x400 team wins at state

Submitted by Karen Katz on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 3:46pm
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In addition to winning two state championships as an individual competitor, Mariah was also a member of the championship 4x400m relay team along with freshman Adele English, senior Cammy Edwards, junior Fiona Noonan, and sophomore Gabby Bishop.

The girls 4x100m relay team took 2nd place with runners Mariah Morton, Adele English, Cammy Edwards, junior Audrey Davis, and freshman Talia Quatraro.

Cammy Edwards placed 2nd in both the 300m hurdles and the high hurdles.

Junior Hannah Jaquiss placed 3rd in the 3000m and 7th in the 1500.

Junior Mckenzie Spooner placed 6th in the 3000.

Junior Hannah Rotwein placed 6th in the 1500.

The girls track team came in 2nd at state.

Senior Parris Joyce took 3rd place in the boys 800.

Senior Eli Wilson Pelton placed 6th in the high hurdles and 7th in the 300 hurdles.

Junior David Lovitz took 8th in the high jump.

Sophomore Ian Smith, Eli Wilson Pelton, Parris Joyce, David Lovitz, sophomore Chris Belluschi, and junior Cody Hoyt placed 7th in the 4x100 relay.

Senior Kate Rubinstein took 2nd place at the state tennis tournament.

Senior Andrew Salvador took 2nd place in tennis.

The doubles tennis team of junior Evan Hallmark and senior Sammy Lubitz finished 3rd at state.

The boys tennis team took 2nd place at state.

 

Video: Senior panel

Submitted by Karen Katz on Mon, 05/21/2012 - 12:32pm
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Presented by the Parent-Faculty Association

Seven seniors spoke at the May 17 parent community meeting. It was great to hear them talk about what they loved about Catlin Gabel (relationships with teachers!) and what they would change, their paths to college, what was fun during their years at the school, and more.

The video runs for one hour.

Junior Terrance Sun and freshman Valerie Ding were finalists at the Intel International Science Fair in Pittsburgh

Submitted by Karen Katz on Fri, 05/18/2012 - 4:24pm
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Participants in the international fair had top projects at regional or state fairs.

Terrance entered a project titled "Improvements to Automatic Translation of Legal Text" in the computer science category.

Valerie entered a project titled "Shining Like the Sun: A Novel Quantum Mechanical Approach to Property Analysis and Energy Efficiency Algorithm for White-Light LEDs" in the physics and astronomy category.

Valerie's project won a Fourth Award. In addition, Valerie was one of only 12 students (from over 1,500) to win an all-expenses-paid trip this summer to CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, where the students will meet with researchers and see the experiments they are working on.

Congratulations to Valerie and Terrance!
 

Class of 2012 college plans

Submitted by Karen Katz on Thu, 05/17/2012 - 4:04pm
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» Video: seniors talk about
their college choices 

 

 

Members of the class of 2012 were accepted to the following colleges and universities.
Unless otherwise noted, one student is attending each of the bolded colleges or universities.

Agnes Scott College
Akita International University
American University, 3 admitted
Amherst College
Bard College, 4 admitted
Barnard College
Bates College, 5 admitted, 3 enrolled
Beloit College, 4 admitted, 1 enrolled
Bennington College, 2 admitted
Boston College
Boston University, 2 admitted
Bradley University
Brandeis University, 3 admitted
University of British Columbia, 2 admitted
Brown University
Bryn Mawr College, 3 admitted, 2 enrolled
Bucknell University
California Lutheran University
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
University of California at Davis
University of California at Riverside
University of California at San Diego, 2 admitted
University of California at Santa Cruz
Carleton College, 4 admitted
Carnegie Mellon University
Carroll College
Case Western Reserve University
Chapman University
University of Chicago, 2 admitted
Claremont McKenna College
Clark University
Colby College, 5 admitted
Colgate University, 2 admitted
Colorado College, 4 admitted, 2 enrolled
University of Colorado at Boulder, 3 admitted
University of Colorado at Denver
Columbia University
Cornell College, 2 admitted
Cornell University
Dartmouth College, 3 admitted, 2 enrolled
Davidson College, 2 admitted
University of Denver, 3 admitted, 2 enrolled
DePaul University
Dickinson College
Drew University
Drexel University
Duke University, 2 admitted
Earlham College
Eckerd College
Emerson College
Emory University, 4 admitted
Eugene Lang College the New School for Liberal Arts, 2 admitted
Evergreen State College, 2 admitted
Fordham University, 4 admitted
Furman University
George Washington University, 3 admitted
Georgetown University, 2 admitted
Gettysburg College
Gonzaga University
Goucher College, 2 admitted
Grinnell College, 4 admitted
Guilford College
Hamilton College
Hampshire College, 2 admitted
Harvard University
Haverford College
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Hendrix College
Hofstra University
Howard University
University of Idaho
Illinois Wesleyan University
University of the Incarnate Word (Honors College)
Ithaca College, 2 admitted
John Carroll University
Johns Hopkins University
University of Kentucky
Kenyon College
University of La Verne
Lawrence University
Lehigh University
Lewis & Clark College, 5 admitted
Lindenwood University
Linfield College, 2 admitted
Loyola Marymount University, 2 admitted

