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Written by by Maddi Hanlon-Austin and Maya Allen
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Tuesday, 26 January 2010 |
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It is passing period, and for the next five minutes
the halls will overflow with students rushing to their classes.
Books jostle out of lockers, and greetings are shouted over
the throng of bodies pushing along. In center hall, Grant
Principal Joseph Malone surveys the crowd, while beside
him, Kim Patterson and Charles Hunter engage with
a few students who stop to ask questions. As the clamor
dies down, Malone continues to walk the halls, calling out
to the stragglers, encouraging them to hurry on to class.
When the final bell rings, Malone heads back to the office,
a smile on his face.
This familiar scene from the halls of Grant
High School will vanish next year, when Grant loses one
of its most valuable staff members. Malone, principal for
the past year and a half, has announced his upcoming
retirement.
“I’ve been doing this for 34 years and I love it,”
says Malone, who has spent 20 of those 34 years as an educator in
Portland. “I don’t want to get into a situation where I don’t love it, so I
think this is the right time to se
rve my society in a different type of way
than what I am doing now.”
For Malone, a Tennessee native, the role of an educator
“comes naturally” in more ways than one. His father, Professor John
Malone, was involved in education as well and was the principal at
the high school attended by Malone and his 10 brothers and sisters. “I
respected him to the utmost,” Malone says about his relationship with
his father. “He was respected in the community, in the schools and in
the church. He was respected for all the work he did.”
But Professor Malone was as strict as he was respected;
his son recalls that his high school never had a dance. The students,
however, were determined to have a prom. As junior class president,
young Malone presided over the class council meetings, and during
one meeting his father, the principal, chose to sit in and listen to their
plea for a dance. Even though Malone’s father had instilled in him
a strong sense of obedience through a strict religious upbringing,
Malone decided that day to take a stand against his father for the
first time and fight for what he and his classmates wanted. Even so,
Professor Malone decided against having a prom, and the issue was
never brought into conversation again.
Times were different when Malone was growing up. “I
experienced [segregation]. White and black fountains, sitting in the
back of the bus, and having to go up to the window to place an order
at Sonic,” Malone recalls. “But that never stopped me from having
white friends. My parents instilled in me and my siblings to have
people accept you for what you are, not the color that you are.”
In his brief time at Grant, Malone has remained a
prominent member in student body activities. From sporting events
to Constitution team debates, he has seen it all, “It gives me chills. I’m
not just looking at the event, but what students are getting out of the
event and what this will mean in their future.”
The students and staff of Grant will miss the energetic
presence that Malone brought to the school during his time here.
Kim Patterson smiles sadly as she expresses her opinions on Malone’s
retirement, “He has let himself enjoy going to events; kids couldn’t
ask for a better cheerleader. I will miss his genuine appreciation and
enthusiasm for the achievements at Grant. He makes my day happy.”
With such a long history in Portland Public Schools
and an even longer history in teaching, Malone has a colorful array
of anecdotes about students, past and present. In the words of his
personal secretary, Angie Payne, “He’s funnier than heck!”
Payne goes on to say that while she’s not happy about
his departure, he will leave plenty of good memories. One such
story representing his quirkiness in the office is that of the infamous
cracker incident, when Payne switched Malone’s favorite garlicky
crackers with plain ones. Malone proceeded to spend five minutes
reprimanding Payne about his strict cracker preferences. It is clear that
a lot of laughter has taken place
in the office during Malone’s
occupancy.
Malone is well-liked
for his youthful energy and
sense of humor. Students have
grown accustomed to Malone’s
upbeat demeanor in the halls
during passing periods, as well as
his willingness to be available to
students whenever he is needed.
Security guard Charles Hunter also expresses regret for
Malone’s retirement. “I’m happy for him but sad for the building and
us.”
Hunter explains that Malone’s retirement will affect the
entire Grant environment.
