What I Learned: Lessons from Portland High Schools
Photos shot on location at Lincoln and Catlin Gabel high schools in Portland and Century High School in Hillsboro.
Image: Leah Nash
Each year, Portland Monthly’s education grids present a clear quantitative picture of local schools. But there’s a lot more to education than student-to-teacher ratios and graduation rates, particularly when it comes to high school. Sometimes—we’d venture to say many times—the most defining moments happen outside the classroom, in the furtive glances and conversations between classes. To get a glimpse, this year, we enlisted the aid of about 30 students and 30 teachers at three area high schools to help us understand what they consider the really important lessons and influences at school. For one week in early December, our embedded teams at Lincoln, Century, and Catlin Gabel high schools anonymously answered the same set of open-ended survey* questions each day to give us insight into their experience. The results are at once humorous, poignant, honest, and revealing. We have edited the selected responses only for brevity and clarity, but otherwise the rich, textured story presented here is one created entirely by those living it.
SLIDE SHOW: See a day in the life at three area high schools
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