Clearwater Is a Swirl of Activity

The new school year is well underway and characterized by great excitement, a mature culture and a wealth of activity. Everyone is happy to be back at school and enters into interactions and activities with focus and anticipation. The days feel very full and fun.

A subset of students initiated and joined in on a number of organized group activities and projects, to the extent that we had to create a weekly schedule just to make sure that activities wouldn't conflict and preclude students involved in more than one from doing all or most of the things they want to do. The master schedule looks like this, for now, with an addition of singing two mornings a week.

In addition to these activities, a large number of students are involved in the cooking class which has created the Clearwater Cafe, the playwriting/acting class and a movement class inspired by student interest in martial arts. Individuals are also involved in guitar, drum, math and French classes, sewing and piano practice. The Clearwater Singers are rehearsing for a December concert. Magic, the Gathering and Settlers of Catan are played on a regular basis again this year.

The newest sport is Whiffleball and an invented variant that can be played in the Active Room. A bus load of students travels to a nearby soccer field at least one day a week. As in all previous years, many students continue to create and develop rich worlds, stories and characters as part of live-action roleplaying games that reflect their particular styles and interests. A film committee selects older or lesser-known movies for movie Fridays. The current movie theme is visions of the future. (More about many of these activities in later posts. Stay tuned.)

The list of specifics doesn't even begin to give a sense of the heart of Clearwater education--the daily work and rewards of creating and re-creating relationships with fellow students and staff members and making constant decisions about how to prioritize one's time, where to focus one's efforts and what it means to be responsible in any given situation.

Students spend time in the art room on a daily or occasional basis.






In the waning days of late summer, intrepid young students braved the creek water, which is much cooler than it was during the summer. Their tolerance for cold water is truly impressive.


To see more photos and snippets of the first weeks of school, click on the link below.

A Magic game in full swing.



Selling delicious homemade chocolate chip cookies to benefit equally the school and themselves.



Working on a sewing project.



Putting the new drum set through it's paces. (More on the new set in a later post.)



Caring for a lame hen.



A monumental, multi-day Lego creation. (More on this later.)

Clearwater is Snohomish County's First Rain Garden Project

Our rain garden was featured in the Snohomish Conservation District's Fall Newsletter. Unfortuantely, the article is a PDF so I can only link without graphics. This is part of the Clearwater Reach grant project.

Improvements Around Campus

Mat and Matt were hard at work over the summer, making improvements to the buildings and grounds. 

 The Mat(t)s

They finished the painting of the buildings and fixed up the basement of the house which made room for a game room and freed up the upstairs for the playroom again. They also worked on the drainage swale and another swampy area adjacent to the swale, which they now call the "frog garden", right near the newly installed big tires in the play yard.

The swale was made by many members of

our community, and deserves a post of its own.

Frog garden

Tires

But they didn't stop there. They upgraded the music room, improving the acoustics and adding recording equipment.

Welcome Back!

Things have been so busy here at school, there are a ton of photos and so little time to post them.

Everyone is glad to be back in the swing of things.

More Clearwater Art

Drawing is something many students do everyday at Clearwater. A parent's birthday or some public occasion often inspires younger students to create and present a piece of art to parents and sometimes staff members. Some students are dedicated and disciplined artists whose daily routine includes drawing many and varied images. Others put pen or pencil to paper to draw maps of the school or imaginary worlds, which become props or references in creative games. Young girls are often fond of drawing princesses or fairies with lovely clothes and flowers.

Niya, an 11-year-old student, draws frequently at home, but recently has been drawing more often at school. Recently, I was delighted to notice a couple of wonderful, fantastic creatures she whipped out. There is something about the personality and weight of the creatures that captured my imagination. Niya graciously signed and dated the pieces and permitted me to publish them on this blog. Thank you, Niya!



You'll notice that the drawings are on ancient, lined dot-matrix paper, donated to the school for scratch paper. One of the things I find fascinating and inspiring about all the drawing that goes on at Clearwater is that most of it is done for the student's satisfaction, out of a need to express something graphically. Clearwater students don't draw because it's art time, and they usually don't start drawing with the intent to produce something to display. They draw because they feel impelled to, which is often. People such as Niya draw for the love of it, while also consciously working to improve their skills. I often wonder how natural and common drawing would be for most of us if we had all had the time and space to draw for our own pleasure and need.


(End of post)

Meteor

When Gabe started practicing spinning poi at school, we started seeing all sorts of things twirling around. Here, Betsy demonstrates a variation on the art, which is called Meteor.

Diploma Presentations

This is The Clearwater School's 13th year, which means that those students who started at age five are now graduating. Fittingly, our graduating class this year is the largest ever. So far, four of six aspiring graduates have completed their diploma presentations. Each event has been so different from the one before--and I know that the next two will also be unique.

This past Saturday, I watched Ian Freeman-Lee present his paper and demonstrate his skill at writing, design, art, and production. He showed us a preview of a video game he is creating in collaboration with another student. As I listened to Ian's informative and entertaining talk, I was impressed by so many things--his timing, his humor, his accomplishment, and his confidence.

Code for Ian's computer game. Prototypes & rules for related card game

(Click on "Read entire post" for more.)

With a now familiar sense of awe, I was also impressed with Claire, Betsy and Gabe in their presentations this year, and the graduation presentations of all the students who have gone before. It is always moving to see children grow into themselves, and graduation from high school is a very moving transition.

Clearwater's graduation presentations provide a very public reflection of the process of growing up--as experienced by one individual. I continue to learn from the graduates how being at Clearwater can be a completely different experience for each student.

Samples of Ian's art portfolio

Each Diploma presentation includes a question and answer section. As I listened to the questions asked on Saturday, I was reminded of how grateful I feel for these presentations, for what they give to me and the rest of our community.

Audience at Ian's diploma presentation

The dialogue between the Clearwater community and the graduates is a wonderful exchange of curiosity, admiration, caring and connection. The questions are often specific to the presenting student, but the issues raised speak to larger philosophical issues about what it means to gain an education and take on the responsibilities of being an adult in our culture.

Those of us who attend the presentations this year get to learn about students' passions that range from hula to visual art to jazz guitar, from poi spinning to computer gaming. We get to hear how students master the academic tasks of reading and writing, become better at communicating, push themselves to be more outgoing or more focused, and most centrally, how they get to deeply know and fully be themselves. It is a highlight of my year to celebrate our students' accomplishments, and thank them for what they have given to us personally and as a community.

Some former, current and future Clearwater graduates