“The changing of a guard changes everything about the
building,” Hunter continues, “He took the job to help us out, he had
been planning on retiring before, but expanded his time as a principal
just to help us out.”
Grant staff members are not the only ones expressing
sadness about Malone’s retirement; the principal has also left his mark
within other Portland Public High Schools. Jefferson Vice Principal
Margaret Calvert got a chance to work with Malone during the
beginning of his Portland teaching career at Ockley Green Middle
School. Calvert, like many others, will remember Malone’s genuine
attitude, great enthusiasm and support towards kids.
“Although he’s not from Portland, he came here and
made Portland a place in his heart, near and dear to him. As an
administrator, that’s a strong strength to have. [His retirement] will be
a great loss.”
Marshall Haskins, vice principal of Wilson High School,
also expresses opinions towards Malone’s upcoming retirement,
“It’s bittersweet. When you work in education for a long time you
gain generations. But on the other side, he’s way more
deserving of this. He’s got 30 trenches in his field, so I
think he deserves to spend time with his family and loved
ones like retired administrators do.”
The principal’s wife, Lois Malone, expresses
mixed feelings about her husband’s retirement. One
reason Malone is ready to retire is so that he can join his
wife. “Joseph could keep doing this forever,” Lois Malone
comments. Laughing when asked about Malone at
home she responds, “What day of the week? Usually
during the school year he’s always out, so when he gets
home he just wants to eat. He’s pretty quiet, he likes to veg
out and watch TV.” Lois Malone, now retired, also has a
long history in education. Besides teaching in Tennessee,
she taught sixth grade at Gregory Heights Middle School
for 27 years, Occasionally, she still returns to Gregory
Heights as a substitute.
In their spare time together, the Malones
travel to the beach, go out to eat and socialize with friends,
“All our friends are teachers too, so we could talk about it
for hours on end,” Lois says. Though it is evident that both
the Malones are passionate about teaching, Lois Malone is
ready for her husband to retire. “Before he started at Grant, he was
supposed to retire but he agreed to give it a try and he’s loved it,” she
says. But family matters are beginning to pull the Malones back to
Tennessee. Principal Malone will possibly take over a family friend’s
funeral business, and his wife is eager to move closer to her parents.
Yet one thing holds them back.
“Our daughter Allison just got engaged on Christmas
Day,” Lois Malone says.
“She thinks she’s
getting married, I told her I
would take her down to the
courthouse,” laughs Joseph
Malone, with raised eyebrows.
Malone’s tenure at
Grant, though short, has
affected students and faculty
alike, “PPS has been good to
me, and I have something to
give back. Grant has a way of
pulling people in. Just the way people say Grant, the way they sound
it out, gives it a different sound.”
Upon parting, Mr. Malone wishes that he could have had
a bigger impact on students who are not being as successful as they
could be or taking pride in their schoolwork. “I see the lackadaisical
attitudes and my mind goes, three or four years later, what do they
expect to happen?’ That’s what bothers me,”Malone says, towards his
concerns for students.
Although Malone expresses concern over that issue, what
he’s brought to Grant in the past year and a half has been exceptional.
He’s worked hard in maintaining a sense of equality at Grant, “The
only thing I can bring to the table is what I’ve experienced. We’ve got
to talk about it; not only one person has the answer.”
It is evident that Grant will be a different place without
Malone walking the halls and happily partaking in multiple Grant
student activities. But we don’t have to worry quite yet. The end of
the school year is months away, and Malone isn’t planning on leaving
Grant completely in the past.
“I could do something like this again,” Mr. Malone says
with a mischievous smile, “There’s even a possibility of doing some
similar things. As long as I can go out and serve my community.” |
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Written by Rosa Inocencio Smith
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Monday, 04 January 2010 |
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Note: The Grantonian began writing and reporting this article with full permission to print the subject’s name. However, after discussing the matter with his family, he asked that his name be withheld shortly before the story went to press.
