Sustainability in the curriculum

By Ellen Spitaleri

The Clackamas Review, Jan 18, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

Second graders Zack Cahill and Emory Good check out bulbs sprouting in the garden box behind the school.

ellen spitaleri / clackamas review

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At Cascade Heights Public Charter School in Milwaukie, students study the future, especially the future of this planet.

“Sustainability is huge,” noted second grade instructor Melanie Adams, who has completed the Oregon 4-H Wildlife Stewards program.

She added, “If we don’t teach children [about sustainability], we’re going to eat up all our possibilities.”

She said that even second graders understand that we have to “stem consumerism” in this country, and they understand that “abundance won’t always be there.”

Principal and school founder Holly Denman explained that the Cascade Heights Public Charter School opened its doors in September to students in grades K through six, and the school plans to expand up to eighth grades within two years.

The school is located on SE Rusk Road; the main building is an annex, and some classes are taught in rooms located in the next-door Orthodox Church of the Annunciation. Denman said they looked at 52 different locations, before settling on the Rusk Road site.

Advantages to the site include “a forest, a wetland, a pond and a garden area, which are off-limits during recess,” Denman said.

But at other times students are interacting with the environment, doing bird counts, learning to identify birds by their calls and using pond water in scientific enquiry lessons.

“They are learning what a wetland is, who lives there and why it is important,” she added.

The focus of the charter school is “agriculture, performing arts and multi-sensory learning,” Denman said.

She added that some people could not see the connections between those three areas of study, but, she said, she and the staff want children to “think about the world around them, the natural world.”

Connections important

Cascade Heights students make connections in a number of ways, when they go on field trips to farms, and when they study different cultures and the foods they eat, Denman noted.

Adams said that her second graders are studying China, and she taught them to drink tea in a traditional Chinese way.

“They are making connections to foods and where they come from,” Adams said.

“Why do the Chinese drink tea? Why is rice such a big deal? We’re studying that,” she added.

“They are learning that they are part of a global community,” Denman said, adding that the students who are studying Chinese culture will eat with chopsticks for the next two weeks.

Although Cascade Heights Public Charter School is the “only independent charter school in North Clackamas,” Denman noted, the school is “connected in ways we need to be connected to the district.”

She added that the North Clackamas School District has been supportive to the charter school, even though the school “wasn’t started by the district, and teachers are not paid by the school district.”

Students were selected by public lottery, and a waiting list was established.

“We had 450 children in the lottery, and we accepted 132,” Denman said.

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