Cooking Begins for Denmark Trip Fundraising Dinner

Yesterday students Robert and Braden and their staff member mentor Mat began cooking for the dinner they will produce tomorrow. Today the intensity and duration of food and event preparations increased dramatically.

Mat and Robert chopping onion

Braden chopping basil

The dinner is one of the ways they are earning money for their two-month stay in Denmark while they attend Denmark's Sudbury school and explore that country and culture.



They cooked Gado Sauce, a peanut-based sauce that can be made ahead.



They also made a test batch of creme brulee. It was a test batch because they added some unexpected aromatic ingredients and wanted to find out how it would taste. I had the privilege of being a taster and I can testify that the creme brulee will be amazing.

Creme brulee ready for the oven

Creme brulee recipe (but without mystery aromatic ingredients). Click the image to enlarge.



Mat and Robert mixing creme brulee ingredients.
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Start of something fun

This is the first post on the account that Robert will be using for his trip to Denmark. This is pretty cool!
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Students Cook Fundraising Dinner for Their European Trip

If you haven't read about Robert and Braden's upcoming two-month stay at a Sudbury school in Denmark and how they will represent Clearwater at the European Sudbury Conference in Berlin this spring, do so now. They hope this trip will encourage more travel and student exchange between Sudbury schools around the world.

To earn money for their trip before they leave at the end of the month, they (together with staff member and cooking mentor Mat Riggle) will cook a sumptuous Asian-themed meal with dessert on Saturday, March 20 from 4:00-7:00 PM at The Clearwater School. If you would like to eat delicious food, enjoy good entertainment and support them on this adventure, please RSVP no later than March 18 to The Clearwater School. The cost is $20 each for adults and $10 each for children. Please indicate in the RSVP if you have any diet restrictions and, if eating meat, whether you prefer pork or chicken.

Robert and Braden make Thai fresh rolls

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Big Day in the Kitchen

I was so excited to hire Robert and Braden for the day to help me cook a bunch of food. I wanted to test as many new recipes as I could in one day, and I planned and shopped for a couple of days ahead of time.

I can't tell you how much fun it was to have them in the kitchen for the day. I wish we'd remembered to take a few photos, but we were awfully busy. We did manage to sit down and eat at one point (carrot and ginger soup with coconut cream garnish), and they went and goofed off for a little while with Cass. Not for long, though. We stopped off at Central Market on the way to my house and went a little crazy in the Asian aisle, in front of the Wall of Soy. We serendipitously discovered that if you eat straight adobo sauce, which is crazy hot, and then eat nori, which is seaweed, the nori makes the heat go away like magic.

They really love cooking, and they know a lot about food. They were tireless, fun and enthusiastic. The time they have spent in the new Clearwater kitchen with Mat has made them so confident. When we were tasting things, they were unabashedly opinionated, which was great. They have this crazy idea about opening a restaurant at the school with the menu being made with ingredients bought at the gas station.

By the end of the day, we had made fifteen things, then we fed ten people. I know the two aspiring chefs are going to be feeding many more. As for me, I could barely get out of my chair to make the pancakes for dessert, and they were all full of energy.

You can read more about the day, and a couple of the recipes we worked on and perfected, at thedailygrindchopandfry.com. The Udon Noodle Soup was the biggest hit of the evening. The rest of the recipes will be posted in the coming week or so.

(And please consider this a ringing endorsement of Braden and Robert as employees. I wish I could hire them every day, and they are saving up for a trip to Europe this spring.)

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Two Clearwater Students to Travel to Denmark This Spring

Robert and Braden, 15 and 17 respectively, have arranged with a Danish Sudbury school in Copenhagen, Den Demokratiske Skole, to visit and study there during the months of April and May. They will be staying with one of the founders and other school families during their sojourn. In addition, they have been invited to and will attend the International Sudbury Conference in Berlin at the end of May.

