Cedar Hills Co-Op
(The following article was published in the Oregonian on April 21, 2001)
Jordan Fry, in black calf-high boots at least six sizes too big for her, uses a big bucket to scoop up bubbles and schlep them outside.
"Here comes the foam! Here comes the foam!" 6-year-old Jordan calls out to her kindergarten classmates as she clomps out the door. What appears to be a mop-up job actually is the tail end of a science lesson at Cedar Hills Cooperative Kindergarten & Preschool. Except it hardly seems a lesson, seeing how the students stand around a table brimming with soapsuds. Making bubble beards, tossing bubble balls, slathering the floor with bubble water.
Having grand fun.
But that's the point at this school, where for 50 years, teachers and parents have been teaching side-by-side in small classes. Where they think that children ages 3 to 6 learn faster through playing, not sitting.
Where they think that youngsters, given skills and respect, can solve most of their own problems.
"We're not in the business of managing children," says Linda Callegari, 49, who has spent a decade teaching 4-year-olds. "We want the children to learn to manage themselves." It's this philosophy that has propelled the school through five decades of existence and earned the respect of public school educators, whom co-op graduates often dazzle.
The 84-student school has built such a reputation, mostly through work of mouth, that waiting lists stretch for every class. Some parents drive from as far as Vernonia, an hour away, to have their child participate. Co-op graduates are the parent of children who have children attending. Parents gush about the school, mostly because it has helped their children, but also because it has helped them. Jordan's mother, Tammy Fry, say the co-op basically saved her family. "I think that families easily get as much out of this as the children," says Fry, 35, of Bethany, seated on a tiny classroom chair n the Community Church of Cedar Hills, where the co-op rents space.
"The co-op came at a time in our lives when we were having trouble because we didn't know how to deal with Jordan," says Fry, who has a degree in education. "The school taught us how to deal with her, which helped us deal with ourselves. "I can't say enough about this experience."
Such heartfelt raves have been the norm, says Lois Todd, who has been with the school, more or less, from the start. Her involvement stretches back to 1954, three years before the school's launch. Parents organized and helped build the school, she says, because the Beaverton School District did not offer kindergarten until 1984.
Todd, who had taught at her mother-in-law's private kindergarten in Northeast Portland, enrolled her 4-year-old daughter, Kathy, the first of three children to attend the co-op. By then, the co-op had moved from the Durig house (where the Cedar Hills Shopping Center now sits) into its church home on Cedar Hills Boulevard. Mouse-filled fields surrounded the preschool. Planes from Bernard Airport, now Beaverton Mall, flew overhead. Parents walk-pooled, not car-pooled, their children to school from nearby neighborhoods. Times have changed. But children have stayed the same, says 75-year-old Todd. Their modus operandi at that age is to play," she says. Todd went on to become the paid kindergarten teacher, on duty 17 years before retiring in 1989. She's now president of Parent Child Preschools of Oregon, a group she helped form, which includes 60 co-op schools, several in Washington County. "It's all a matter of embedding the things they're going to learn in the activities they're so invested in," she says. "We need to give them time to play around with ideas." The concept is hardly new, Todd says, but it lost favor in the 1960's. She blames Sputnik and America's fear of falling behind for inciting an almost manic drive to educate children, the sooner, the better. "It was the start of trickle-down curriculum," says Todd, "where second-graders learned what third-graders used to learn, and first-graders learned what second-graders learned, and so on. "But it backfires when you try to teach elementary-type of school to younger children."
Public school teachers, including Sharon Hansen, agree that young children need play to thrive. Hansen says co-op graduates, like graduates of other high-quality preschools, have a leg up in public school because they've learned how to get along in a group. "You can really tell the difference between the kids who have attended good preschools, like the co-op, and those who have not," says Hansen, who teaches third grade at Oak Hills Elementary School. Previously she taught kindergarten, often to co-op graduates.
"It doesn't matter if they come from strong families or not. What matters is whether they've learned skills from working with other children. Usually the kids who are more successful are the ones who know how to work within a group situation. In its 50 years, the co-op has educated about 2,000 children, many who have gone on to great things, including Secretary of State Phil Keisling. Todd brags of her three children: Kathy, a doctor; Mike, an engineer; and Steve, a lawyer and judge. "They left here with a solid foundation," Todd says. "I know there are a lot of co-op graduates out there who have made a real contribution to the community." The education requires much effort, particularly from teachers and parents. That's why, school advocates concede, it's not for everyone, particularly time-starved working parents. Lance and Stephanie Hacking, like other parents, must fill a parent-teacher shift two or three times a month, typically three to four hours each time. The Bethany couple also must belong to a school committee and attend several large parent-teacher meetings each year. The Hackings have two children enrolled, which means they spend twice as much time in the classroom. Neither has teaching experience. Stephanie, 29, is a homemaker, and Lance, 31, is an Intel engineer. It's tough finding time sometimes, Stephanie admits. But she stresses that benefits far outweigh hardships. "I parent totally different now than before we went to the co-op," says Stephanie, who is eight months pregnant with their fourth child. She heads the school's 50th anniversary committee. "I grew up with authoritative parents, who told you, 'Do it because I'm the boss.' "I still have my days when I get mad, but I'm now able to solve problems with children b because they're doing much of the problem solving. We have a language we can use."
That language comes from mutual respect, says kindergarten teacher Jean Talbott. Instead of telling a child to do something, co-op teachers and parents present options and let them decide. "They may not come up with the same solution as us," says Talbott, who took over Todd's job when she retired. Todd taught Talbott's two children in the 1970's. "But it works for them, and that's what counts."
Children solve problems, but they hardly run the show. Talbott and the two teachers overseeing the younger classrooms plan specific lessons, most with academics sprinkled into play-like activities. For instance, children might learn numbers by designing a phone book using classmates' phone numbers.
Parent-teachers, armed with teacher-written instructions, lead lessons at various classroom stations, such as blocks, woodworking or the dramatic play corner. Daily, each classroom gets a fresh crop of three parent-teachers. Most are mothers, but fathers pitch in whenever possible, Talbott says, unlike co-ops early days, when parent-teachers were called "mother's helpers." "We have all kinds of different personalities, skills and experience," says Talbott, 54, who has a bachelor's degree in education.
Talbott and the other teachers are the only paid staff; tuition pays their salaries and the building's rent and utilities. Annual fundraisers pay for everything else, from classroom supplies to playground equipment. "We have to be able to accept the best offerings that people have to give," Talbott says. It's not always equitable, she admits. But the school's beauty, she says, is that parents work as a team. The strong support the weaker, something Stephanie Hacker knows firsthand: Last year, when her eldest daughter was sick for several months, co-op friends filled in her volunteer shifts. "It's not just a school; it's a family," says 32-year-old Michele Preim of Bethany, whose daughter, Brooke, attends kindergarten. Her parent-teaching has led to a career choice. She'll teach first grade in the fall at Pioneer Heritage Academy in Hillsboro.
"If anybody's in a bind, somebody's there to help," Preim says.
Just as Peter Bryan and Stephanie Strickler are here to help Jordan Fry get the bubbles out of the water table and out the door. The jabbering students spend at least 20 minutes sloppily filling buckets, marching outside and dumping suds on gravel. Then the gleefully grab mops or rags and get on their knees to clean up the considerable bubble mess. "Bubble killer, bubble killer," they chant, finishing the job and racing outside for recess. And play time.
Courtesy of the Oregonian
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