At-risk Portland High students say they enjoy working with their hands and helping the needy.
By KELLEY BOUCHARD, Staff Writer [Portland Press Herald]
June 3, 2009
Jasmine Dipietrantonio waters plants as Alida Payson of Cultivating Community helps Katie Wilson and Shantel Ballard weed a plot in the Oxford Street Community Garden. Dipietrantonio, Wilson and Ballard are alternative education students at Portland High. Photos by Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer
A sophomore in Portland High School’s alternative education program, he’s not much interested in sitting at a desk for hours at a time listening to a teacher go on about one subject or another.
A new garden-based curriculum is giving Velasquez and his classmates a fresh reason to come to school, get their hands dirty and help provide food for needy people in the community.
On Tuesday, Velasquez confidently lugged buckets of bark mulch into a garden plot on Oxford Street, just a block from the high school. He knows something about gardening. He helped his grandfather landscape his whole yard one summer.
“I hate being cooped up in the classroom,” Velasquez said during a break. “I’d rather be out here than inside asking 20 questions.”
Portland High’s alternative education program targets students who are at risk of dropping out.
The program’s staff started the gardening class in May as a service-learning project sponsored by a $250 grant from the Kids Consortium.
Cultivating Community, a nonprofit that promotes public gardens, provided the plot at Oxford and Chestnut streets, next to the city’s homeless shelter. Almost immediately, alternative education staff members saw a difference in their students.
“It’s amazing how much more engaged some of the students are when they’re here,” said Sophie Payson, a social worker in the program. “I think it’s because they’re outside, working with their hands and seeing results.”
Kyra Adkins, the program’s science and health teacher, uses the gardening class to reinforce traditional lessons about nutrition, ecology and sustainable food production.
Next year, Adkins and her colleagues plan to develop an interdisciplinary curriculum focused on the garden that will include lessons in reading, social studies and math.
Adkins said the garden provides a fresh forum where struggling students can envision the potential for success outside the classroom.
“Many of these students haven’t seen a benefit from going to school for a long time,” Adkins said. “This is a whole different environment with a whole different set of expectations and a whole different opportunity for positive outcomes.”
She noted that although some of the students have worked in family gardens, many have little first-hand experience with growing food or making healthy food choices at the supermarket.
A dozen students worked in the garden Tuesday morning. Some created paths with bark mulch. Some watered the beans, peas, lettuce, tomatoes and other plants that have already sprouted. Others weeded or mapped out the perennial plants that rim the plot.
Summer school students will care for the garden through July, and Cultivating Community staff members and volunteers will oversee the plot until the students return in September.
Produce grown in the garden will be donated to local soup kitchens.
That’s enough reason for Shantel Ballard and Katie Wilson, both sophomores, to pick up trowels and dig in dirt that’s crawling with bugs and worms.
“I like the fact that we’re going to grow this food and give it to homeless and needy people,” Ballard said.
Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:
kbouchard@pressherald.com
Copyright 2009 by The Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. All rights reserved
Wicheaka Ker and Alida Payson discuss mapping a garden Tuesday. The alternative education program is using the class to reinforce lessons in nutrition, ecology and sustainable food production. Produce from the garden will go to local soup kitchens.PORTLAND — Most days, it’s a struggle for Hector Velasquez to make it to school. Photos by Gordon Chibroski/Staff Photographer
The organization plans to expand its programs and resume publishing its monthly newspaper.
By KELLEY BOUCHARD, Staff Writer [Portland Press Herald]
February 24, 2009
John Patriquin/Staff Photographer;Friday.,February 20, 2009. Will Gorham, president, and Katie Brown, vice-president, of the Munjoy Hill Neighborhood Organization are leading an effort to rebuild during its 30th anniversary year seen here outside the office in Portland. [Press Herald Photo]
PORTLAND — Thirty years after its founding, the Munjoy Hill Neighborhood Organization is rebounding from internal strife that nearly destroyed the city’s oldest neighborhood group.
The group is retooling its organization, its free monthly newspaper and its Web site to attract and serve a broader range of residents in one of Portland’s most diverse and densely populated districts.
“This is a rebuilding year for us,” said Will Gorham, the group’s president. “We’ve been through a period of upheaval. But we’re addressing our problems and moving forward, one step at a time.”
Upheaval and change are nothing new to Munjoy Hill. Located at the tip of the downtown peninsula, overlooking Casco Bay, it is one of Portland’s oldest neighborhoods. It dominates the East End, which is home to about 4,800 of the city’s 64,000 residents.
Through the centuries, Munjoy Hill has hosted one wave of immigrants after another, most recently from Africa, Asia and Latin America, though its population remains largely white. Traditionally a Democratic stronghold, the neighborhood recently has experienced an infusion of Green Independent party members.
