About Catlin Gabel
David Bragdon '77 joining New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration
Oregonian article, August 2010
Catlin Gabel News Spring 2010
From the Spring 2010 Caller
AMAZING AWARDS IN SCIENCE
Yale Fan ’10 and Kevin Ellis ’10 both won top honors and $50,000 each by coming in second place with all-around prizes in the recent Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. This was the first time ever that two winners have come from the same school. Yale has also won a place on the 20-member 2010 U.S. Physics Team, and he placed ninth at the Intel Science Talent Search in Washington, D.C., earning him a $20,000 award for his research on the advantages of quantum computing in performing difficult computations. Kevin was also one of the 40 Intel STS finalists in Washington, D.C. and won a $7,500 award. At this year’s international Northwest Science Expo, Kevin Ellis ’10, Rose Perrone ’10, and Vighnesh Shiv ’11 each won special awards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Rose also came in second place in electrical and mechanical engineering. Yale won first place in physics and astronomy and several other awards. Brynmor Chapman ’10 won statewide second place in biochemistry, and Lucy Feldman ’10 won statewide honorable mention in animal sciences. Kudos to all!
NEWS FROM AROUND HONEY HOLLOW
Catlin Gabel was selected by Oregon Business magazine as one of the 100 Best Green Companies to Work For in Oregon, honoring the school’s variety of green policies and the high value its employees places on sustainable practices. . . . An article by facilities director Eric Shawn, “Catlin Gabel School—a Focus on Food,” was published in the May 2010 inaugural edition of the Journal of Sustainability Education. . . . PLACE director and urban studies teacher George Zaninovich was nominated by the Coalition for a Livable Future for the Robert L. Liberty Regional Leadership Award for his significant contributions to Portland’s livability. . . . . The Oregon Athletic Coaches Association named Lerry Baker the girls track coach of the year and John Hamilton the golf coach of the year for 2009. . . . This year’s diversity conference in April offered a wide variety of workshops on issues that included homeless youth, blindness, race and American popular music, Southern African cultures, immigration, political diversity, masculinity, worldwide access to technology, and contemporary religious practice. The day was capped with performances by the Jefferson Dancers and the Maru-a-Pula Marimba Band from Botswana.
FESTIVE GAMBOL BRINGS IN GREAT SUPPORT FOR FINANCIAL AID
Thanks to enthusiastic bidders, donors, volunteers, and supporters, the celebratory 2010 Gambol auction at The Nines hotel raised $345,000. Derrick Butler, M.D.
’86 brought the crowd to its feet when he spoke at a special appeal for financial aid. Many thanks to co-chairs Gina Wand and Heather Gaudry Blackburn ’90 (right).
’86 brought the crowd to its feet when he spoke at a special appeal for financial aid. Many thanks to co-chairs Gina Wand and Heather Gaudry Blackburn ’90 (right).OUTSTANDING SERVICE WORK
Middle School students, staff, and families contributed 1,152 pounds of food to the Oregon Food Bank for Project Second Wind. . . . The Upper School Environmental Club raised enough funds through sales of smoothies and baked goods to help provide 641 Iraqi students with clean, safe drinking water through Water for Peace.
KUDOS TO OUR STUDENTS
Mariah Morton ’12 jumped 18 feet at track and field districts to break the school long jump record set by Wendy Miller Johnson ’68 in 1968. . . . The Upper School mock trial team won its third state championship competing against high schools many times our size. . . . Cody Hoyt ’13 won an Oregon Driver Education Center video contest about safe driving with a spoof of the Old Spice commercial. . . . The Flaming Chickens robotics team won the regional Chairman’s Award this year, the highest honor. They also won the Innovations in Controls award at the Colorado regional competition.
For their senior prank, the community-minded class of 2010 converted the Upper School quad to a petting zoo for the young ones
Farewell to George Thompson '64 & Bob Kindley
Two longtime educators retire
From the Spring 2010 Caller
George Thompson ’64 has launched into retirement after spending 25 years at Catlin Gabel—first as a student, then as a teacher and counselor. He’s become a familiar presence on campus, with his service dog, Cairo, receiving almost as much daily love and attention as George gets.
