10A COTTAGE GROVE SENTINEL November 9, 2016
N INJAS
P-20
Continued from page 3A
Continued from page 1A
depression. For those living in
poverty, the risk factors skyrocket.
“Stress created by these factors
has a tremendous impact on brain
development,” Lester said. “Some of
these kids have levels of toxic stress,
and it doesn’t go away. They’re wor-
rying 24/7.”
Lester said — and many educa-
tors present seemed to agree — that
students facing such challenges are
common in South Lane School Dis-
trict.
“It’s a super scary picture,” she
said. “When we think of some of the
kids we work with and what those
kids have been exposed to, I don’t
think this is far off.”
Still, Lester said that there are av-
enues for support that can change
outcomes for these students, and
she and her team have reached out
to other agencies to try and create a
network of such support.
“We can’t do this by ourselves in
education,” she said. “No matter how
great a leader you are, you can’t do
it by yourself. We need to work with
the health care system, with social
services.”
Lester and her team are working
with groups like the Early Learning
Alliance, Lane Education Services
District, University of Oregon, South
Lane Mental Health, 90by30, Be
Your Best Cottage Grove and others
to pool resources to better serve lo-
cal youth. She said an asset mapping
exercise calculated 160 modes of
support available for young students
and families in a group of about 45
organizations.
This coordination exposed the
need for a “resource hub” through
which organizations can compare
and contrast the services they offer
to paint an accurate picture of sup-
ports available locally.
“There is currently no way for pro-
viders to come together to talk about
what their organization offers, which
families they’re serving, where there
is redundancy or barriers to their suc-
cess,” she said.
Agencies like Lane County,
PeaceHealth and Be Your Best Cot-
tage Grove have their own plans for
improving community health, and
Lester pointed out common goals
between the plans such as the afore-
mentioned resource hub, a school-
based health clinic and expanded
family resource center.
Under the P-20 umbrella are ini-
tiatives like Peggy’s Primary Con-
nection, a family resource center
that currently operates at the Lane
Community College campus in Cot-
tage Grove but will move to the new
elementary school at 10th and Taylor
Streets. Lester said that hours at the
center have been expanded to serve
kids after school. The South Lane
Children’s Dental Clinic also oper-
ates at LCC here, and Lester said the
need it serves is great.
Grants have been procured for the
dental clinic, as well as the Kits in
Transition to School Program (KITS)
— which offered study skills and
school experience to incoming kin-
dergarteners over the summer. Les-
ter said that KITS could be renewed
for up to fi ve years, depending on its
federal funding. A Preschool Prom-
ise grant was used to establish pre-
schools at Bohemia Elementary and
Dorena School, and there are waiting
lists for both schools. South Lane is
also offering early education for kids
whose second language is English.
O FFBEAT
Continued from page 4A
was able to articulate his be-
lief to the devout among the au-
dience members that evolution
was the mechanism God had
chosen for Creation, and that
the references to “six days” in
the book of Genesis was better
understood as “six epochs.” Not
everyone believed that, but he
did, and many who would have
rejected the fossil record as anti-
biblical found themselves able
to contemplate it because the
man explaining it to them was a
credentialed minister.
In 1872, the Oregon State
Legislature appointed Condon
as Oregon’s fi rst state geologist
— this in spite of the fact that he
had no formal credentials in the
fi eld. However, he was one of
the most learned people in the
state, and his years of obsessive
collecting, studying and writing
on the subject of geology made
him a natural for the post. With
it, he moved his family back to
Forest Grove and took a posi-
tion there as a geology professor
— fi nally leaving the old life as
a man of the cloth behind.
Then, in 1876 when the Uni-
versity of Oregon was launched,
Condon was brought aboard to
teach all the sciences there.
As a university professor, Con-
don was a huge hit. He named a
textbook for his geology classes,
because one was required; but
it was barely even cracked. In-
stead, students would pore over
actual fossil specimens kept in
glass-topped display cases that
functioned as tables in his class-
room. He actively encouraged
women to take his classes and
get involved in the sciences, and
in 1878 his daughter Nellie was
the valedictorian of the univer-
sity’s very fi rst graduating class.
