New this Year: Social Justice & Service Clubs

Cedarwood started offering optional virtual clubs on Fridays for students this fall, as a way to connect with friends across the grades and expand interests outside of the classroom.

We’re excited to share a little bit about these new clubs with you, starting with our Social Justice and Service Clubs! These clubs have been meeting since the fall of 2020, but new members are always welcome to “click in” to the Zoom meetings on Fridays!

Social Justice Club
Grades 6-8

Through September and October, the Social Justice Club had several amazing visitors. They alternated having a visitor share one week, and then delved deeper into discussion the following week. They also shared videos on different topics relevant to the club’s mission, and then discussed them.

The club’s first guest was Seneca Cayson, an activist in Portland for Black Lives Matter. His sharing opened excellent discussion about both taking action and love.

For Indigenous People’s Day, the group watched a couple of videos, including one from Teaching Tolerance about the myth of Christopher Columbus, and another from NAYA (Native American Youth and Family Center) here in Portland. This generation is learning a more truthful history from the beginning, which gives us hope!

Another Friday, an outreach coordinator from NAYA came and shared their experience as an Indigenous Two-Spirit person. The visit was inspiring and informative.

David Blue, the Diversity Director at Central Catholic High School, came another week and brought three students of color who are involved in social justice. They are all leaders in the different BIPOC student unions at their school. David asked them questions that led to them sharing about their growth since the 9th grade in finding their voice. We also watched a film on microaggressions and each students shared a personal experience with us. Their honesty and willingness to share was powerful.

After several meetings of looking out at the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people in our conversations, we turned to doing some identity work ourselves. Using This Book is Anti-Racist, by Tiffany Jewell, we read and completed the exercises from the first three chapters, which focus on the questions of “Who am I?",” “What are my social identities?,” and “What defines race and ethnicity?”

Currently, the students are involved in creating the Martin Luther King, Jr. celebrations for Cedarwood. They will be visiting with younger students on Zoom to read books about Martin Luther King, Jr. They’ve also created an all-school art project and are helping to organize an assembly for the middle school. These students have an enthusiasm to switch into action mode after so much learning!

What will winter and spring hold? Hopefully some school sharings for Black History Month and Women’s History Month.

Mr. Hayes, Mrs. Harrison, and Ms. Pearl have been inspired and excited to be able to delve into these topics. Our hope is that the club continues once Cedarwood is back in the building for in-person learning, but also that more and more of the content this group is exploring becomes part of the school’s regular curriculum.

Service Club
Grades 4-6

The Service Club has taken on two big projects so far this year, and the contributions of our community are what made them a success! Thank you, everyone, for your support.

A supplies drive done in partnership with Friends of Seasonal and Services Workers for fire victims in Southern Oregon was the club’s first project that needed community support. The response was wonderful, and the organization was thrilled when we delivered so many useful supplies to send down to Southern Oregon.

The club partnered with Friends of Seasonal and Services Workers again for their second project, collecting toys for 150 families in the Hillsboro area, as well as 200+ in communities south of Portland. The organization usually partners with an elementary school in SE Portland, but due to COVID, that school wasn’t able to run the drive. Cedarwood was able to step in and fill a great need. One of the volunteers from the organization visited Service Club virtually and shared his life experience of starting to work in the fields when he was five. He still had a truck that he had received from a similar toy drive when he was young, and now he is in his fifties. His visit was an amazing gift to the group, as he brought a warmth and personal story to the drive experience for the students.

As an ongoing project this year, the Service Club has partnered with Marquis Piedmont Assisted Living in North Portland, and students have been writing cards to residents there throughout the fall. This extended to the first graders sending cards to the home, as well! The group decided to take it to the next level and has had three Zoom visits with residents! Both the students and the seniors have a great time seeing each other and sharing. Students have sung, played instruments, demonstrated gymnastics, and showed art work. There have also been many fun pet sharings, magic tricks, and jokes. The Service Club. will continue writing cards to their penpals and having Zoom visits this spring!

Heather Pearl grew up playing in the woods, fields and waters of Connecticut. Basketball, soccer and track were her first sports loves, followed by ultimate frisbee and biking in her 20s. Heather moved to San Francisco to attend SFSU, and it was there she fulfilled her secret desire to study drama, which luckily led to her meeting clowns and circus performers. At a rehearsal one day where people were doing push-ups, running around and creating work to make people laugh, Pearl found her calling. In the city by the Bay, she performed solo, as well as with Clown Conspiracy, the SF Women’s Circus, Make*a*Circus and Clown Mobile. In 1996-97, Pearl attended and completed the Dell’arte International school of physical theater in Blue Lake, California.

In 1998, she moved to Portland and joined do Jump! extremely physical theater, with which she performed for four years and taught for seven. After leaving doJump!, she co-founded the nomadic theatre Company with Michael O'Neill. In 2001, Pearl received a call to help out at an after-school circus class at Portland Waldorf school.

Heather began substituting on a regular basis, and her interest in spacial dynamics grew. In 2004, she began her five-year, level 1 spacial dynamics training. In 2005, she was hired as the first movement education teacher at Cedarwood. Developing the Movement Education Program has been one of Ms. Pearl's greatest joys in life. An experience that continues to provide new challenges and inspirations, to always meet who the children standing in front of her are--and what they most need and will thrive learning! There are calm and sweet moments teaching, but never dull ones!