George’s career has centered on education. After earning his undergraduate and graduate degrees in history at Colorado College and the University of Washington, he first taught at Middlesex School, the school he attended after Catlin Gabel. “But I was bitten by the bug and wanted to start a school of my own,” he says. When he was 26 he and his wife, Margot Voorhies Thompson ’66, created Neskowin Valley School out of an old dairy barn in south Tillamook County. “It worked. The gods were with me. It was a wonderful, exciting project,” says George. They ran the preschool-8th grade school for 14 years, until they moved back to Portland to enroll their son, Geordie, in Catlin Gabel’s high school.
George worked for a year as the head of Vision Northwest, an agency supporting people new to blindness. He returned to Catlin Gabel in 1989 to teach 8th grade English. Six years later he embarked on a new job as counselor in training, spending four years at night school at Lewis & Clark for his master’s in counseling psychology and the credentials to become a full-fledged Upper School counselor. “This was an opportunity for me to delve deeper into the personal challenges of young people and help them become emotionally more literate and learn to help each other,” he says.
George is proud of the work he’s done on the Peer Helpers program, which trains students to help their friends solve their problems. He’s also enjoyed teaming with coach John Hamilton to teach the sophomore health class, which focuses on citizenship, ethics, choices, and self-knowledge. “I can’t see myself being idle and probably have a career left in me. I don’t know what or when it’ll be, but it’ll probably involve music. I will miss having kids around every day, but I feel like it’s a good time to say goodbye,” says George.
Bob Kindley retires this summer after 42 years of teaching math at Catlin Gabel. A graduate of Reed College with a master’s in mathematics from the University of Oregon, Bob always wanted to be a high school teacher—especially after attending five high schools around the country and seeing the best and worst of teaching.Bob’s teaching philosophy echoes that of Catlin Gabel. “I want kids to ask their own questions and pursue the answers—not just give back what the text or teacher says. What they find doesn’t have to be profound or new, but it’s a sign that they’re thinking about the topic and getting a perspective on it,” he says.
“Math is the hardest thing to teach,” he says. “Some students have the gift to see to the heart of the problem. We tend to shortchange those students—it’s often a case of ‘show your work’—but we want to cultivate that rare gift of intuition.”
Bob fondly remembers his first year at Catlin Gabel, when he taught Tom Killian ’69 and Dan Bump ’70 (who’s now a mathematician). “I learned more from them about mathematical creativity and insight than ever before. I had many other fun classes, especially the class of 1971, with Mike Radow, Ilan Caron, and Bill Rempfer. It was a time when ideas were flying around, and we all got in on the thinking process.”
Bob has no big plans for retirement, but he expects to garden, travel, camp, hike, and fish. “I’m not done with math,” he says, and he plans to work on math projects and perhaps return to the school to tutor or substitute. “Catlin Gabel is a good school,” he says. “I’ve liked working with the faculty: there are good people here.”
The Catlin Gabel Student Association: An Anatomical Analogy
By Eddie Friedman '10
From the Spring 2010 Caller
There are bad days and good days in and for the Catlin Gabel Student Association, the CGSA, of which I am president this year. On bad days the CGSA seems to me like an appendix. It started when the school needed a group to process and carry out the tasks of the community that other student or faculty organizations could not. On bad days, the CGSA feels a little vestigial, and like a sharp abdominal pain above the right hip of the (student) body.
I wouldn’t enjoy working with and leading the CGSA nearly as much if every day were a bad day, and the vast majority aren’t. To continue the anatomical analogy, on good days the CGSA is the hind brain of the Catlin Gabel high school’s community. This utterly invaluable cranial region consists of three parts.