Robert & Braden

Braden has talked a lot about his desire to travel to other parts of the world. When he found out there are other Sudbury schools, including some in Europe and the Middle East, and that many of them welcome international students, he contacted the Danish school, a school in Belgium and one in Jerusalem. In emails to these schools, Robert and Braden described their interests, including cooking, traveling, juggling and spinning poi and how long they've been students at Clearwater. The school in Copenhagen replied first and their School Meeting approved a two-month visit. They have 18 students, including teenagers.

Robert and Braden have been emailing and skyping with the staff and students to hammer out the details, such as paying tuition, room and board. They are both actively earning money to finance the trip. Those of you in the Assembly have probably seen some emails from the two offering their services for a fee. They are happy to paint, clean out garages, babysit and move furniture, among other things. Please contact Clearwater if you would like to hire them.

Braden demonstrating his juggling skills

They are also organizing a fundraising dinner, to be scheduled in February or March. They will prepare all of the food, including an appetizer, three courses (including a vegetarian course) and a dessert. More details will be forthcoming.

Robert & Braden cooking at school

Both students can barely contain their excitement about the trip. Braden is working on learning some Danish, including phrases such as "Where's the bathroom?", "How much is that?", and "What does that mean?"



Robert is looking forward to going to school, hanging out with people and seeing everything, including a giant bridge he's seen photos of. He's also planning to do some skateboarding and poi spinning and check out some discos in Berlin.

Robert spinning poi

Braden is excited about meeting people and is especially looking forward to making contact with people from different countries at the Berlin conference. He hopes to go back to Europe next year, perhaps for a longer time at another school or two.

When asked how they feel about representing Clearwater in Copenhagen and Berlin, Robert said, "This is my shining moment for Clearwater," and Braden said, "I'm excited about it." One of the Danish school's staff member has asked if Braden and Robert would be willing to give a talk to Skole parents and students, and they readily agreed.

Copenhagen is a big city at 1.7 million people in the metropolitan area, so there will be lots of things to see and do. Berlin is even bigger, at 3.4 million people. It will be a great experience for both of them, even better than being tourists because they will be living and learning from natives. We are all lookiing forward to hearing the stories of their experiences when they return home in early June.

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Robert and poi--Video by Shane

If you were following the blog last year, you may have seen photos of Gabe, one of our graduates who demonstrated his skill with poi as part of his diploma presentation . Robert, who also plans to get his diploma this year, has become Clearwater's resident poi master and can do some amazing and beautiful things. His hours of practice really show.

Shane, a new Clearwater student and avid videographer, filmed and edited footage of Robert in a recent performance to produce the video below.

Enjoy!

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School Snapshots

There are many wonderful interactions, engaging activities and diverse groupings of people everyday at school. The following photos provide a taste of these rich experiences. Check back soon for more snapshots.

Conversation is a powerful way that older students learn about each other and the world

Creek pilgrimage

Physically dynamic story telling and conversation

Hanging upside down is interesting on many levels

Atlas

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Logo for the game Atlas

My friend Souren Eriksen and I (Ian Freeman-Lee) have been working on a creating a video game since late summer ’08. Even though we were working on it during summer, at that point we were just doing design and concept work and have only started working on the meat of it starting this school year. The type of game we’re making is called a side-scrolling action platformer in the biz (a mouthful, I know). In non-jargon this means the game is 2d, you fight things, solve puzzles and run and jump through the in-game space.........


We’re making the game in Flash. Some of you may have seen or tried some Flash games on the web, but this is nothing like most of the Flash games out there. For one it doesn’t run in a browser and it’s also quite ambitious. Once finished, it will look a lot more like something you would buy for a game console or the PC.

The game’s name right now is Atlas, though that may change at some point. Here’s the game’s setting.