This story could begin in any number of places. But the telling of it starts 12 years ago, with the day a 6-year-old boy went snowboarding for the first time and broke his toe. His mother, a skier like the rest of the family, worried that after hurting himself, her son would never try snowboarding again. But she underestimated him. As soon as the broken toe healed, he went back to the mountain, pursuing what was to become one of his favorite activities: one that he now describes as “a natural high.”
That first day snowboarding is now the boy’s favorite memory, and there’s a lot that the story could say about him. It could say he’s tenacious, courageous, persevering. Or it could say that he’s willing to take risks. It could show how much he’s determined not to let an element of danger keep him from something he enjoys. He’s 18 now and a senior at Grant. Sober, he seems like a friendly, likable guy, described by the people who know him as “nice,” “funny,” and “easy to talk to.” He has a relaxed way of speaking and a way of downplaying his own problems that makes everything seem easy to fix—everything, that is, except for his drinking. Over the past two years, in spite of concern from his family and friends, warnings from police, and meetings with Alcoholics Anonymous, he has seen alcohol become more and more a part of his life. Now, he faces the challenging question of how to control it.
He was born in Portland in 1991, adopted at birth and brought up in the Grant neighborhood, in a house close by the school where he has lived all his life. He remembers spending most of his time with his mom as a child; his father, he says, was often busy at work. Things changed in his sophomore year, the year he was 16. That was the year he got drunk for the first time, at a party the day before Halloween. It was the year his adoptive father, worried (says the son) that the boy was going to be a failure, began trying to redirect his son’s life. But the stricter his father’s rules, the more the boy rebelled. Near the end of his sophomore year, he and a few of his friends were arrested for the vandalism of Grant High School and 52 cars. It’s his worst memory—the first time he was arrested, the only time he faced the possibility of a sentence. The first time he saw his mother cry.
Before he started getting in trouble, the boy thought he could open his own snowboard business someday. He could study business in college and turn one of his favorite pastimes into a lifelong career. Now, he says, he can’t do that anymore—at least, not the way he wanted to, and not the way he planned. His grades, which have suffered ever since he started drinking, will limit his opportunity to get into a four-year college. His first arrest, which could have been expunged on his 18th birthday if not for his alcohol-related police contact, will stay on his record for another five years. He was upset when he first learned about this, but now he’s accepted it and says he doesn’t really care. When asked what he wants to be “when he grows up,” he raises an eyebrow and answers, “I just don’t want to be in jail. Or dead.” After a moment he adds, as a kind of explanation, “I don’t really have any dreams anymore.”
He says this offhandedly, and a little apologetically, as if his listeners are the ones who might be hurt by it.
*
In the beginning, the boy didn’t think his drinking was a big deal. He figured drugs and alcohol were a normal part of high school, just something to do while hanging out with friends. Even now, the first reason he can think of for his drinking is that “drinking is fun.” “I don’t know,” he says. “You always have a good time. Everyone’s happy, there’s no drama—you don’t have to worry about anything.”
It’s a vision that contrasts markedly with some of the other scenes he describes. He can remember three occasions when he became so drunk that he passed out or stopped breathing. Once, his dad came home and found the boy lying in the street; after bringing him inside, he had to keep waking him up so he could breathe. The boy is startlingly nonchalant about his experiences; he shrugs, for example, over the memory of a night when, with vomit clogging his nose and mouth, he passed out while at a party with his friends. They carried him outside, laid him, unconscious, in the back of a truck, and went back to the party. “They got me somewhere safe,” he says now. “I didn’t want to ruin their night.”