The pons is the bridge between the brain and the central nervous system. All information traveling to the brain from the body passes through this little patch of tissue. At the beginning of my time as CGSA president, Michael Heath, the head of the Upper School, told me: “Your job in the CGSA is not really to serve as the student liaison and petitioner to the faculty.” Coincidentally, many students told me: “Your job is not to represent the opinions of the faculty to us!” From what I’ve experienced so far, they were both wrong. The CGSA sends information both ways.
The medulla oblongata at the base of the brain, beneath the pons, regulates autonomic functions within the body. These functions are not conscious, so if the medulla oblongata were not there to carry them out they would not happen, and death would probably ensue. While maybe not quite so vital, allotting funding for clubs, planning kidnap day, and managing class elections are jobs that the CGSA does that bear great importance to the Catlin Gabel community.
And finally we have the cerebellum, that beautiful striped body of folded neural tissue, tucked back underneath the occipital lobes, attached to the brain stem at the pons. This region plays an absolutely essential role in the functioning of the body. Like the cerebellum, the CGSA receives information from all parts of the community and uses this information to modify and fine-tune the actions of the body as a whole. Not only does the CGSA represent the faculty’s feelings to the students and vice versa, we take into account those feelings and opinions and desires and synthesize them in order to do what we think is best for the Catlin Gabel community.
Earlier this year the CGSA dealt with the issue of cell phones in the high school community. The faculty thought something had to be done, while most students didn’t. We debated it thoroughly, observed cell phone use in the community, and conducted six weeks of experiments. We considered that while it might be easy to simply abandon the issue, if we did the faculty might take more drastic measures than we thought appropriate. Eventually we arrived at a middle ground that emphasized respect and responsible action, pillars of this educational body. (You may read the policy online at http://www.catlin.edu/upper/cgsa/cellphone-policy.) So far, everyone seems pretty happy.
The work of the CGSA is not always easy or straightforward, hence that uncomfortable appendix-like feeling. But when we toil to complete important, significant work for the community, despite many challenges, we’re the brain stem, and it all seems worth it.
Eddie Friedman will attend Brown University this fall. He admits that he may have taken a few liberties with the facts of the actual functions of the various organs he mentions, for the sake of beauty and aesthetic unity.
Redefining Community: Linking the Global & the Local
By Spencer White
From the Spring 2010 Caller
Our heads fill these days with reports of environmental degradation, the unraveling of indigenous communities, and the harsh realities of human conflict on our globe. I find this overwhelming and sometimes downright scary. I can only imagine how these problems make my 11-year-old students feel as they move through school, becoming more aware every year of the issues we, or they, will live through. Regardless of the life paths our students choose when they leave Catlin Gabel, they will face a world characterized by ever-increasing communication and collaboration with international communities. Technology has brought us the ability to maintain relationships and conduct business with people just about anywhere on the globe, at any time of the day. How our students engage in these relationships— in essence, their diplomacy—is of great importance to our world.
Our global education program seeks to foster global competencies in our students. Among these is the ability to work and communicate effectively across national, cultural, and linguistic boundaries. So how do we do this? Besides teaching world languages, or providing travel opportunities, how do we help our students build cross-cultural communication skills? The answer is, we practice. We practice by taking advantage of every opportunity we can to get kids to collaborate with their international peers.
Teaching students to be literate in cross-cultural communication requires two intentional activities. The first is creating meaningful relationships with people around the world—initially through email exchanges and interactive Skype conversations, and eventually through global travel.The second act is linking these relationships to local peer groups. Our students must practice communicating about a specific issue, problem, or goal not only with local peers, but with peers of other cultures, languages, and nationalities. In this way we redefine the idea of community for our students, explicitly teaching that our actions and decisions affect not only our local community, but also those far away.
“Looking back in my journal I see how I have really never felt a connection with someone that far away from home before.” —Catlin Gabel student traveler
For example, Carter Latendresse’s 6th grade unit on food teaches students to critically examine how food is produced in the U.S. and compare our levels of consumption with that of other global communities. Making this tangible, the Garden Club’s new vegetable beds allow students to grow their own organic produce, as well as understand the influence the global food industry has on how we produce, transport, and learn about the norms of global food consumption.
