Trillium Charter School

Ken Gadbow (High School Advisor)

When I was twelve years old, a friend and I started a bicycle shop in his dads garage in North Carolina. Pulling bikes apart and trying again and again to get them back together provided me with a rewarding and exciting self-directed project that was unlike anything being supported by my school. I could not have guessed at the time that this exploration would carry me through nearly two decades of working in bicycle shops, designing maintenance classes, and helping kids learn about bicycles. Facilitating after school and vocational education programs for Portland Community College, the Community Cycling Center, Outside In, and the Portland Yellow Bike Program allowed me to explore my desire to help others learn about the world in front of them.

Desiring to continue my development as a teacher, and broaden my horizons as a learner, I returned to college in 1996, starting at Portland Community College and later graduating from Portland State University. During this time, I studied ceramics, welding, and Spanish, finally finding my greatest interest in the study of world history. I came to appreciate how the study of history provides a platform from which to explore the social parameters within which societies agree to live. A social studies classroom has the potential to create engaging, relevant, and meaningful discussions about the process of history and its connection to the role of the individual in the present and in the future.

When I returned to public education as a teacher, it was with a sense of what is fundamentally important about learning that the purpose of education is to create life-long learners. The classroom should be a place where students are encouraged to think critically when given the boundaries and support in which to do so. And, like my days in that garage in North Carolina a students need to become active participants in their learning in order to make it meaningful. Lasting learning is based upon the ability to connect seemingly abstract ideas to real world experience.

My responsibility as a teacher is to help forge links between students personal lives and the concepts introduced in the classroom. I have always been an active and curious learner. Today, as a facilitator of learning, I am a strong advocate of alternative schools as a solution to many of the problems faced by larger public schools today. I believe that the smaller, more intimate structure of Trillium fosters a responsive and caring community of teachers, students, and their parents. The emphasis on self-directed learning provides a network of support for students to explore and develop their own areas of interest. School should be a place where we can have heated discussions about the past, explore ideas that fascinate us in the present, and be encouraged to take ownership of our learning, digging our hands in, when necessary, and getting greasy.

Click here for Ken's blog.

Jess Brooks (High School Advisor)

Jess is also known as Jessie to her family or Jessica Leigh Brooks when she's in trouble or trying to act official. She was born in Chicago and raised in Ohio where she narrowly escaped in 2000. She took up sanctuary in the northeast at a small university called Alfred, in the town of Alfred right down the road from a place called Alfred Station. Apart from that it really was in the middle of nowhere, which was perfect for Jess' favorite pastime of playing in wooded, rocky and water-like areas. Jess was known as Jessbrooks in those days. She became Czar of an outdoor organization called the Forrest People, started an activist group, became president of the ever so cool Math Club and sat on the Judicial Board. She also became the Astronomy TA somehow, although knows very little about the subject.

After Alfred, for some unknown reason, Jess traveled west with a college friend for the city of Portland. Then, as it turns out, Portland agreed with her and she's been there since. Here she's fallen in love, created a pottery studio and obtained a healthy bike collection. Her first job here was as a bike mechanic, before plummeting into the world of Math tutoring and education. She began taking Graduate Math Education classes at PSU in 2005. Also in 2005 she began working for Pacific Crest Community School as their Algebra 2 teacher and in 2006 she started working for Trillium Charter School.

Click here for Jess' blog.

Will Watts (High School Advisor)

I grew up in a modest English-speaking home that overlooked the Rio Grande, where Texas lapped at my feet, and Mexico boxed in the sunset. Raised by professors and research scientists, I had access to a wealth of information that granted me access to levels of education that others in my neighborhood were not privy to; which is meant to say that I was tracked as a "Gifted and Talented" child at a very early age. While I earned that title, and still work hard at all of my endeavors to maintain that designation, I found that "Gifted and Talented" was very, very subjective term later in life.

After transferring high schools, and going from the "cusp of the Third World" to Cherry Hill, New Jersey (an extremely affluent suburb of Philadelphia), I learned first hand how subjective it was, when I was told that "honors in El Paso, Texas doesn't mean $&#@ here." Over the course of a summer, and a few thousand miles, I went from a well-respected, college bound, honors student to someone who was regularly accused of plagiarism because I wrote too well for my remedial English classes.

This sudden, immediate dichotomy heavily influenced me as a student, and continues to shape my philosophy as an educator today. As a result of this schism, I strive to see the vibrant, unlimited potential in every student, regardless of the shadows cast upon them by labels and categories.

To this end, a critical, non-banking pedagogy is essential,which is why I have chosen Trillium as my base of operations. No where else in PPS, or the world, could I teach to transgress in the way that I do, around the people that I do. I love being a part of this community, and consider it to be among my most prized possessions.

Click here for Will's Blog.