Adventures at Catlin Gabel

One of my fond memories of teaching is of my experience at the Catlin Gabel school, a special private school in Portland. This was in the 1980s.

Catlin Gabel serves Portland and the world as an educational catalyst, drawing together dedicated educators, motivated students, superb curricular resources, and thoughtfully applied technology, in a beautiful and functional setting, all for the purpose of forming bold learners who become responsible action-takers for life. Catlin Gabel is an independent, non-sectarian, progressive coeducational day school.

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Catlin Gabel has a special fund for hiring artists and writers for residencies at the school. I received a Writer in Residence invitation and accepted it. I spent a term up at the school, teaching a class and working with students on their writing projects. The experience was so successful that students wanted me for a second term, but the fund permitted one term only. However, the administrators found a way around it and hired me for a second term as a "Scholar in Residence." It was during this second term that I had the memorable experience.

For the second term, I suggested teaching a class in hyperdrama, directing the students to write and produce a one-act hyperdrama for campus. So this is what we did. I had ten students. Class was held in a cabin in the woods near the soccer field. The only drawback, for the students not I, was that the class began early in the morning.

Here are some random memories of what proved to be an extraordinary experience.

The students. Varied, all bright, but from different backgrounds with different future goals. This became epitomized by the latent hostility between two young women in the class (these were all high school seniors): one, wealthy, wearing the latest style, who wanted to become an art director for an ad agency; the other, bohemian, unkempt, who wanted to ride her bike around the world. The latter used to love to sit across the seminar table from the former and cross her hands behind her head, lifting her arms to reveal her unshaved armpits, which grossed out the former so much that she eventually took me aside to ask if I could get her to stop it.

The bohemian girl was quite her own person and refused to do any of the assignments or any of the collaborative work involved in writing, rehearsing and presenting a hyperdrama. However, a student came up with a brilliant way to include her. The woman wrote poetry -- so in the play, a part was written for her as a ghost who wandered randomly through the action reciting her poems. Amazingly enough, it worked! It actually was quite comic in effect.

One morning on the bus up to campus, I found the bohemian girl sitting in the back of the bus. I joined her. She looked totally hungover. What's going on? I asked. She brought out a handful of Russian coins. She told me she'd spent the night on a Russian ship that was docked in town, spent the night partying with Russian sailors on their ship! (I hope this woman became a writer ha ha.)

The hyperdrama was brilliant and included a film within the play. Not only did they write and produce a play, they made a film that was shown during the play! Absolutely amazing kids. The story was about a student rebellion at Catlin when a new Head Master decides to make French the official school language. (They came up with this because they all hated their French class.) The film was a satire of the video sent to parents of prospective students.

The production was brilliant, I thought, but in fact it puzzled almost everyone, who had never seen a hyperdrama before. But the kids -- the performers and the audience -- loved it. Everybody wanted to do it again but no more funds could be found to return me to campus, so that ended my wonderful experience at the Catlin Gabel School.