Ten Tiny MLC Dances: Sneak Previews

Francesca Tricamo-Palmer, one of MLC's juniors, is creating a documentary about Ten Tiny MLC Dances as her contribution to the fundraiser. Here are a few sneak peeks:

MLC Community Dance 2011

MLC parents, students, and alumni join together for a festive square dance in the gym. A live band with a caller played beautiful music that got everyone tappin' their toes!

Janice's Locker

Janice Holstine was a member of the MLC community for many years as an aide. When she found a teaching position of her own and decided to leave MLC, we decorated her locker and attached a plaque that reads

"This Locker is Permanently Assigned to Janice Holstine

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You and your shoes will always have a home."

Murals: Masked Harlequin

This mural lives in the high school hallway, at the base of the stairs that lead up from the back parking lot entrance. It surrounds the staff pictures that are mounted on the wall there.

Murals: Meanwhile...

This superhero-inspired mural lives at the end of the kindergarten hallway, above one of the library's emergency exit doors.

Murals: Black and White Dragon

This mural was painted by Kelsea L. in 2009. It lives in the passageway between Marta and Bianca's rooms.

Murals: Flower Woman

This beautiful mural was painted by Zoe B. It lives in the stairwell leading up from the main office to Caryn's room.

Murals: Totem Pole

Murals are such a huge part of MLC. They display students' creativity and allow us to express ourselves. This mural was painted in 2009 by Kelsea L. and Lydia S., and lives in the high school hallway by Mike's room.

(Please note: titles for murals pictured on this blog are in no way official or created by the artist; they're just a way for us to refer to the murals we are talking about.)

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The author of the New York Times Bestselling The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot, is an MLC alumna. The high school went to Jefferson HS to hear her speak in 2011.

We asked her, along with questions pertaining to her book, about what MLC had been like when she attended. She told a story about setting up an independent business study, which involved taking a road trip through California and selling handmade beaded jewelry.

She also remembered Lewis, the high school math teacher who has been a part of MLC since 1972 - that's right, that's 40 years of teaching at MLC. That's commitment.

Project Second Wind: 2012

This year, Project Second Wind was the week of March 5th-9th. Since Monday was a teacher's planning day, and the Kx6 were out of school for conferences for part of the week, we decided to change things up a little bit from the way we usually do them. The preceding Friday, we handed out paper bags (generously donated by Trader Joe's) to each student. Each bag had a flyer and an envelope attached to it, explaining what Project Second Wind is and the dollar to pound ratio this year ($1:4 lbs).

We also decided against our usual horse race in-school competition. Instead, we thought up a more collaborative way to show the school's progress on the wall - a dragon! This dragon began by the main office, and as the week went on and donations piled up, it grew around the hallway. We cut out almost 2,500 scales, changing colors for each day of the week. By this morning, the totals were in and the dragon was finished: we had collected 11,988 pounds' worth of food and money! Thank you to everyone who donated and helped out!

All-School Picnic

The MLC All-School Picnic is a long-standing tradition. At the beginning and the end of every school year, all of MLC's students and staff hike up to Washington Park's Elephant House and field to enjoy a game of soccer, face-painting, swings, other activities, and the much-anticipated popsicles.

The picnic is a wonderful opportunity to catch up with old friends, make new ones, and have a good time.

It's also a great time to get to know your teachers, who play right alongside students and have just as much fun doing it.

Ten Tiny MLC Dances

The MLC high school is putting on its very own performance of Ten Tiny Dances as a fundraiser. All 144 high school students will be involved in some way, whether they dance, choreograph, sell tickets, or something in between. Students and professional choreographers from the MLC community are working together to create pieces that are each five to eight minutes long.

The performance will be Wednesday, April 4th at the McMenamins Kennedy School (5736 NE 33rd Ave) at 7:30 p.m. Tickets can be purchased online or on Tuesdays and Thursdays at MLC (2033 NW Glisan St) for $20 each; in-house sales include twenty front row tickets at $40 each. Proceeds go to the MLC high school field trip fund and to the MLC PTSA. There are only 150 seats available, so act quickly!

Mike Barber, Ten Tiny Dances Producer

Mike Barber is MLC's high school Educational Resource Center teacher, and an extraordinary person. He has taught for thirty-three years, has recently completed a graduate degree in counseling psychology, and is a choreographer and dancer. He also produces a performance series called Ten Tiny Dances.

Ten Tiny Dances challenges its artists to be creative by confining them to a four-foot-by-four-foot stage. Each performance is composed of ten dances. TTD has been performed in a variety of venues since 2002, including PICA's TBA Festival (the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art's annual Time-Based Art Festival). What began as an experiment has grown to be an extremely popular performance series. OPB's Oregon Art Beat produced an episode in 2011 highlighting the creation of a tiny dance for PICA's TBA Festival (watch below).

As always, MLC's staff are exceptional.

Buddies!

Seventh and eighth graders played cards with their kindergarten buddies in the auditorium on a Thursday afternoon. The kindergarteners are always so happy to see their buddies. We all played a great game of Bingo last week in addition to the board games. Throughout the school, there are many cross-grade activities, from sitting together in all school gatherings, to reading buddies, and art projects. This is just one example of the great community we have here.

Project Second Wind

Every year, MLC participates in a competitive district-wide food drive for the Oregon Food Bank called Project Second Wind. Since MLC has a very hands-on, community-oriented philosophy of education, our entire school population is encouraged to participate in the project. To get everyone involved, we often hold a friendly competition within the school itself. The teams compete against each other--kindergarten through third grade, fourth through sixth grades, seventh and eighth grades, and the high school. We post a chart that shows the competition as a horse race. Each team has a paper unicorn that advances every day so that the entire school can see each team’s progress. This simple approach generates excitement among students who might otherwise be less than enthusiastic about the drive.

Student volunteers (including both of us authors) make announcements to classrooms in anticipation of the week-long drive, to raise awareness and to generate enthusiasm. We distribute boxes, recruit volunteers, answer questions, and go around to classrooms with a jar, asking for spare change. We explain to kindergartners how their donations are going to feed children in their community--maybe even their classmates or neighborhood friends. Even the more cynical teenagers are inspired by the good example set by one tiny six-year-old asking to help. At the end of every year so far, our school--which is far from the wealthiest or the largest in the district--has won the district trophy.

In the end, though, it is never about the trophy. The most obvious proof of what we really accomplish each year is in the acts of the kindergartner handing us a bag full of pennies and of the third grader asking if she could donate her ice cream to the food bank. Although we do not get to meet the families who receive the donations, we can catch glimpses of the good they are doing in the faces of the students at MLC. It is the most rewarding part of the entire process. Because of Project Second Wind, we get a chance to make a difference not only in the lives of the families in need of food, but also in the social awareness of MLC's own students.

La Fille Mal Gardée

Today, the high school traveled to the Newmark Theater to see one of our seniors, Violet Lane-Ruckman (pictured left), perform the lead role in the ballet La Fille Mal Gardée (The Poorly Guarded Girl). Two other MLC students were also performing. Afterward, our lovely high school teachers Steve and Chris danced around in the street, pretending to be ballerinas. Their impromptu performance drew laughter and applause from watching students (and random passersby).

Steve!

Chris!