Teachers David Ellenberg, Becky Wynne, and Laurie Carlyon-Ward, chaperones on this spring’s trip to Nepal, prepared 13 high school students by viewing Food Inc., a documentary on the U.S. food industry. Nepali students at the Sattya Media Arts Collective screened the film for our students’ visit, and together they talked about the arrival of fast-food restaurants in Katmandu. This spring, the students who traveled to Nepal will visit Carter’s 6th graders to talk about the perspectives of their Nepali peers.
Our community’s response to the Haitian earthquake in January most tangibly collected a sizeable sum of money to support Mercy Corps’s disaster relief work. But more notable was the fact that our Lower School students created pastel drawings with messages in French and Haitian Creole that were delivered personally by parents who traveled to Haiti to assist in the recovery. Our community grows stronger and more unified by working together to affect change in a distant place. From these collective efforts our students learn about the disparity between resources and power structures in our world—but they also see that they are not powerless in the face of all the world’s daunting problems, and that when we reach out to communities far away, we in turn strengthen our own.
“I really care about conserving water. I mean I did it before, but not nearly as much as I do now.” —Catlin Gabel student traveler
The Viewfinder Global Film Series is another example of how we challenge our community to unite around global issues, in the interest of educating our students. In its inaugural year, the series has hosted 23 films over 8 months of the school year—attended by more than 600 parents, students, and teachers. Far more impressive than the numbers, though, are the post-screening conversations that ignite passionate debate and reflection about how our school sees its place in our local and global communities.
“I was really surprised when I got back at the sheer amount of resources we use every day, how easy it is for us to have a hot shower, and how we take so much for granted.” —Catlin Gabel student traveler
As our students move into Upper School, their opportunities for local and global collaboration increase. Model United Nations challenges students’ diplomatic skills, while twice a week students board a bus to Aloha to help Latino children with homework. Many of these same students recently returned from Cuba. Apart from the humanitarian nature of the trip, the travelers learned the power of creating relationships with their Cuban counterparts and the life-changing nature of convening with a community so vastly different than their own. Leah Weitz ’10 saw this in action in Cuba, and she’ll never forget it: when she told their Cuban cabdriver about the humanitarian nature of their visit, he gratefully told her their ride would be free.
As an 18-year-old at Lewis & Clark College, I traveled to Argentina and Chile as part of my Hispanic studies degree. Six months in Mendoza living with modest third-generation immigrants of Italian descent taught me the power and potential of creating emotional connections with people outside my own community. Shy of the cliché of calling them my Argentine family, especially when talking with my “real” mother on the phone, I was shocked at how close I felt to them and how utterly dependent I was on their parenting and care. Perhaps I was an independent, self-sufficient young adult in the U.S., but in Argentina I was vulnerable and far from home. Here was my new community developing before my eyes.
“There is no real way to explain what has changed about me. What I can say is that the way I see things is as if I am seeing it on two planes, two perspectives. I see things the way I see it from Costa Rica and from the U.S.” —Catlin Gabel student traveler
We are fortunate at Catlin Gabel to have the opportunities and the means to develop international relationships through travel, technology, and the study of language. We are in the business of redefining for our students what community means, what it means to become a global citizen, and what it means to consider the global effects of daily decisions. In my mind, this fortune comes with a commensurate degree of responsibility. We have the responsibility not only to purposefully seek and create relationships in international communities, but we must always make an effort to connect these relationships to our daily curriculum, our school initiatives, and our local service work. These collaborations linking local action with global realties serve as important reminders of our need to change the way we think about community.
Spencer White is Catlin Gabel's global education coordinator. He also teaches Middle School Spanish.
The Feeling Abides
How have alumni brought the feeling of the Catlin Gabel community into their college, home, and work lives?