Over the summer before his senior year, even as he started to attend AA meetings, the boy’s drinking got to the point where he expected to get drunk every weekend. In addition, he started doing drugs—“to feel better about myself,” he says. He spent all his money, lost his parents’ trust, gave himself a police record with several trips to the detox room. On August 6, two days after his 18th birthday, he was arrested for drunkenness and held in detox for five and a half hours, “listen[ing] to the bums tell their stories.” It was five o’clock in the morning by the time he was allowed to walk home. He’d had 14 shots of Everclear, a brand of liquor so strong that at 95 percent alcohol, it can’t be distilled any further. “People just kept handing me drinks,” he explains with a shrug and a shake of his head. “And I just kept drinking them.”
*
To Breanna Wise, the only one of the boy’s friends who ever tells him not to drink, this kind of behavior is alcoholism. “When he’s just hanging out with his friends, he just drinks,” she explains. “He feels he has to drink, and he doesn’t know when he’s had too much.”
Wise has five uncles who have died as a result of substance abuse, and helping her friend stop drinking is very important to her. Knowing the outcomes of alcoholism, she says it’s hard to see him going through what her uncles did. It worries her. It scares her to see him acting unpredictable and unable to control himself. She tells a story of one night when the boy got drunk, when she had to “sit there and make sure he didn’t, like, jump out of the car.” Bluntly, she states the severity of his situation: “If someone wasn’t there to help him and watch him, he’d probably die.”
“She thinks I’m ruining my life,” the boy says of Wise. He, on the other hand, thinks she’s sure to be successful in life, and he admits that her advice about his drinking is probably right. She’s helped him with it in the past. Sitting near her at the computers during their shared sixth-period study hall, he swears he didn’t drink during the time last May when the two of them were a couple. “She wouldn’t let me,” he says, and then he offers another explanation. “At that point I didn’t really need anything else to make me happy.”
That happiness ended, however, with a story the boy lists along with his police record as one of the things he regrets: One night, he went out with Wise, got drunk, and started messing around with another girl. After that, he and Wise broke up.
That summer, the boy started drinking more than ever.
*
It’s hard to tell how the boy really feels about his drinking. With all the contradictory statements he makes, it sounds sometimes like even he doesn’t really know. He recognizes that his drinking is a problem, but seems in no hurry to stop. He worries about friends passing out and getting into drugs, but doesn’t extend the concern to himself, or respect the concern of the friends who try to help him. More than once he’s made promises—to Wise, or to his teacher that he won’t drink over a particular weekend. More than once, he has broken his promise.
For four months now, he’s been going to group meetings sponsored by Alcoholics Anonymous, which he describes as “fun…just a bunch of kids with the same situation.” But he doesn’t think the meetings, which his parole officer recommended and his dad made him attend under threat of being sent to live in California, are helping him much. For one thing, unless he’s going to be given a drug test, he lies when they ask him how long he’s been sober—it’s what everyone told him to do on his first day. Besides, “All it did was get me more friends that help me do the things I do.” Though he has made some friends who he knows are clean—friends he can call up any time he doesn’t feel like drinking—he hasn’t hung out with any of them in a while. The other friends he’s made are people to go out drinking with. It’s as if getting help has made the problem worse.
He doesn’t say for sure whether he wants the AA meetings to help him, but he thinks they probably should—as long as he’s going there, they should be doing something. It isn’t hard to imagine how the meeting leaders might counter: if AA isn’t curing this young man, it’s because he isn’t trying to cure himself.
Still, the situation is more complicated than that. Drinking remains a big part of the boy’s social life, and he feels that “if I stop, I won’t have any friends, ’cause that’s what they’ll do.” If he didn’t drink, he says he’d have to hang around his house all the time; meanwhile, there seem to be drugs and alcohol everywhere he goes. Last Halloween, having promised to stay sober, he went to a party where there wasn’t going to be any alcohol. But there was, and he drank it. The next weekend, he found himself at another party with people doing speed in the back room. He told his friends to leave, because hard drugs would ruin the fun, but at the next party they went to, there were people doing cocaine. He finally ended up at a third party, playing “beer pong” with cups of beer lined up on a ping-pong table.