He also took seriously his role
as a public intellectual, leading
community members on nature
walks and giving plein-air lec-
tures on the beach during sum-
mer vacation.
He also became famous for his
fi eld trips, in which the whole
class would journey to some
interesting place and study its
geology. It was on one such trip
that he and his class, in 1883,
visited and autographed the sta-
lagmite in the Oregon Caves.
If you should visit the Oregon
Caves and see those autographs,
you’ll likely be startled by how
good they look. The interven-
tion of 135 years seems to have
left those pencil marks stronger
and clearer than ever, rather
than faded like the notes in a
Civil War soldier’s common-
place book.
That’s because the constant
dripping of mineral-laden water
onto the stalagmite over the past
century has deposited a tiny lay-
er of translucent calcite over the
marks. If anyone would wish to
erase them, they would have to
actually damage the stalagmite
to do it.
It’s interesting to think about
the fact that Professor Condon’s
signature will be there on that
rock, clearly visible to all visi-
tors, for hundreds of millennia
after their meaning has disap-
peared into the mists of ancient
history, slowly fading as new
layers of calcite are added and
the stalagmite gradually grows.
As an analogy for the profes-
sor’s life’s work as the father of
Oregon geology, this seems par-
ticularly apt.
“We’ve generated a lot of jobs and
a lot of supports for kids and fami-
lies,” Lester said. She gave much
credit to Ana Maria Dudley and Les-
lie Canales at Peggy’s Primary Con-
nection, Marta Hendrickson at KITS
and Mary Nisewander, teacher of the
ESL classes, for their work in ex-
panding local supports for youth.
Still, Lester said the most chal-
lenging aspect of these efforts has
been aligning the K-12 system with
those that offer early childhood pro-
grams.
“The biggest challenge is the
alignment between early education
system policies, rules and the K-12
system,” she said. “Things are so dif-
ferent. The idea was to align the two,
but it’s going to take a long time. It’s
really challenging just to talk the
same language. There are different
systems for hiring, different develop-
ment requirements, different degree
requirements for teachers, and none
of them match. We need to come to-
gether. It’s exciting to be at the fore-
front of this work, to be able to be
behind the advocacy for the change
that needs to happen.”
them remember these facts.”
The problem with a lot of digital study ap-
plications, Meyers said, is that they act as little
more than question banks. With Scrub Ninjas,
however, students use a ‘ninja’ to create a sur-
gical weapon that can be used to answer the
many hundreds of questions a medical student
needs to answer.
Its promotional materials invite users to
“awaken the mind with the Scrub Ninjas® and
arm yourself with epic surgical infused ninja
weapons and traditional Japanese masks! and
slice through a database of thousands of high-
yield exam review multiple choice (MCQs) test
questions,” calling the game a “modernized test
prep, designed for the visual learner, a question
bank developed as a study companion for all of
you digital hipsters on the go!”
Meyers, who also volunteers as the art teach-
er at London School, said her fi rst goal was to
support students that are terrifi ed by testing.
“My vision is truly to support students in a
visual way, to make studying fun again, and to
reduce test anxiety around high yield informa-
tion,” she said.
Meyers is also launching a line of digital
courses for entrepreneurs that is set to debut in
January. Scrub Ninjas can be downloaded on
iTunes and Google Play, and more information
is available at www.scrubninjas.com.
Body Balance
(Sources: Jelsing, Nadine.
“Thomas Condon: Of Faith and
Fossils,” Oregon Experience.
Portland: Oregon Public Broad-
casting, February 2016; Bishop,
Ellen & al. Hiking Oregon’s Ge-
ology. Portland: Mountaineers,
2004)
Finn J.D. John teaches at Or-
egon State University and writes
about odd tidbits of Oregon his-
tory. For details, see http://fi nn-
john.com. To contact him or
suggest a topic: fi nn2@offbe-
atoregon.com or 541-357-2222.
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