From the Spring 2010 Caller
Catlin Gabel is the standard I have set for a great independent school and is the backbone of my vision for being on the board of Cascades Academy of Central Oregon. I cannot think of an experience that has had a stronger influence on the way that I hope to help my community through nonprofits, education, parenting, and business. —Danielle Easly Nye ’87
Catlin Gabel taught me that I can work hard and have fun doing it. It also taught me to take pride in my work, do the best I can, and to not be afraid to keep learning. However, I think the most important thing I learned is to question without judgment. Why do we do it 
that way? What’s the reason for that? How can we do it better? Why did they put it together like that? —Ashley Tibbs ’92, at right, in his role as CGS basketball coach
that way? What’s the reason for that? How can we do it better? Why did they put it together like that? —Ashley Tibbs ’92, at right, in his role as CGS basketball coachCatlin Gabel provided me with a foundation in critical thinking skills that I use on a daily basis in the course of my work as a police sergeant. This hel
ps me complete a wide range of tasks, which include everything from managing critical incidents, to addressing training issues, to navigating the various shades of gray I encounter on the street. Although I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, Catlin Gabel also instilled in me the importance of service to others, which manifests itself through my commitment to providing service to the community when I go to work, as well as service to the department. Finally, Catlin Gabel gave me an appreciation for learning that has led me to pursue various classes and interests that enrich both my personal and professional life. —Joe Okies ’90
ps me complete a wide range of tasks, which include everything from managing critical incidents, to addressing training issues, to navigating the various shades of gray I encounter on the street. Although I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, Catlin Gabel also instilled in me the importance of service to others, which manifests itself through my commitment to providing service to the community when I go to work, as well as service to the department. Finally, Catlin Gabel gave me an appreciation for learning that has led me to pursue various classes and interests that enrich both my personal and professional life. —Joe Okies ’90I’m not sure how much I truly understood the value of “the feeling of Catlin Gabel” until long after graduation. When I think of Catlin Gabel, I think of a near-perfect balance of critical analysis with an environment supportive of intellectual risk. Much is made of the importance of collaboration in professional work, yet as my career life advances I find that the truly excellent examples of effective interpersonal intellectual teamwork are rare. The “life of the mind” that Catlin Gabel espouses thrives in large part because of its environment of tempered judgment. The line between a stupid idea and a brilliant one is sometimes entirely dependent on the willingness of the audience to engage in the discussion, and Catlin Gabel never lacked for engagement. —Justin Andersen ’91
Catlin Gabel gave me the confidence to be an independent thinker. My teachers fostered an environment where friendly debate was not only encouraged, but expected. In my business (the entertainment industry), a lot of the creative decisions we make are entirely subjective. So you can’t be afraid to throw your opinion out there even if you think you’ll be in the minority. But ultimately, you have to have the confidence in yourself to concede that the best ideas aren’t always your own. —Maril Davis ’90
Upon arriving at the University of Virginia, I was dismayed at the lack of on-campus recycling bins. I brought this up with a professor who shared my discomfort in throwing away recyclables. Through some political maneuvering, we were able to procure funding for bins to go alongside the trash receptacles in high-traffic areas around the grounds. I credit all of this to my 4th grade experience at Catlin Gabel, where recycling was ingrained into daily life. —Markus Hutchins ’02
Alumni Weekend 2010 photo gallery
June 18 and 19
Volunteer award recipient Bob Noyes and distinguished alumni Henry Dick '65, Sally Bachman '75, and Rachel Cohen '90 were honored at a Friday evening gathering followed by dinner in the Barn. Saturday activities on campus included the alumni soccer game, a picnic in the Fir Grove, and a luncheon for the classes of 1945, 1950, 1955, and 1960 in the Jame F. Miller Library.
Click on any photo to view slideshow.
