Students
Athletics history video
Celebrating our athletes on the pitch, in the field, and around the gym
OHSU doctors blog on our Middle School Surgery Day
OHSU blog, August 2012
Join a team!
We encourage all students to join a Catlin Gabel team. Each year a number of students, particularly freshmen and sophomores, hesitate to come out for sports, believing they are too inexperienced to participate. Our no-cut policy allows for everyone to participate. We provide great opportunities for students to give new sports a try. You have nothing to lose and a lot to gain. We hope to see you!
Upper School Athletics 2012-13 Preseason Schedule
Soccer, volleyball, and cross-country preseason practice begins on Monday, August 20.
For conditioning, skill development, and team organization, athletes planning to participate in the first fall contests are required to attend preseason practices. Athletes missing prac¬tices or arriving after the starting date will be withheld from competitions until they have completed nine practices. If teams are filled after preseason is completed, we will not add another team to accommodate late arriving athletes.
Games begin on August 30. Coaches will notify athletes in advance of any practice time changes after this point.
Once classes begin on September 6, practices are after school from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. There is no practice on Labor Day.
» Link to game and meet schedules
BOYS SOCCER
Optional camp – $100
August 13 – 17, 3:30 – 5:30 p.m.
Required practice and team selection
Monday, August 20 – September 5, 3 – 6 p.m. (laptop orientation is on Wednesday, September 5, at 6 p.m., so practice will be earlier)
Head Coach: Roger Gantz, 503-780-3312
GIRLS SOCCER
Optional camp – $175
August 13 – 16, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m.
Required practice and team selection
Monday, August 20 – September 5, 9 – 11 a.m.
Head Coach: Lisa Unsworth, 503-593-1173
GIRLS VOLLEYBALL
Optional conditioning – free
August 6 – 9, 9 – 10:30 a.m. and 6 – 7:30 p.m.
Optional camp – $100
August 13 – 16, 4 – 7pm
Required practice and team selection
August 20 – 23, 3 – 7:30 p.m.
August 24, 3 – 6 p.m.
August 27 – 29, 4 – 6p.m.
August 30, first game at home vs. Astoria
Head Coach Sanjay Bedi, 503-348-0380
CROSS-COUNTRY
Optional practices
Wednesdays from 7 to 8 p.m. for interval session. Meet at the gym.
Saturdays at 9 a.m. for 3-6 mile run. Meet at the bottom of the Leif Erickson Trail on NW Thurman Street
Monday August 13 - 24th annual Oak Hills pre-season run, swim, and ice cream social 7 – 9 p.m.
Required practice
August 20 – September 5
Monday, Wednesday, Friday, 9:30 – 11 a.m.
Head Coach: John Hamilton, 503-645-7198
Notes for All Athletes
Students should have their own footwear properly broken in by the opening day of practice to avoid blisters. Wear athletic clothes suitable for the weather. Soccer players should bring water bottles to carry with them to the field. It is wise to start some conditioning well before August 20 in order to build fitness gradually. This will help avoid muscle soreness and injuries.
Family medical and emergency contact forms must be submitted online before the first day of practice. Update or approve your forms online. Also, all 9th and 11th graders must complete the pre-participation physical examination with their physicians and turn in the required paperwork before the first day of practice. State law requires the school to have the forms on file before students may practice. The forms are available in PDF format at the bottom of this page. Please call the Upper School office at ext. 315 if you have any questions about the forms.
For questions or clarification about the athletics program please email or call Sandy Luu, athletic director, at luus@catlin.edu or 971-404-7253.
Environmental Science and Policy: Real-World Learning
Students in this interdisciplinary class learn facts--and how to cope with complexity and ambiguity
From the Summer 2012 Caller
By Andrea Michalowsky '12
Catlin Gabel prides itself on being green. We recycle, compost, and emphasize environmentalism in the elementary and middle school curricula. We even have goats roaming the campus to help with landscaping. Surrounded by all this sustainability, I considered myself environmentally conscious and aware of ecological concerns. However, my Environmental Science and Policy classes reminded me of just how little I know and how much there is for me to still learn. More importantly, they showed me the nuances, the importance of understanding issues fully, and how to gather the information necessary to form my own opinion.Peter Shulman and Dan Griffiths began this interdisciplinary class in 2007. Peter, an experienced history teacher who had previously founded the PLACE urban studies program, presented the idea to Dan as an opportunity for students to understand both the politics and facts behind current affairs. Dan, a science teacher and biologist, saw the material as an opportunity for students to better understand the importance of science in current affairs.
Originally, the classes were linked, and the teachers sat in on each other’s classes. This year, however, they were separated for the first time, allowing students to take one of the classes without the other. Moreover, the Environmental Policy class ran for only one semester, complemented by a class on oil in the Middle East. These alterations not only gave the students more freedom in choosing classes, but also gave the teachers more freedom in choosing specific topics. Dan included a unit on truth and recognizing biases in articles. Peter further explored oil, currently a particularly pressing issue in regards to the environment. Even as the program evolved, it maintained its founding ideals and emphasis on experiential learning.
