Pathfinder's Four Roots

Chris Weaver, for Open Space, September 19, 1997

The short history of our school is both humble and rich beyond measure. It is like a big messy haystack full of diamonds. (Perhaps that is why, the first week of school, your children kept coming home with brown grass in their hair.) The love that many of us feel for Pathfinder, its community, and especially its children is so deep that I can only hope to do justice to a little of it with my words tonight. Fortunately, we will have a chance to hear one another speak in a talking circle when I am finished. The daily life of our school, which we are each a part of today, is like a tree. The tree is the part we can see. But the life of a tree depends on its roots, which are not always easy to see. What are the roots of Pathfinder? I am thinking that we have four of them.

THE FOUNDING MOTHERS

The first root is the root of the founding mothers. Seven years ago a group of women gathered in a West Seattle living room. They gathered out of a powerful devotion to the education of their children. The founding mothers had worked in coop preschools, and they believed in a kind of community schooling that would be responsive to the whole child. They knew that many schools strive for academic excellence, and that many succeed. But they knew also that schools by their very nature often judge students by a painfully limiting set of criteria. Too often, a five year-old who is a powerful creative thinker and learner can enter a school system that underestimates her abilities. She is not invited to pursue her thinking in rich experiences and build her own knowledge; instead, she is expected only to fulfill generic learning goals. She is not supported to creatively and assertively solve problems; instead, she is expected to only comply with behavior rules. These expectations of our system can have a terribly dulling effect on the heart and spirit. Our school's founding mothers wanted an education that would allow their children to grow according to their full potential. They did not want the growth of character, self-knowledge, and imagination to be managed out of their children's school lives.

So the founding mothers decided to start a new school. None of them had ever started a school before, and the idea was, if you ask me, rather audacious. They worked for two years, hundreds of hours, without pay or any promise of success. They met with district officials and the school board.

They drafted documents of vision and plans for action. More mothers joined them, and some fathers as well. They sought out the advice and expertise of educators in other parts of the city who had started schools. They jumped through hoops, and flew through hoops, and crawled through hoops, with humor and great perseverance. And, just over five years ago, they interviewed and hired three teachers and an administrator, and opened the doors of a double portable in back of Roxhill Elementary to 75 wide-eyed and bristling five, six, and seven year-olds. The new school was called AE4.

I am thinking that the root of the founding mothers did not stop there. Every time that a group of parents gets together to create something that will help the children, their work grows from this root. All the unsung volunteer hours that have created three highly successful auctions grow from this root. The daily volunteering in the classrooms and the office grow from there. The hard work of the PTSA and site council committees grows from there. The room painters, the facilities designers, the garden weeders, the cubby-builders, the co-op childcare, the giving tree, the people who copy and staple the newsletters; all of these grow from the same skill and devotion that existed in that first seed in that living room seven years ago. And tomorrow, when we look to the future in our first open space forum we will be building on a tradition of commitment, vision, and action that has been a part of our school from the beginning.

THE GIFTS OF THE STAFF

The second root of Pathfinder is the root of the gifts of the staff. None of us, not the secretaries, the principals, the support staff, not the tutors, the Blazing Trails staff, nor the teachers at Pathfinder came here by accident. We were drawn here because something amazing was going on, and we could smell it. It seems to me that the energy of the founding mothers has always had a kind of screening effect. People who do not have a devotion and a passion to match theirs would not choose to work here. The staff at Pathfinder is here because we believe in being responsive guides and mentors to each and every child and for each child's sake. We are here to work day in and day out to create a school that we would have loved, with all our hearts, to attend as children.

The larger community probably doesn't know what it's like when the Pathfinder staff gets together. We know each other well, and we have a deep appreciation for one another's unique gifts, life experiences, and teaching skills. We invented a schedule that allows teachers to work in teams to develop curriculum and to discuss in depth the progress of our students. As a whole group, we solve complex problems of staffing, scheduling, and budgeting by consensus, working up plans and backup plans until we know that everyone's needs are being met. In my experience, this kind of collaboration between equals, without hierarchy, is most rare.

I remember reading a study that interviewed people to ask them about the best teachers they had ever had, to see if a particular teaching program or philosophy was better than the others. The unexpected result was that the best teachers, who truly expand their students' lives, use a huge variety of methods. It is not the program that makes the best education, it is the particular craft and dedication of particular teachers, in all their uniqueness. Pathfinder is a remarkable place for teachers to develop their craft. There are high standards and a great wealth of ideas and teamwork, but programs are not imposed; we each can choose and refine what works best for us. I am certain that the students benefit from this creative flow.

At a rally two years ago, John Stanford said something that stays with me. "It has been said that being a parent is the most important job you'll ever do. I believe that is right. Being a teacher," he said, "is the most difficult job you'll ever do." I know that for the teachers and all the staff at Pathfinder, we know that our jobs are never done. Our job is to provide for our students' needs as learners, but we know that academic needs are deeply interwoven with emotional needs, physical needs, and deep human needs for community and responsibility and beauty.