In April, the Munjoy Hill Neighborhood Organization will reassert its community prominence when it resumes publishing the Munjoy Hill Observer, a neighborhood fixture since 1980.
The board recently hired Lisa Penalver, a graphic designer who lives on Peaks Island, to redesign the Observer and involve a broader range of residents in producing stories, columns and photographs. She was chosen from more than 30 applicants. She starts in March.
The board suspended publication of the Observer last summer, shortly after a new slate of officers was elected in June.
The officers shut down the newspaper because some members were concerned about bias in and potential liability of its content, said Katie Brown, vice president. Members were particularly concerned about coverage of issues such as the future use of the former Adams Elementary School and the planned opening of a parole office on Washington Avenue.
“It had become more of a personal newsletter, covering opinions and stories of a select few residents,” said Brown, who has been on the board for three years.
NEW GUIDELINES FOR NEWSPAPER
The newspaper’s troubles reflected problems in the neighborhood group overall, Brown said. The situation hit a low point in late 2007. Membership had fallen to about 75 people from a high of about 500 registered residents in the 1990s.
Personal attacks were common at monthly meetings, and conflicts between members often kept projects from getting done, she said. Several of the group’s 15 board members resigned.
“A lot of really good people left the board because they were fed up with the way things were going,” she said.
The ship started to right itself last June, with the election of a new board. A member nominated Gorham, a past president and former city councilor, for the top spot. He was elected without opposition.
“He’s a fairly no-nonsense kind of guy, so things started to improve right away,” Brown said.
At the time, a husband-and-wife pair of volunteers, Heather Curtis and Ed Democracy, had been running the Observer since September 2006. They took over when the former editor, Jim Hanna, resigned after several years on the job.
Curtis was coordinating editor. Democracy was calendar editor, advertising director, circulation chief and a regular columnist. They defend their efforts to keep the newspaper alive after Hanna left.
“We tried to maintain it as a truly community newspaper and not just a publication of the board,” Democracy said. He said the neighborhood group’s personal dynamics could be “vicious” sometimes, especially when board members and others tried to control the content of the newspaper.
Curtis said she published news items from 10 to 20 contributing writers each month and bent over backward to keep coverage balanced.
“If people sent us news, we printed it,” Curtis said. “After a while, dealing with the petty politics got to be overwhelming.”
Curtis and Democracy said they’re glad the board has hired a new editor, and they hope she has better luck navigating the politics of the job.
“I hope the board steps up and gives her the support she needs to do the job well,” Curtis said.
The board has set parameters for themselves and the editor. Before the board advertised the position, a restructuring committee developed a new guiding policy for the newspaper. It stipulates that the Observer will be overseen by a managing committee and must be run by a paid editor rather than volunteers.
“The goal is to have an editor who is accountable to the board and the entire organization,” said Gorham, who joined the neighborhood group in 1983.
A NEIGHBORHOOD RESOURCE
Once the Observer is back on track, the directors plan to upgrade the group’s Web site, munjoyhill.org. They hope to add features that provide vital information and help connect various facets of the neighborhood, including families, artists, business owners, immigrants and senior citizens.
Now, the group has a full board of directors and membership is on the rise, with more than 100 registered residents, Gorham said. He recently persuaded Cynthia Fitzgerald, a charter member, to return to the group and head its membership committee.
“My hope is that we attract new productive community members to the organization and welcome back people who have been involved in the past but felt burned by the experience,” Brown said.
Looking ahead, the group plans to augment its role as a neighborhood resource by expanding programs for young people, immigrants and other community members. It has applied for a $27,000 federal grant through the city to hire teens to do yard work and other chores for seniors throughout the neighborhood.
The directors also have started talking about building an addition to the group’s headquarters at 92 Congress St. The Munjoy Hill group is the only one of Portland’s 17 neighborhood associations that owns its headquarters, a single-story building it shares with community police officers and other community groups.
Joe Gray, Portland’s city manager, said he’s glad to see the Munjoy Hill group is on the upswing. He meets monthly with his Neighborhood Advisory Committee, made up of representatives from the various associations, to stay in touch with community issues.
Gray said the membership and activity of neighborhood groups commonly ebb and flow over time. Conflicts among members can lead to frustration and burnout. When that happens, he said, a few dedicated members can keep an organization from falling apart.
“That has been the strength of Portland’s neighborhood groups,” Gray said. “Invariably, a few people step forward and reach out to re-energize the organization with new blood.”
Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:
kbouchard@pressherald.com
Copyright © 2009 Blethen Maine Newspapers
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