Model classes: Oregon's best go far beyond their boundaries
Crescent Valley, South Salem win grants for
study
in the community and around the globe
June 10, 1997
By CHERYL MARTINIS
The Oregonian
OREGON - Visitors to Robert Madar's class often are struck by what's missing: most of the class.
His advanced biology students spend little time at their desks at Crescent Valley High School in Corvallis.
Instead, they might check insect traps in a park or look up something in the library or visit with community "mentors." In addition to pencil and paper, they haul binoculars, compasses and clinometers to their outdoor classrooms.
There, they document plant and animal life for parks officials who want to know more about the creatures who inhabit their open spaces.
They experiment with the best ways to plant cottonwoods. One year they produced a field guide for Hewlett-Packard's Stewart Lake property. Every year they generate original research with the help of a mentor.
Madar serves as guide, or gopher, as his students work independently.
"We're in charge," as junior Josh Hamilton said.
"I gave up enormous amounts of control," Madar said.
The program is one of two in Oregon that the state Department of Education recently deemed a model for others. State officials awarded each a $34,000 Christa McAuliffe Fellowship -- named for the teacher-astronaut who died in 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger -- so that teachers can package and share their ideas.
This year's recipients involve high school programs that "take kids out of the building and into the community," said Larry Austin, state Department of Education spokesman.
Or world.
Two South Salem High School instructors, Andrew Goldstein and Molly Kellar, share the other grant for their "21st Century Schoolhouse."
The schoolhouse spans time zones and hemispheres to explore environmental topics with students from schools in the United States, Australia, Brazil, Israel, Japan and South Africa.
So far, students have communicated via the Internet and a on-line magazine they publish.
They are preparing for September's 10-day environmental summit that will bring 120 student delegates from the six countries to Salem.
Students recently hashed out proposed articles for a "declaration of environmental rights and responsibilities." Before September, they must research topics ranging from deforestation in the Amazon to rapid urbanization in South Africa so they will be ready to propose solutions at the summit.
Goldstein and Kellar, meanwhile, are scrambling to raise money to hold the summit while ironing out the logistical details of feeding, housing and translating for their global guests.
The grant will allow them to share how they established the global classroom with other teachers.
"You can put any theme into a 21st Century Schoolhouse," Goldstein said. "We*ve just chosen environment."
In both classrooms, students are expected to share their knowledge with the community.
In Corvallis, students appeared before a county parks board to describe the plants, birds, mammals and insects they found in Open Space Park west of the city.
One board member, impressed by the quality of their data, pledged 10 years' worth of future research work to Madar's class.
Madar, in fact, has more offers of projects than students who can do them.
It's a pleasant position for a one-time high school "bad boy" who remembers flushing a cherry bomb down a third-floor toilet of his San Francisco high school.
But the former truck driver, lodge caretaker, pipeline diesel mechanic, community development worker and child-care provider has found his place at Crescent Valley. He had only to tour the campus -- nestled in the Coast Range foothills in front of an experimental forest with Jackson Creek running through it -- to see the possibilities.
Madar is the first to say that many basic courses are best taught in ways other than the project-based approach he uses with his biology class. He teaches a traditional chemistry class, for example. But his approach with his biology class seems to work well.
"It's a very intimate, intense, small-group experience," senior Julianna Gray said.
As youngsters check their pitfall traps to see what insects might be preserved in antifreeze, Madar instills the seeds of stewardship. His students get more than a chance to do original research. They see that they can make difference in their community.
"A lot of these kids, for the first time in their lives, they're the experts," he said.