On the first day of Environmental Science, Dan told us that he intended to run the class as he would a college class. He expected us to lead our own learning. As such, one of the major projects of the year was a plant lab that was formulated by the students. Dan provided the plants and the nutrient formulas (we were studying the effects of nutrient deficiencies), but we had to create the procedures. We spent several class periods sitting around the U of desks discussing what should and should not be measured on the plants. The conversation went back and forth among the 17-person class. We often ended with the sense that nothing had been accomplished. The process was slow. In retrospect, I realize just how much I learned during those debates. They taught me the importance of listening, how to work with a group, and the necessity for patience. Moving forward with the lab and editing the procedure as it progressed, I also learned the evolutionary nature of experiments. This was a new aspect of science for me, a transition away from the traditional classroom labs. It provided a real-world applicability that had been lacking before.
This real-world applicability was matched by a real-world foundation. Both classes took field trips, seeing the issues in action. Environmental Policy took a tour of 
New Seasons Market as a model of a business that emphasizes local and sustainable products. During the genetically modified plant unit, Environmental Science visited Oregon Tilth and a genetic modification lab at Oregon State University. At OSU, one of the professors presented his argument for the necessity and naturalness of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The farmers working at Oregon Tilth objected to the superficiality of this solution and called for natural processes. Visiting the lab and the farm, we were able to see both sides of the debate in the real world. We then used this information, along with an extensive list of resources provided by Dan, to craft scientific essays for or against GMOs. However, the essays meant little compared to the field trips. Seeing the issues out in the world provided a grounding that could never be attained in the classroom.
New Seasons Market as a model of a business that emphasizes local and sustainable products. During the genetically modified plant unit, Environmental Science visited Oregon Tilth and a genetic modification lab at Oregon State University. At OSU, one of the professors presented his argument for the necessity and naturalness of genetically modified organisms (GMOs). The farmers working at Oregon Tilth objected to the superficiality of this solution and called for natural processes. Visiting the lab and the farm, we were able to see both sides of the debate in the real world. We then used this information, along with an extensive list of resources provided by Dan, to craft scientific essays for or against GMOs. However, the essays meant little compared to the field trips. Seeing the issues out in the world provided a grounding that could never be attained in the classroom.We not only saw current issues in action, but also did projects to address them. We spent the last month of Environmental Science helping the rest of the school community with various environmental issues. The class divided into groups that addressed anything from curriculum for the Lower or Middle School to the best way to improve the greenhouse at the school in Ecuador that students will visit this summer. These projects required communication both within the groups and with the adult clients. Working with the adults to achieve a mutual goal made our projects more immediate. It was also like working for someone, further preparing us for the outside world.
In addition to teaching us life skills, these experiences provided the foundation for a full understanding of issues—and the recognition of the necessity for this understanding. Another project in Environmental Science consisted of a formal debate about nuclear power. We were split into a pro team and a con team and then did the research to support our arguments. We presented these arguments to the class and a panel of judges (Dan, outdoor education director Peter Green, and science teacher Aline Garcia-Rubio). Aside from the public speaking experience, we learned the nuances of the argument. In the end, the debate was tied; neither team came out as the obvious victor. This reflected my sentiment and that of most of my classmates: we don’t know definitively if nuclear power is good or bad. Although we remain unsure about the conclusion, we now better understand the issue. This understanding of the gray area revealed more than a decisive conclusion ever could. Not only did we see both sides, but we also recognized the importance of seeing both sides: the information became more important than the conclusion.
This full understanding and so many other aspects of this program left a lasting impact on students. On the first day of class, Dan had us each say why we were in the class and what we hoped to learn. On the final day, we discussed what we had learned, and if our opinions had changed. The vast majority of students agreed that we were now less sure of our standing on issues such as nuclear power but valued our greater understanding of the issues. We felt prepared to talk about the issues as informed citizens.
As Dan had promised, the class also prepared us for college. Sabin Ray ’11, who took the class last year and subsequently enrolled in an environmental studies class at Brown University, said that she arrived at college already informed about many of the issues that came up. The big, open-ended papers and labs Dan and Peter assigned prepared her and all of us for college-level courses. Beyond college, the classes taught us about learning in any capacity and working on projects and in groups. They provided life lessons that will be useful whether or not we go into environmentalism.
Catlin Gabel teaches us to be green, but more importantly it teaches us to be active learners and thinkers. Likewise, Environmental Science and Policy informed us about current issues, but more importantly taught us how to learn and form our own opinions.
Andrea Michalowsky ’12 will attend the writing seminars program at Johns Hopkins University this fall. She was the chief editor of the Catlin Gabel literary magazine, Pegasus.
Why Garden in School?
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.
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
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.
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.
Graduation 2012 Photo Gallery
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.
Catlin Gabel's Academic Achievers in the Oregonian
Oregonian article, June 2012
Video: Senior lifers' advice to Beehive students
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
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.
students News