*
The boy claims he never feels any physical effects from not having alcohol. He insists he doesn’t need it—and maybe he doesn’t. Instead, what he seems to need more than anything is connection—the connection he has with the people around him, the connection he feels whenever he drinks. It’s a way of having fun with the people he knows. It’s a history he shares with his “tight and funny” birth dad, who the boy says used to be just like him in high school, and who he now says he wants to be like when he’s older. Even more, it’s a way of trying to forget about the people and things that he’s lost: friends who have gone out of his life or given up on him, and football, which is out of the question after a knee injury sustained in an accident while he was drunk. Now, he says, he often drinks “just to make myself feel better.” He’s never tried any other way.
Even being told not to drink can prove that people care about him—like the girl, who says that “a lot of his friends have just given up on him. I don’t want to be just like everyone else.”
“I just want someone to show me that they’re there for me,” the boy says.
And although he reproaches the girl for not talking to him or texting him, she says that the fact that he does have someone “there for him” is exactly what she wants him to remember. She says people need support to stop drinking, and she promises that he has hers. She thinks he’s beginning to think about his actions more. He might be on his way to getting his life back under control.
Meanwhile, the boy says he wants to stop drinking. But he also says he can stop whenever he wants to, and he hasn’t done it yet. He still has to choose his loyalties and the risks he’ll be willing to take. If he lets his drinking go further, he risks his grades, his reputation, his future, even his life. If he stops, he risks losing his friends—and though some might say they don’t sound like much to lose, they represent the only life he knows.
So go back 12 years to the boy’s favorite memory. Go back to the day he decided, at 6, that the fear of another broken bone couldn’t stop him. What kind of pain is he willing to risk now? What, today, is he willing to be brave about?
“If I’m with my friends and they’re [drinking],” he says, “I’m not going to say no.”
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Written by Katie Gilbert and Maya Allen
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Friday, 30 October 2009 |
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*This story relies heavily on anonymous sources, and names in quotes have been changed. All sources were independently verified, following Grantonian editorial protocol.
The matter was brought to her attention three years ago. Susan Stautz, a Spanish teacher at Portland Community College (PCC), encountered a particularly serious case of plagiarism involving two of her students. The two, a boy and a girl, were involved in an abusive relationship at the hands of the boy.
Stautz explains that, according to the male student’s upbringing and beliefs, “Women are supposed to obey men automatically.” He was accustomed to this assumption and because of this wasn’t used to be being denied a demand. In this case it was a demand for a plagiarized assignment.
The woman in this situation was subjected to verbal abuse, which eventually became physical. Eventually she was forced to file a restraining order and switch schools. “She had to basically escape from the relationship,” says Stautz.
This particular incident occurred three years ago as a conflict rooted in cultural differences. However, girls are willingly complying with plagiarism demands from male students in a similar way at Grant.
One senior, “Samantha,” has been, in her words, “helping” a group of boys since her junior year at Grant. It started with tutoring members of the men’s basketball team “until they started getting overwhelmed,” she says. “I’m the team mom for them, so when they needed help with homework, I was there,” explains Samantha.
Still, she continues to help these boys. Why? Because “they’re the only thing I have ‘till I get out of here,” she says. She explained that until she graduates, sports are “[her] life. That’s what I’m known for. That’s all I’ll ever be known for.”
Interestingly, the boys are often willing, even strategizing, to get girls to cheat for them in school. “Michael” describes his three-step method: First, express how hard the particular class is to the girl and imply you need a lot of help. Next, get them to offer help, but make it seem like it’s only going to happen once. Finally, repeat the process until it becomes a pattern.
Michael describes the routine without hesitating: “They know, low-key, this is not going to be the last time they do the work for me,” he says nonchalantly.
What Michael describes is plagiarism, and according to a US News and World Reports survey taken in 2008, 98% of high school students partake in it. Eighty percent of these students are classified as “high achieving,” and 51 % of students, including Michael, “[do] not believing cheating [is] wrong.”
