Riverbend Students like choices, hands-on experience

Riverbend’s Blake Darr, 16

By Tom Peterson

“It was really fun to watch the kids get excited,” said Britnei Rubio after several students designed and landscaped portions of her property. “They did an excellent job and worked really hard to figure out what would work best.”

“All I did was give them a color scheme, and they did the rest.”

It’s not a typical high school project, but little is at Riverbend Community School on the Columbia Gorge Community College Campus. 

The school, which is chartered through District 21, and moved to the CGCC campus last summer.

“We get to do projects and work with our hands,” said Blake Darr of the landscape project. “It’s a lot better than reading textbooks all day.”

Students prepared and planted a bed within the yard and added several potted plants to the residence.

The 16-year-old sophomore said they had to draw a three-dimensional design of their pot and then use some geometry to figure out the volume within it. 

Classes at Riverbend use this interdisciplinary approach, capturing lessons in subjects such as horticulture and geometry in the doing of real-world projects.

Riverbend’s Haley Ezelle, 18

“Days and hours are not separated into what you're learning,” said Riverbend Executive Director Stacey Shaw. “Subjects don’t fit into in boxes or categories. They learn in projects and get a different perspective and become a system thinker, which helps you in the real world. They can make connections between Art and Science or History and Journalism. 

Haley Ezelle who is on track to graduate in October, likes the size of the school, noting she felt far less claustrophobic at Riverbend.

“It’s a bit smaller, and it's less draining of my energy… there is not as much pressure from other students.”

The 18-year-old recently finished a project on the liberation of Auschwitz, a Jewish concentration camp in Poland during World War II in Josephine Colburn’s Social Studies Class. 

“I used popsicle sticks to build a sculpture on the transition of Auschwitz,” Haley said. “Inside the camp changed, noting they removed gas chambers, but left the train station and many other buildings such as barracks for the slave labor.

Haley said she planned to take a year off of school after graduation while at the same time looking into a degree in mortuary science. For now, she is enjoying the freedom of being able to explore topics that are of interest to her.

Riverbend’s Brandon Pentz, 17

Her mother works at the International Order of Odd Fellows Cemetary in The Dalles. And Haley has also reached out to Alex Carlson at the medical examiner’s office on the topic of becoming a mortician.  

“It’s been a lot nicer for me,” she said of attending the school.

Shaw said, “If a person is learning by doing and experiencing generally, they tend to speak more, to be more interested in the subject and feel more choice and control over their learning, and they are going to understand and retain it better.”

Brandon Pentz said the hands-on learning is what convinced him to attend the school four years ago, when it was called Wahtonka Community School.

“I like to work hands-on, rather than normal school work,” he said. 

The 17-yer-old pointed out several high points in his last four years of school. 

He said he engaged with a project to create a board game called Ruination with a project group. They took the game from concept to game pieces, a board, rules, and a business plan to develop and sell the game. They talked about expansions, maps, sourcing materials, intellectual property. 

“We had to decide whether to do it during school time, or go outside of school and give up our own time to work on it.”

Riverbend’s Trent Bauc, 15

Pentz said they also worked on a horse ranch, where they fed, groomed and learned about the care, safety and cost of maintaining horses.

It was like the equivalent of being an intern. “I would work with horses again.”

Fifteen-year-old Trent Bauc came straight to Riverbend as a freshman after attending Mosier School. 

He said it was a tough choice as many of his friends were headed to The Dalles High School. 

“It’s better suited for me,” he said. “It’s not all assignments. It’s more interactive. You go to different places. In Biology, we just did some landscaping.”

Mission

Ultimately, the school’s mission is to empower students to achieve their goals and make a positive impact on their community and their world through innovative project-based education, design thinking, and real-world application of new skills

“Learning should be a joy,” Shaw said. “You don’t want the last book that a person reads to be the one they had to read to graduate.”

The school is primarily on the third floor of CGCC’s Building 1, which also houses the cafeteria and library. It also overlooks the new Skill Center and Student Housing on the east side of the campus.  

 You can learn more about the school and enrollment by clicking here.   

Read our previous story about the school and staff here.