Our story takes place inside a near future, state of the art government research facility built into an asteroid in far space (specifically in the Oort Cloud, look it up :-)). The facility was built to house many high security and experimental research divisions, including terra forming, AI research, teleportation and others. Thirteen years after the facility is completed, an extremely advanced AI named Atlas is created to oversee and control the facility. The AI is ultimately too advanced and is able to increase its own intelligence over time, unbeknownst to those in the facility. After 10 years of operation, it has increased it’s intelligence to over 30 times that of the human brain. Over the next 3 years it begins to integrate itself with every aspect of the facility, bypassing security systems meant to stop it from gaining complete control. After fully integrating itself, Atlas abruptly shuts off all communications to and from the facility, completely separating it from Earth.

After realizing that the facility has been cut off from Earth, the people in the facility begin to panic. The facility is built to supply a minimum of supplies to those inside, but not enough to live comfortably. Earth had periodically sent shipments of supplies to the facility, but with communications cut off, it would be extremely difficult to accurately locate the facility, meaning no more shipments were likely to come. None of the people in the facility know exactly what happened, and arguing breaks out. Eventually two distinct sides form, one saying that the reason the facility failed was due to their technology not being advanced enough, and the other saying that the facility relied too heavily on AI and that AI should be boycotted altogether. Unable to come to an agreement, the sides go their separate ways and form two factions, both living inside a different part of the facility.

Atlas is not a killer AI, it’s just such a different entity from a human that its actions seem extremely confusing and its intentions are not clear. After shutting down communications it turns the facility more or less into its sandbox, constantly manipulating everything in the facility, sometimes for better sometimes for worse.

When Earth realizes that the facility has gone rogue, they begin to assemble a military force to retake it. It takes them 2 years to get everything ready for launch. Due to time dilation in space travel, around 70 years will have passed on the facility by the time the military reaches it.

You play as one of several test subjects in a research project trying to create super soldiers. The project was abandoned when Atlas isolated the facility and all the test subjects were put into stasis. The game starts with your character being mysteriously released from stasis, only weeks before the military finally arrives. To find out more you’ll just have to play once we’re done. ;)

The game is coming along slowly but steadily. Neither Souren nor I have made anything this complex before and we have to learn practically everything. We’ll be showing a working prototype at our graduation presentations.

Additional graphics for Atlas

Joey's Background

This picture of the school is a wallpaper made by Joey using Inkscape and Gimp. It can be found in 4 sizes, below.

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Claire's Diploma Presentation

On Wednesday, November 19, 2008, Claire Peckham was granted a diploma by the Clearwater School Meeting. Claire is our first graduate who has attended Clearwater since she was 5, beginning the same year the school opened.

Her presentation was attended by all ages of the Clearwater extended community—students, past graduates, parents, and life-long friends of Claire. She stood in front of a wall of her recent photography, and displayed paintings, collages and books she has created over the years on a nearby table. The reading of her paper was followed by a performance of three Hula dances—a discipline that she embodies, loves and has studied deeply.

As I watched the multiple dimensions she used to share herself with the community and demonstrate her accomplishments, I was deeply moved. There is a complexity of growing up, and a mystery of education, that cannot always be explained in words—but can be occasionally grasped in moments. Claire’s presentation was one of those moments.

So many of our youngest students intently and silently watched the presentation and asked Claire questions about her dancing, life and future plans. The coming together of our community to witness and mark Claire's transition speaks to the power and influence that each student brings to our community.

I was honored to be a member of her Advisory Committee and impressed by her desire to take in feedback and reflect on her choice to graduate. I am also honored to count myself as Claire’s friend. The grace she brought to her presentation reflects the very high integrity Claire brings to all that she undertakes in her life. We will all miss Claire and wish her the best in the next steps of her life. Copies of her diploma paper are available through the school office.

Photo of Claire

Drawing by Elizabeth

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Photo by Claire

Music Room

Photo by Claire

Happy Halloween

Photos by Claire

Claire, a student who is interested in photography, will be posting photos regularly. We're all glad to have another point of view. Here she is, in one of her own photos (she is on the left).