More than anything, children want to be known and genuinely liked and appreciated by the adults in their lives, not only for their spelling test score but for being themselves. Building an environment where these needs can be met, especially with the class sizes we have, is a forever unfinished work. Every single teacher I know struggles hard with balancing work with home life. We have learned lessons of balance and boundaries, and some of us have learned them the hard way. But I do not have the words to say how inspiring it is to work with these people. The real gift of the staff is the gift of love and dedication, which we feel, and share, and live by.

NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITION

The third root of Pathfinder is the root of Native American tradition. Many people who were not a part of the school during its first and second year do not know the story of Pathfinder's Native American focus. It began with a very special first grader, beginning to read, back when our school was called AE4. The teachers wanted to find books that would reflect this student's world. Some people in the Seattle Indian community helped us by providing resources and advice, and a friendship began.

As we worked together, we learned more and more about the history of Indian education in this area and across the country. It is a history of a dominant culture assimilating children by force. The educational system, both public and private, sought to eradicate the knowledge, traditions, and languages of Native American cultures over a period of many decades. This policy was a source of great suffering, as families were literally torn apart, and its legacy is with us today. Beginning in 1993, AE4's first site council began meeting with community leaders in Indian education. We learned that, while many tribal schools in Washington are bringing Native traditions back into education with great success, urban Indians face a greater challenge. The 1500 Native American students in Seattle were spread evenly across the city's 100 schools, and they and their families continued to experience schools as being alien places blind to their knowledge and their needs. We learned that many Native American families have a deep and justified mistrust of the educational system, and that most schools remain deeply ignorant about the cultures and needs of Indian students.

The result is that more Indian and Alaska Native students drop out of school than any other group, by percentage, and that they drop out much earlier, often in the fourth grade. In an effort to address this problem the AE4 site council voted to become a "Native American focus school." The plan included hiring Native American teachers and providing special cultural studies and events for all students.

As a teacher who has been with our school since its first year, I can say that the root of Native American Tradition has brought great riches to our students and to our community, in more ways than any of us can say. In that second year we were gifted with the talking circle, which is a part of our important decisions from the kindergarten classes to the site council. From the start we were taught that all voices must be heard, that the wisdom comes not from the biggest mouths, but out of the circle.

From the start we also learned that in Native American tradition there is a powerful inclusively. As the staff worked with Grey Eagle to develop the learning wheel, we learned that if one culture is honored, all cultures must be honored. The talking circle gave our school its name, drawn from an Icelandic myth. Those of us who were present at Pathfinder's naming ceremony in January of 1995 will remember the West African drummers, the Scottish dancers, the Chinese ribbon dancers and the five traditional drums which arrived inexplicably that night from across the region.

Our modest efforts to make our school a good place for Native American children and families have thus bloomed a hundredfold, and we on the staff are most grateful for the gifts that people in the Indian community bring to our school. The work of Rita Bubak in the Culture House, of artists like Harvest Moon from the Quinault Nation and David Horsley from the Snoqualmie Nation, of storytellers like Grey Eagle, provide us with deep learning experiences through which each child and each adult can reflect on our own particular tradition and draw our own meaning. The door is opened to a new kind of knowledge, and perhaps to an old kind of wisdom which can serve us well.

THE CHILDREN

The fourth root of Pathfinder is the deep root, the wellspring. It is the children themselves. Without them, the other roots are nothing. Their energy is our source and our greatest joy. As parents, they show us how to live our lives. As teachers, they teach us. When our work seems impossible, when we arrive empty, the children fill us and sustain us. We are not here to shape them, but to be shaped by them. We are not here to improve them; they are complete already. As a school and a community we are like a ship with our sails hanging flat. With the strong hearts of the children, with their desire for learning, our sails are full, and we are sailing.

PAYING ATTENTION

So I am thinking that to be Pathfinder, we have to work hard and pay attention to our roots. What happens when we forget the founding mothers? When we stop honoring the love and the work of our families and volunteers, we cut ourselves at the root, and we are not Pathfinder. What happens when we forget the gifts of the staff? When we place programs above people, when we no longer value our uniqueness, when we do not nurture a healthy balance in our difficult work, we cut ourselves at the root, and we are not Pathfinder. What happens when we forget Native American tradition? When we stop honoring the elders, when we stop listening to the stories, when we start teaching any culture in a surface, token way, when we give up the talking circle for the sake of expedience, we cut ourselves at the root, and we are not Pathfinder.

And what happens when we forget the children? When we no longer have time to nurture creativity, character, and the growth of the heart? When we see not children but educational outcomes? Then, truly, we have no root, we are not Pathfinder at all.

I am grateful to the site council and to others who organized the open space event for us. It is a good time to celebrate, and a good time to pay attention.