“I don’t think it’s wrong because it’s not like I’m forcing them,” Michael justifies. “They offer and take the initiative after I persuade them a little bit, so why not?”
Teachers and staff understand where these opinions are coming from, but they don’t agree with such practices.
“Plagiarism has been around for a long time,” says Stautz, who once taught at Grant herself. She explains that it is because students are thinking in the short term and not the long term. She also explains that this particular issue, girls doing work for boys, is widespread.
Plagiarism certainly is not limited to Grant. A Portland State University football player describes a similar process to the one outlined by Michael. Bribing girls to do homework for him has become common practice.
“When I first joined the football team, all the junior and senior football players told me that even the prettiest girls weren’t worth my time. They said playing football means I have to maintain good grades, so the best bet is to find smart girls who will do their part in helping you get your work done.”
However, the boys don’t seem to realize the risks involved. Says the PSU athlete, “I don’t think I’m going to get caught. How will they catch me? It’s all in fine print, and typed on the computer.” He defiantly concludes that “Yes I’m going to continue to do it, and yes I do know the consequences. But when you have a lot of work… it’s kind of hard doing it all by myself.”
Grant head football coach and counselor Diallo Lewis expresses disappointment in these boys for two reasons: “One, that they wouldn’t show the commitment of doing the work themselves and two, that they would take advantage of someone like that.”
Other teachers and staff at Grant struggle over this issue as well. They grasp for solutions in the same way Lewis has tried to grasp the ethics of the conflict. History teacher Donald Gavitte explains that “if the laws aren’t respected, people won’t follow them,” and that “[plagiarism] has to be caught before it even starts.” Gavitte believes that rooting out plagiarism is difficult. Although teachers have a lot on their plates, “one has to know the capacity of their students. That’s part of being a teacher.”
Vice Principal Brian Chatard agrees that this is a difficult matter. Chatard, as well as Stautz, explained that there are measures teachers can take against plagiarism. Involving students in assignments such as speeches and exams that require their personal opinions, or creating assignments that require a lot of in-class work are only some of the ideas they came up with.
“There are multiple ways for [students] to demonstrate they know the material,” says Chatard. He explains that it helps “not to just assign a whole bunch of assignments you can copy off someone else.” Stautz also indicates that there is need for teachers to promote good behavior in class to help combat plagiarism. She said “when you promote good behavior you get better results than when you just punish bad behavior.”
The student planner addresses the consequences of plagiarism by punishing involved parties with zeros on the assignment or failing the class. But how is a perpetrator who isn’t enrolled in, or never taken the class, punished? The punishment for the boys here is clear, but what about the girls?
“I remember when we first got the policy,” comments Strautz, who co-wrote the GHS plagiarism policy along with teacher Therese Cooper and others. She said that it’s not fair “for the person who didn’t write the paper to passively allow for it” and to not carry any responsibility. She, as well as others, also expresses that what these girls are doing is unfair to themselves as well the boys. “It’s symptomatic of you not standing up for yourself.”
Many believe that the girls involved only do it because of issues of self-esteem, a desire for acceptance, or attention. Regarding participating females, Gavitte states that “not only are they plagiarizing but… they can’t feel very highly of themselves if they’re doing this. It’s like cheating without getting any of the benefits and all the risk. It’s crazy.”
The self-proclaimed “team mom,” Samantha, argues that she does it to help them graduate and participate in sports at the same time. “It might screw them,” she admits, and “It’s a risk, but it’s risk we’re willing to take.” She just wants the boys to be able to graduate.
“Christopher” (a classmate of Samantha) believes she is forgetting herself in the grand scheme of her actions however. He reported that he tried to talk to her during class about this, saying she could do better in school by focusing on her own work, but to no avail. He explained that “she thinks their being able to play is the most important thing “more important than anything else.”
