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HEATHER HILL
THE MID-COUNTY MEMO
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| Students shared their struggles, motivations, realizations and advice to inspire young and old alike to a brighter future. Posing for the camera are 2008 graduating seniors, from left, Emily Moyer, Jesse Piercey, Jacob Sprague and Jeff Handley. |
| COURTESY AMBER MAHNKE |
The David Douglas School District’s alternative high school executed a standard graduation ceremony in form and design, with all the customary vestments, traditions and pomp. In keeping with Fir Ridge’s personalized learning model, the evening’s rites also recognized the diverse challenges students navigated in their unorthodox course to this moment, as well as their individual achievements and skills built during the journey through Fir Ridge. While all students walking that night had proved their proficiency to graduate, the school invited four exemplary representatives to track their trail to the stage.
Emily Moyer, the first student testimonial, took the podium with a smile, then proceeded to detail her story of a fractured family and drug dependence, her ensuing rehabilitation and self-renewal at Fir Ridge. She thanked the school and her reconstructed family for affording her the tools to face life’s challenges. She praised her fellow students as “the strongest, most persistent group of people I have ever known,” and the teachers as “honestly amazing,” and when she thanked them for their time and patience, the audience awarded her with thundering applause.
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| At the end of the Fir Ridge Campus class of 2008 graduation ceremony, held last month at the David Douglas Performing Arts Center, seniors doff their mortarboards in celebration. |
| COURTESY AMBER MAHNKE |
Moyer’s story shared a thread with other stories that followed, a thread that often befuddles the efforts of administrators: social issues, as opposed to academic ones, jeopardize a teen’s educational success. Student speakers David Finney and Dayna McDaniel embodied the dichotomy of this interference.
Finney, a self-described “super-senior” recited an original poem that illustrated the high price of play. “A desperate fan of myself willing to do whatever it takes to get backstage,” with feet “made of flames crossing bridges of my life but also leaving them ablaze,” Finney finally realized that “after so many years of making myself readily available to others, that others would not be so ready to make themselves available to me.” He came to understand that “too much play and no work makes for a broke man” and “the time I spend with myself is the realest time I will ever have.” The poem’s conclusion, “It never occurred to me in a million years that where I had been would affect where I am,” hammered home the permanence of life’s poor choices.
Addressing an issue often in the news but rarely heard firsthand, Dayna McDaniel spoke of teen angst turned outward. She opened by thanking Fir Ridge’s anger management counselors for helping her overcome the cycle of “... fighting, bad language, skipping school or worse yet, going to school only to disrupt classes.”. She noted that once welcomed into the support structures at Fir Ridge Campus, her “personal barriers began to come down, and learning and growing up became much easier.” Ultimately, by “hating myself and taking it out on the world, I now know I was only hurting myself.” She closed with the advice, “Once you set your focus, you will see your only enemy is your own negativity.”
While such emotions may ring familiar to many, student speaker Run Sufi, by sharing her immigrant’s journey, educated the majority to what a fraction of the audience knew well but could not express. Sufi, a stunning figure in her graduate’s robe, traditional Muslim headscarf, and shimmering chrome stilettos, took the audience on her life’s adventure, starting when civil war drove her family from Somalia when Sufi was only an infant. After eight years of refuge in Kenya, they immigrated to the United States where cultural and communication misapprehension alienated Sufi from teachers and peers. Inquisitive and determined, she strived “so hard to understand the new culture I was living in,” when “everywhere around me were examples of people not trying at all to understand my culture.”
Though her life’s challenges emanated from the isolation of “otherness,” Sufi echoed her peers’ self-realizations by crediting confidence for her ascendance. She learned to “be independent and to communicate with others,” helping her to become “a better person and to use determination and discernment.” Seeking to “continue helping other children who have communication barriers because I know how difficult it is to be unable to express yourself,” she volunteered at the school library and looks to continue her involvement in community organizations while studying radiology.
Sufi, though seated in the last row, would return to front stage three more times — to accept a $1,000 David Douglas Educational Foundation Scholarship, the one-year Mount Hood Community College Scholarship (vested by State Sen. Rod Monroe, who praised Sufi as “an outstanding individual who wants to give back to the United States of America what this country has given to her”) and the Fir Ridge Positive Academic Performance Award.
The Fir Ridge Senior Awards granted teachers an opportunity to recognize student conduct unaccounted by credits. To present them, Knight welcomed school counselor Catherine Nyhan, whom he described as someone “who has basically done as much as possible to help (the seniors) reach this graduation ceremony tonight.”
The first award, for Academic Excellence, went to Ott Manhxaythavong, colloquially known as Tommy Andrews, who rivaled Sufi in honors, having also received the Moore/Parker Family Scholarship of $400. Teachers exalted Shawen’Tanae Mosely to Senior of the Year in companion to her exceptional Leadership prize, rewarding her high grade point average, good attendance, exemplary behavior and extracurricular involvement.
Fir Ridge teachers also honored Jamie Tucker with the Community Service Award. Tucker had volunteered her time to help jump-start the Oregon Trail program through Multnomah Educational Service District’s Outdoor School. Bliss Peters earned the Good Citizenship Award for helping to create a positive learning environment for both students and faculty, and after difficult debate, the Most Improved Award went to Matias Osegueda.
During his opening speech, Fir Ridge Director Ron Knight said 90 percent of students credited the size of the school and the teaching staff to their success. When asked to nominate Educator of the Year, the graduating class came to a tie, awarding honors to English teachers Jason Fullerton and Bobi Blue.
Blue commented later that the award was “such great recognition from the people that matter most, the students.” She followed by musing, “My job may be finished come the commencement ceremony, but I will wonder about (the students) for years to come.”
Every student must navigate his or her own transition into adulthood, from dependence to self-sufficiency, from recreation to responsibility. Fir Ridge can only create a supportive environment for its students and impart lessons that reflect how education factors into all aspects of life.
In addition to recognizing the teachers and administrators who guided graduates’ academic careers, the graduation ceremony also introduced school board members who vote on the larger governing decisions that impact all students.
David Douglas School District Superintendent Barbara Rommel and school board Chair Annette Mattson shared words of wisdom with students: “Ideas are power. Your ideas will be translated into action and make the world a better place,” Rommel said. “Don’t ever stop learning. Find the passion, find what ignites your brain and grabs your heart, and learn from it,” Mattson said.
Mattson’s few words on government, as well as the presence of State Sen. Rod Monroe, whom Knight thanked for his enduring support for the Fir Ridge program, impressed graduates and spectators alike with the importance of political involvement both on a community and on a federal level.
Mattson noted, “I don’t remember anything that was said at my graduation. What I remember is how I felt.” Though students thanked the teachers, family and friends who helped them to that moment, they also all credited the discovery of their own self-reliance for clearing their path to graduation. They wore this newfound strength in their demeanor (and in many girls’ cases, in the strength of their ankles as, apparently, stilettos have returned). This monumental graduation ceremony presents an affirmation yet, let us hope, not a culmination for either school or students. The Fir Ridge Campus class of 2008 set the bar for future graduates to surpass.
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