Growing Kids Who Care; Connecting School, Place and Planet
“Place is really important. If you can get kids to bloom where they’re planted and take ownership of the area around, they’re going to be more likely to come back and be those good citizens that we need here in our communities. To give them a sense of place, pride in where they’re from, we have to tap into the resources that are here.”
—Melissa Radcliffe, Science Curriculum Head, Tillamook School District by Becs Boyd
Kennedy High School: Turning Stragglers Into Leaders
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visit to Kennedy High School in Cottage Grove, Oregon on 18 November, turns out to be one of the most up- lifting days I have spent in a school, perhaps ever. Formally known as AL Kennedy Alternative High
School, the school was founded in 1998 by a forestry teacher who wanted to help students aged 15 to 18 who were struggling in mainstream education. By 2008, when current principal Tom Horn took over, the school was sinking under an attendance rate sometimes as low as 23%, serious drug problems and alarming drop out rates. Now, little more than two years on, Tom’s vision, and the perceptive and caring approach to the students which
shines through the principal and his team of committed and talented staff, have completely transformed the culture of the school. Attendance rates are around 90% and the drop out rate has fallen dramatically, while test results show an upward trend. The school serves a maximum of 75 students, but there are 190 further students waiting for a place. According to its vibrant website, (
http://blogs.slane.k12.
or.us/kennedy ), the school sets out to help students from all backgrounds to, ‘think, discuss, question and analyze, combine knowledge with goodness, and acquire the intellectual skills that ensure a love of learning and a lifelong commitment to helping others.’ The focus of education at Kennedy is to ‘prepare students to use the skills learned at school to tackle local, national, and global issues that focus primarily on economic vitality, social justice and environmental integrity.’ The way Tom Horn himself expresses it is that he wants kids
to leave the school ‘with the creative energy to change the world‘. This would be no small aspiration for the most privileged products of private education, but seems to be reaching for the stars when
www.clearingmagazine.org/online CLEARING 2011
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