Samantha confesses that her own grades slip as a result of all the work she does for others, but explained that the team “is awesome and [she] really just enjoys watching them play.” She knows she is smart but she continues to put these boys in front of her own education nonetheless.
Lewis, maybe most of all, was impassioned by this answer. “She’s not helping them; she’s only hindering them and getting in the way of their success. I would want to find out what the real reason behind it is. Is it that she wants attention from these guys, acceptance from his peer group, or what?”
“It is an issue of self esteem, said Stautz in response. I think, unfortunately, it is still true today that girls are afraid to be smart.” Gavitte agreed, pointing out that this whole issue is “like a form of abuse [and] shows that women have come a long way,” yet, “they are still putting themselves into subservient roles.”
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Written by Théa Kindschuh
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Thursday, 15 October 2009 |
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Arriving back at school, we’re all met with the student-choked hallways and lack of parking spaces. But this year it seems like classes are stifling too- 42 students in Forensic Science? 45 in World Civilizations? 56 in Tucker’s notorious Calculus class? Mr. Don Gavitte, Social Studies teacher at Grant, explains the answer behind this ongoing situation.
Grant has always been a place where students sign up for classes that challenge and intrigue, classes like Philosophy, AP European History and PSU World Civilizations, from the social studies department. “We’ve never had enough sections of Philosophy and AP Psychology, and I’ve worked here ten years.” Gavitte says as we make our way to the copy room. “We’ve had some classes that have worked, classes that have given students opportunities. But we lost four and a half teachers this year.” As a result, these heavily sought-after classes are becoming even scarcer, and that means more than just crowded classes.
Already lots of schedules aren’t full because there simply aren’t enough classes- and this isn’t anything new. Could our other electives be heading down a similar path to Woodshop, Computer Aided Drafting, Autoshop, and Home Economics? Getting enough student interest in electives is something Gavitte says has never been a problem at Grant. “We just can’t offer it. We are seen as NE Portland’s best option due to our electives, teachers and challenging courses.” So how will we be seen without those attributes?
It isn’t one person’s fault when an elective gets cut or becomes more compact. When a teacher is hired, they are assigned a department, not specific classes. This means teachers like Gavitte have to work hard to create classes like PSU World Civilizations. It also means that there is no guarantee those classes will be there year to year. The Social Studies department went from 45 to 42 classes this year, with only eight and a half teachers for the whole department. Gavitte believes “we could easily hire two more teachers full-time and give them full schedules. The school could probably use five to seven people.”
With a tight budget, not enough teachers and too many students, the next question is simple, yet tragic-- Which classes get cut? “Most teachers and administrators would loathe to make that decision. That’s not going to be popular with the community either.”
Last year, Mr. Lickey taught the two sections of AP Euro that were offered. This year he’s had to take on AP US History and Constitution Team and nothing else. But Gavitte is mostly just teaching AP US, so where did all the electives go?
This year, Social Studies is already looking thin with only two sections of Philosophy, two AP European History, two AP Psychology and one World Civilizations. Being a Social Studies prerequisite, US History gets priority over the electives. “When you’re doling out the yearly classes the departments come together and have to decide what’s good for the department-- you’ve got to compromise … You wonder how long [electives] are going to be affected if you keep getting tighter and tighter and tighter. Elective classes are what keep students here; for many the elective is the anchor of their day. If we’re just teaching required classes, and that’s all we have to offer, how attractive is Grant as a school? It makes sense for freshman classes to be small, they need the extra attention. But how big can an AP class get before it gets stupid?” Gavitte admits that we choose to have bigger class sizes, but we do so for a perfectly valid reason-- so that we can have those electives we love. The few in-demand classes left are going to be huge. “Is this it? Is this the thinnest classes can get before it’s a joke?”