Award recipients
Bob Noyes – Joey Day Pope '54 Volunteer Award
Shout out to the class of 1975
Sally Bachman '75 – Distinguished Alumni Service Award
Rachel Cohen – Distinguished Younger Alumni Award
Henry Dick – Distinguished Alumni Award
Three generations of Eaton men
Class of 2010 musicians formed a fabulous band
Dancing on the Barn porch
Alumni luncheon fuels nostalgic look at Garrulous Pine yearbooks
Gearing up for the all-comers soccer game
Goooooal
Urban Planning is Really Quite Fetching
By Alma Siulagi '10
From the Spring 2010 Caller
As my childhood years faded into the past, the conviction that I would one day change the world dissipated. With the slow creep of reality reducing my options, I resorted to crossing my fingers in hope of stumbling upon another fabulous passion.
The wait was a long one. Throughout the first half of high school, I couldn’t even pick a specific subject that particularly captivated me. I was perfectly decent in most classes, and good grades were within reach if I worked hard (which I did). But nothing came naturally. I was restless about my future, and in a fit of aimlessness, I signed up for PLACE, at the time OULP (Oregon Urban Leadership Program). The vague course name matched my fuzzy understanding of the course, which, as far as I knew, was something my mom wanted me to do.
George Zaninovich, the current head of PLACE, often tells me that “urban planning isn’t sexy.” But I disagree—it completely seduced me with what I had passed off as the impossible. Changing the world may be forever beyond my reach, but changing lives materialized as a real option with PLACE.
What is urban planning? Most of my peers don’t know, and ask me to define it. I usually ramble on about “public spaces” and end sentences with “you know,” but what I really want to say is: It’s where we are standing right now, you and me. It’s everything around us—the buildings, businesses, the flowers on the side of the road, stoplights, your next door neighbor’s house, the way that road curves in a certain way, that tree you like to sit under in the park. It’s something that changes every step you make, provides the backdrop of every memory good and bad, and it’s what I want to do. It’s changed my world, and one day, I will change yours.
Until then, I’ll be here. I’ve chosen to stay in Portland, an urban design and planning hotspot, and study at Reed College. I’ll be downtown starting in May, working with Walker Macy, the firm that designed parts of Catlin Gabel’s breathtaking campus. I plan to spend the next few years learning urban planning inside and out (well, as much as one ever can with such a fluid subject), and then get started on changing the world.
PLACE Creates Engaged Citizens
By George Zaninovich
From the Spring 2010 Caller
Often, during one of the first classes of a semester, after the chatter subsides and the room quiets, I grab a piece of chalk, turn towards the students and ask: What is community?
This is an important question. In the program I lead, PLACE (Planning and Leadership Across City Environments), students work to complete a plan that addresses a community need of a local nonprofit organization, school, or government agency. As the semester progresses, they use what they learn about civics, sustainability, public involvement, and social equity to walk in the shoes of a project client and understand the interests of the many different stakeholders in the project.
Five years ago, during Catlin Gabel’s Imagine 2020 visioning process for the future of the school, members of the community brainstormed PLACE (formerly the Oregon Urban Leadership Program) as a way to use Portland as a living urban laboratory. Portland is not only Catlin Gabel’s home, it is the perfect place for students to learn how to work with diverse communities. Portland is an engaged city. People participate. Citizens are involved. Communities care. In fact, public meetings in Portland are attended at a rate of three times the national average.
Engaged citizenship for youth is more than registering to vote at the age of 18. Engagement means participating, taking action to enhance communities, becoming a vital member instead of a passive spectator. Urban planning is a dynamic tool that empowers youth by creating real-life situations where they see communities as living entities. This includes spending time in the community in which they work, indentifying stakeholders, talking with them, and creating a plan to work with government officials as well as community members from diverse backgrounds. Engagement in this case is about identifying and strengthening community.
I hear “school” from one side of the room, and I write it down. I hear “neighborhood” from another, and I make a note. Sometimes a voice will mutter “family” and another “friends.” I add both to the list. I ask, can someone be part of many different communities? If so, how does one feel part of a community? And, by the way, what makes a community anyway? As I prepare to write at the board, student stares drift beyond the collection of communities on the chalkboard and out the windows toward different visions of the world around them.
