Class of 2021: Spring Paintings
Spring energy is in the air, and our 8th grade class recently spent a day channeling the season of spring with canvas and paint.
It’s amazing to see how our students dive into their art projects with such devoted attention and effort during the Connected Learning program. These students have established such incredible mastery of organization, self-direction, and follow-through this past year; I am very proud of them, and I know they are going to succeed in high school with these new skills.
This poem by Claude McKay pairs beautifully with our collection of student paintings to bring a little seasonal uplift to your day!
After the Winter
By Claude McKay
Some day, when trees have shed their leaves
And against the morning’s white
The shivering birds beneath the eaves
Have sheltered for the night,
We’ll turn our faces southward, love,
Toward the summer isle
Where bamboos spire the shafted grove
And wide-mouthed orchids smile.
And we will seek the quiet hill
Where towers the cotton tree,
And leaps the laughing crystal rill,
And works the droning bee.
And we will build a cottage there
Beside an open glade,
With black-ribbed blue-bells blowing near,
And ferns that never fade.
Claude McKay, born Festus Claudius McKay in Sunny Ville, Jamaica in 1889 was a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance, a prominent literary movement of the 1920s. His work ranged from vernacular verse celebrating peasant life in Jamaica to poems that protested racial and economic inequities. His philosophically ambitious fiction, including tales of Black life in both Jamaica and America, addresses instinctual/intellectual duality, which McKay found central to the Black individual’s efforts to cope in a racist society. He is the author of The Passion of Claude McKay: Selected Poetry and Prose (1973), The Dialectic Poetry of Claude McKay (1972), Selected Poems (1953), Harlem Shadows (1922), Constab Ballads (1912), and Songs of Jamaica (1912), among many other books of poetry and prose.
Donna Blaser was raised in the beautiful Willamette Valley and spent her childhood creating art, horseback riding, climbing trees and enjoying every possible opportunity to head out on adventures. She holds a BA from the University of Oregon in Spanish and Latin American studies as well as a Bachelor of Fine Arts. She completed her Waldorf teacher training at the Micha-el Institute, and during those years of study while learning how to teach explosion-filled chemistry experiments, artistic botany lessons, and playful poetry writing games, she knew she’d found her calling! Donna began a teaching career at Cedarwood in 2001 and has taught every grade level at least once. She is currently the Class of 2021 lead teacher; next year she will lead the Class of 2029 as their first grade teacher.
She loves the arts-based Waldorf curriculum, and can often be found in the hallways, smudged with paint, charcoal or glue from teaching a recent art project. She adores traveling; her most recent expedition was to backpack around Mt. Hood on the Timberline trail.