Loyola University New Orleans
Macalester College, 3 admitted
University of Miami
McDaniel College
Middlebury College, 4 admitted
Mills College, 3 admitted
Montana State University, Bozeman
Mount Holyoke College
New College of Florida
New York University, 4 admitted
Northeastern University, 2 admitted
Northwestern University, 4 admitted
University of Notre Dame
Oberlin College, 5 admitted
Occidental College, 13 admitted
Oglethorpe University
Ohio State
Oregon State University, 4 admitted
Oregon State University (Honors College)
University of Oregon, 18 admitted, 3 enrolled
Honors College at the University of Oregon, 7 admitted
Oxford College of Emory University
Pacific University
University of the Pacific
University of Pittsburgh
Pitzer College, 2 admitted
Pomona College, 3 admitted
University of Portland, 2 admitted
Pratt Institute
Prescott College
University of Puget Sound, 8 admitted
University of Redlands, 4 admitted
Regis University
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 3 admitted
Rhode Island School of Design, 2 admitted, 2 enrolled
Rice University
Rochester Institute of Technology
University of Rochester
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Saint Anselm College
Saint Joseph's College-ME
Saint Louis University
Saint Mary's College of California
University of San Diego, 5 admitted
University of San Francisco, 7 admitted
Santa Clara University, 4 admitted
Sarah Lawrence College, 2 admitted
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Scripps College, 4 admitted, 2 enrolled
Seattle University
Simmons College
Skidmore College, 3 admitted
Smith College, 2 admitted
University of Southern California, 5 admitted, 4 enrolled
Spelman College
St. Lawrence University
St. Olaf College
Stanford University
Stevens Institute of Technology
Swarthmore College, 2 admitted
Syracuse University
Trinity College, 2 admitted
Trinity University, 3 admitted
Tufts University, 2 admitted
Tulane University
Ursinus College
Vassar College, 6 admitted
University of Vermont, 7 admitted, 2 enrolled
University of Virginia, 2 admitted
Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
Wake Forest University
Washington and Lee University
Washington University in St. Louis
University of Washington, 2 admitted
Wellesley College, 4 admitted
Wesleyan University, 3 admitted
Western Washington University
Wheaton College MA, 2 admitted
Whitman College, 10 admitted, 3 enrolled
Whittier College, 2 admitted
Whitworth University
Willamette University, 2 admitted
College of Wooster
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, 3 admitted
University of Wyoming

 

Class of 2012 college destinations

Talbot Andrews
Neil Badawi
Jade Bath
Chloe Bergstrand
Annika Berry
Yelena Blackburn
Cameron Boyd
Schuyler Brevig
Amanda Cahn
Rachel Caron
Jade Chen
Ilana Cohen
Alex Compton
Gus Crowley
Emrys Dennison
Brooke Edelson
Cameron Edwards
Devin Ellis
Lauren Ellis
Zoë Frank
Graham Fuller
James Furnary
Genevieve Gideonse
Qiddist Hammerly
Andrew Hungate
Julianne Johnson
Parris Joyce
Thalia Kelly
Holly Kim
Diana Ko
Sarah Koe
Alex Liem
Chloe Loduca
Sammy Lubitz
Esichang McGautha
Grace McMurchie
Lizzie Medford
Walker Michaels
Andrea Michalowsky
Anaka Morris
Mariah Morton
Tapiwa Nkhisang
Nathan Norris
Koichi Omara
Grant Phillips
Jemma Pritchard
Ramtin Rahmani
Kate Rubinstein
Divesh Sachdev
Andrew Salvador
Danielle Shapira
Dylan Shields
Henry Shulevitz
Emily Siegel
Logan Smesrud
Cydney Smith
Taylor Smith
Lauren Spiegel
Megan Stater
Mint Tienpasertkij
Katy Wiita
Cole Williamson
Eli Wilson Pelton
Brandon Wilson
Will Wilson
Jeremy Wood
Jared Woods
Kenny Yu		 University of Portland
University of Southern California
Bryn Mawr College
Carleton College
Rhode Island School of Design
University of Oregon
Colorado College
Hampshire College
Colorado College
Barnard College
New York University
Pomona College
Evergreen State College
University of Vermont
Whitman College
University of Denver
University of Rochester
Gonzaga University
Duke University
Swarthmore College
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
Dartmouth College
Beloit College
Northwestern University
University of Chicago
Vassar College
Willamette University
Rhode Island School of Design
Cornell University
University of Oregon
Bates College
Montana State University, Bozeman
University of San Francisco
Bates College
University of Southern California
Whitman College
Scripps College
University of Denver
Johns Hopkins University
University of Southern California
Emory University
Smith College
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
University of Oregon
Washington University in St. Louis
Sarah Lawrence College
Dartmouth College
Whitman College
University of Southern California
Bates College
University of Colorado at Boulder
Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Oberlin College
Bryn Mawr College
Oregon State University (Honors College)
Rice University
Georgetown University
Scripps College
Columbia University
Rochester Institute of Technology
University of the Incarnate Word (Honors College)
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Harvard University
Trinity University
University of Vermont
Stanford University
Chapman University
Northeastern University

Video: seniors talk about their college choices

Submitted by Nadine Fiedler on Thu, 05/17/2012 - 1:38pm
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Catlin Gabel seniors are excited to be off to college! Several students talk a bit about where they're going, and why their college choice is a good one for them.

» Link to class of 2012 list of college acceptances

 Eli's going to Harvard!

 Megan's going to Columbia!

Ramtin's going to Dartmouth!

Logan's going to Oregon State University Honors College!

Grace is going to Whitman College!