Catlin Gabel students in the current PLACE class have teamed up with master’s students from Portland State University’s School of Urban Studies and Planning and the city of Portland Bureau of Environmental Services. Together they are working on a community needs analysis and site design for Zenger Farm, a nonprofit urban farm in outer southeast Portland. This educational experience is unique in the partnership of high school students with graduate students and a public agency.
Zenger Farm is in outer southeast Portland’s Powellhurst- Gilbert and Lents neighborhoods, two culturally and economically diverse areas. This project requires immense coordination among all of the entities and an understanding of a wide array of complex urban issues, including farming in an urban setting, food insecurity and how to address it using local food production, community involvement with non-English speakers, and how to motivate and involve youth of different ages and backgrounds.
As part of the project, Catlin Gabel students have had to figure out, in conjunction with their partners, how to engage the community in the Zenger Farm planning process. They created surveys for adults and youth. They went door-to-door in the area surrounding the farm to administer the surveys, and then planned and implemented a design workshop for community members. Our students created activities for youth of all ages, networked with teachers and principals of area schools to get youth input, led focus groups, and worked with the neighborhood association to get youth involved in the process.After a few moments of window-gazing and silent contemplation, I sit down at a table near the students. The chatter picks up again. One student uses her hands to sketch a giant circle in front of her eyes as she explains her definition of a community and all of the different groups of people in it. Another student raises his hand and talks enthusiastically about the different communities he feels a part of as his arm continues to point upward. He finishes, and with a deep breath puts his arm back on the desk. One of the quieter students in the room mentions that familiarity and commonalities are the keys to feeling part of a community. I get excited and rush to the chalkboard. I write her comments down and ask one more question before class ends. Is it possible to understand a community just by talking about it?
To prepare for the Zenger project, Catlin Gabel students did a lot of reading and discussing. They read articles on Portland’s emphasis on density, the effects of Metro and the urban growth boundary on the region, the challenges facing growing communities, issues facing rural areas in transition, and the Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood plan. The reading sparked lively discussion—but PLACE is about getting outside the four walls of a classroom. So that’s what we did.
This current project is a perfect example of what PLACE aims to do: empower youth to be engaged citizens by working on real-world urban planning projects in different communities throughout the Portland region. Catlin Gabel students learn from the world around them while doing important work that benefits the region—the acts of truly engaged youth who have seen their definitions of community expand.
George Zaninovich has been at Catlin Gabel since 2008.
The Little Things and the Big Thing About Baseball
By Chris Potts
From the Spring 2010 Caller
The argument that “baseball is a game of little things” is, to me, unassailable, as is the philosophy that high school sports should be used as vehicles to teach students lessons that can carry them through the rest of their lives. Holding these truths in tandem, you quickly realize that the avenue to reach these larger lessons is to build a cohesive team, a community of ballplayers. Unfortunately, there’s no handbook for this, there’s no one way to do it. Just like baseball, it’s putting all of the little things together in the right way.
When I interviewed for this job, I was told, “Baseball at Catlin Gabel is on life support.” But when I first met the team, I realized that they were a great group of young players who needed somebody to give them some discipline, some foundation.
We’re not a winning program. In my five years at Catlin Gabel, we’ve lost many more games than we’ve won. It’s not even close. I would argue, however, that we’re an extremely successful program. Each year, this group of students comes together. We’ve grown in numbers every year. Our baseball team is an inclusive and incredible, albeit unique, community.
What follows isn’t that elusive handbook for team-building. It’s a look at a few of the little things that we’ve done together.
Each year I choose a theme around which to build our team mentality. The theme for our first year was “Building Something We Can Be Proud Of.”
When we won our first game, I worried that our players were so excited that they’d offend the other team. Then again, when you haven’t won a baseball game your entire high school career, wouldn’t you jump up and down and scream when you got your first “W?”