“Everything is precarious.” Gavitte observes. “It always is. When they first establish a budget, it’s usually agreed that its not enough. Then we have difficulty maintaining that budget.” The economy is less than fantastic, and everything that the country is complaining about affects schools directly. “Health insurance costs rise, so it costs more to insure teachers and the budget gets thin. If fuel is expensive, books and paper are expensive. The buildings are old so it costs more to maintain them”
Students are willing to struggle without a textbook, they are willing to get to class early and sit on desks or even the floor. They are willing to go through the hardships necessary to participate in these classes. That should be evidence enough to show us they find these classes important, but many people see the school problem as they see the health care one: If they have it and it works for them, they’re not going to complain, even if the system is bad. Same in schools. “We need collectivity. It needs to be bigger than the individual circumstances.”
Youth don’t have the vote, so those experiencing the issue cannot make their voices heard easily. We can complain as much as we want, but Gavitte reminds us that the problem is “Bigger than the students, bigger than the teachers, bigger than the administration, even the Grant community … If we want to encourage students’ learning, this is an important thing to make a priority. It’s going to require a bigger effort than we really ever have had. As a teacher, of course I really believe that should happen. But it has to go beyond that. Those who don’t have a direct and immediate investment in schools-those without kids in schools-have to make that decision as well.”
“Social Security, MedicAid-- those things are untouchable. No one wants to throw Grandma out on the street. We need that same feeling towards schools.” Gavitte argues. “Take care of grandma, take care of the kids. Everyone else can make do. That’s the kind of effort we’re talking about.”
And how can we make that effort happen? Keep on slugging through. Jump through hoops to keep those classes we love. Make sure everyone knows the importance of education. Write our legislators, make yourself heard. We need that effort, or else World Civ’s going to go the way of Woodshop. Philosophy’s just going to get bigger and bigger. And we all know we don’t want that.
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Written by by Kaili Kasparek
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Thursday, 15 October 2009 |
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Enrollment at Grant High School has been on a downward slope for the past five to six years. In the 2004-05 school year, enrollment peaked at 1848 students, but last year the school’s enrollment barely broke 1550. Yet interestingly enough, enrollment is on the rise once again. This year Grant has 1634 students, which is almost 100 more than just last year. The answer to this recent population explosion lies in the freshmen class: it has jumped to 472 students, which is larger than it has been for a long time in Grant High School history.
Statistically, the freshmen class has always outnumbered the other grades at Grant. The main reason for this is because as students get older, they are more likely to drop out. The Grant Student Outcome Summary, a school population survey carried out by the PPS, shows that the number of neighborhood students in the freshmen class has grown 11 percent in the last five years, which is a remarkable figure.
Vice Principal Kim Patterson believes that there are three factors that caused the influx of freshmen this year: “We’ve recruited more heavily from private schools, we are an amazing school, and the recession.” Patterson explains that families are simply not as willing as they once were to invest in a private school education for their children when they could receive a comnparable education at Grant for nearly no cost.
“Academically, we are better,” states a positive Patterson. She does admit that Grant’s facilities are not as outstanding as those of the private schools, but that it “clobbers” other schools with its numerous clubs, groups, and course options. The outstanding Constitution Team, mock trial club, Royal Blues, and one of the best theater programs in the Northwest are all key factors regarding Grant’s recent enrollment spike. One benefit of the growth in enrollment is that the school must hire more faculty; Patterson hopes that Grant’s increase in size will lead to more specialized classes.
It is known that unlike Grant, Portland’s entire student population is not growing, because studies executed by Portland Public Schools prove that overall enrollment continues to decline. This suggests eight-grade students simply have a stronger desire to come to Grant than ever before.
Teachers, parents, and students alike are all wondering whether the population increase will become a trend. For better or worse the future of Grant’s population is difficult to predict, especially given the district’s planned overhaul of the high school system. Even Patterson is unsure of the changes the near future may bring. Nonetheless, although the halls may be exceptionally crowded this year it may be of some comfort to know that the majority of newcomers at Grant are there by choice.
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