February 26—Manhood—Outside the gym, after practice, I pull one of the new players aside. He’s been struggling this week. He’s a good player (we’d say, “he’s got a lot of upside”), but we need to rebuild some of his fundamentals. He’s also never had to work this hard, physically, ever.
There’s a big transition between middle school sports and high school varsity athletics. We’ll be playing against 200-pound gorillas looking to play in college. Wrestlers. Linebackers. The kid I’m talking to is 14 and could probably make the scale hit 140 if I handed him a 20-pound dumbbell.
We do a lot of physical conditioning. The younger players typically take some time to adjust. During this physical adjustment period, the boy I’m talking with has lost all accuracy with his throwing. We’d say “he couldn’t hit the ground if he dropped the ball.” I’ve been playing catch with him during warm-ups to protect the other players. I’ve seen tears well up in his eyes during three of these first four practices. Time for a chat.
At one point in the conversation, I say, “This is why I love baseball, because you can learn lessons through the sport that you can apply to the rest of your life. Right now you need to learn to make the adjustment from 8th grade baseball to high school baseball. Just like how you’re making the transition from 8th grade academics to high school academics. In both things you’re going to have to get tough, you’re going to have to work harder than you’ve ever had to before and you’re going to have to learn to control your emotions. I think you can do it.”
I do think he can do it. I need a #3 starter.
During my second year, the theme was “Playing the Game with Class.”
March 1—Playing in the Mud—It’s still a little wet to be using the whole field, but we need to put in defense and relays as soon as possible. The first game is two weeks away. The field is still holding too much water.
The players circle around the third base cutout, and we talk about the geography of our field. There are three layers. First, there’s the soil underneath everything. That’s what the grass grows out of. Surrounding the bases, there’s a layer of clay that builds the foundation for the cutouts. On top of that is a top-dressing. I explain to the players that this stuff is baked at like 5,000 degrees so that it becomes porous and can absorb three times its weight in water. This, I believe, is the science portion of baseball.
We squat around the perimeter of the cutout, grabbing chunks of clay that we’ve churned up during defense and conditioning, and rolling them into balls. When we’ve grabbed the biggest chucks, I have the players throw them so that I can lay them out for one of my captains to tamp back into the clay foundation.
One of the sophomores says, “I get to throw mud at my baseball coach.” I’m not too fond of how this sounds, but I don’t think I can argue with him.
The theme of my third year was “Learning to be Competitive.”
We drive a long way to get to some of the games. To the Pacific Ocean, literally. The team was shocked when I instituted the no-headphones, noelectronics, human-interaction-only rule. “Why can’t we listen to our iPods?” The answer was no.
In deference to my totalitarianism, a group of students began singing on the bus rides home. They got very into it, going so far as to print out lyrics.
It was awful: adolescent boys screeching the lyrics to Britney Spears, NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys. It was an assault on human musical aesthetics. It was the sound of my group of boys coming together. It was music to my ears.
The dynamics always change after our first road trip.
During my fourth year, our theme was “Working as a Team.”
Close to the deadline for this article, I get an email from a former player. He’s hoping to be in town and catch the end of a Friday double-header. I want him to come to the game, to cheer us on, and for the younger players to realize that they’re a part of something bigger than the second game of a double-header.
This year’s theme is “Respect for the Game.”
April 26—Heart—An unusually large wet-weather system has rolled in. We’re in the gym, hitting practice balls, tennis balls, softies, and whiffles. We’re looking ahead at the season: 8 tough games in 11 days. The arms are ready. Though we’re having difficulty getting on base, I’m fielding the best defense in my time at Catlin Gabel. We’ve seen each of the teams in our league. We know we’re the underdogs, but there’s a palpable sense that we can put it all together and make a run at the playoffs. I’d say our biggest asset is our cohesiveness. This team is all heart.
Chris Potts is an outdoor education teacher at Catlin Gabel and is in his fifth year as the head baseball coach.
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