Perrydale School District Is Probably One of the Most Unique in the State of Oregon Due

Setting

Perrydale School District is probably one of the most unique in the state of

Oregon due to the wide range of places its students come from. Found in rural

Amity, Oregon, this single ‘A’ high school has a very strong sense of community and unity within its’ small walls.

The Community

Perrydale High School is also unique in that 60% of its student body is made up of interdistrict transfers. Coming from cities as close as Amity, but also from Dallas, Monmouth, Independence, Sheridan, Salem, Keizer, Willamina,

McMinnville, West Salem, Falls City, Dayton and even Corvallis, the students at

Perrydale come from a wide variety of homes and communities. The draw to

Perrydale is due to; the small number of students, the teacher/ student ratio, the high graduation rate, the high academic standards and the wide spread reputation for excellence. This mixing of students provides a great sense of diversity, not so much ethnically, but geographically. Many of my students are able to draw upon the experiences from their home cities and bring those into the lesson, which enriches the experience for the students from other areas.

The actual environment of the school campus is extremely rural. Besides being surrounded by small, modest homes and the volunteer fire department,

Perrydale is surrounded by rolling grass fields, wineries and cattle ranches. Most of the students do not come from farming families, but do have recreational farms for horses, livestock, rodeos etc.

Economic characteristics within the community of Perrydale students show that many are within a low to middle socioeconomic class. Jobs many of the students parents hold range from private businesses to stay at home parents. These students are not deprived, for many if not most of them have video gaming systems. However, many of the student population at Perrydale find outdoor activities more rewarding than technology; hunting, horseback riding, working on their trucks, camping, hiking and four wheeling to be in their top favorite things to do. Knowing what my students are interested in and how they spend their time is vital as an educator so I can tie in my lessons to grab their attention. If I want to grab their attention regarding my lesson, such as technological progress in the 19th and 20th centuries, I would say that the assembly line made it possible for the automobiles they love and cherish to be affordable to them. Without the modernization of the auto industry there wouldn’t be room for growth to other avenues such as; four wheelers, snow mobiles and motorbikes! Making those connections with the knowledge of where my students are coming from geographically and culturally is vital to the success of my lessons.

Many students get rides from their parents or carpool with fellow students.

Perrydale is located about 5 miles west of Highway 99W and about 10 miles northwest of Highway 22. For lack of a better term, it is “out in the middle of nowhere”. There is one school bus that drives students who live within a short distance around the Perrydale campus; however it arrives quite early (6:00am) for some students due to the large attendance area of the school.

Availability of extraneous resources is limited to the actual communities in which my students live. Most communities have hospitals and health care facilities and all have some sort of recreation piece in which my students enjoy such as restaurants, shopping, paintball, gaming centers etc.

The School District Community

Perrydale High School is one of three schools within the Perrydale School

District; Perrydale Middle School and Perrydale Elementary School are the other two. Sharing buildings (such as the “old gym”) between the three, Perrydale

School District is located on one campus. Because of the connection of the three buildings, my students are able to connect to other grades aside from their own.

My high school students are able to assist and volunteer in the grade school classrooms during their release periods. This helps create a strong sense of community and school spirit that is very powerful.

The School Community

With a student body of between 310-332 students (fluctuates often), kindergarten through twelfth, Perrydale has a very strong sense of community.

Many of the students have known each other from when they were very young; therefore they have strong bonds with their fellow classmates.

A predominately white school, (95%) Perrydale is very non-ethnically diverse. The remaining %5 is of Hispanic origin. Due to this, ESL programs are not in place. 37 are eligible for reduced lunch and 57 for free lunch. English is the first language for all students.

The FFA, or Future Farmers of America, is an organization that Perrydale is connected with in that the AG (or agriculture) class participates in. They are focused on giving students responsibilities based on agricultural techniques such as; harvesting, livestock care, land tending etc. Many students participate in the

FFA of Perrydale, and our particular program has won many titles in FFA conventions around the state or Oregon.

Discipline issues, I have discovered, are not a huge issue in the Perrydale

High School. “Duties” are given like referrals, and if and interdistrict student has three within a month, they are automatically dropped from the roster. This motivates students to maintain good behavior and not give teachers grief. Transfer students must also keep their grades up or they are dropped from the roster. In district students are kept from this threat.

Friday school is offered as a disciplinary action. The school week at

Perrydale is from Monday through Thursday; students who are serving detention attend Friday as well for either a study session or additional assignments and tasks.

Perrydale High School is mainly one hall with six classrooms and a library.

Additional classes (Spanish, art, shop and AG) are in the portables outside the school. The library is very small and has very little reference material, adjoining the library is the newly created computer lab, with modern machines and monitors linked through a district network. The school has a very inviting appeal due to its small size and warm community.

The No Child Left Behind Adequate Yearly Progress is being met in all areas (math and reading). The Oregon State Report Card states that Perrydale is strong in all areas of performance.

The Classroom Community

The classroom for which I taught in was set up in a traditional manner.

Eight rows of four or five desks faced the front where a podium, table and overhead were placed. A white board was behind the podium and teacher’s desk was off to the left of the table.

Mainly consisting of males, my World History class had 21 students. One had an IEP, which regarded his ability to transfer thought into written work. I had no interaction with parent or community volunteers or classroom assistants. My students were all white and had similar abilities. Reading and writing were daunting tasks for my students and therefore I had to modify materials and lessons to be appropriate to their level and abilities. Although my students had similar abilities, they have varying interests. This made planning lessons fun and interesting for I could appeal to different learning styles every day. Some students were very interested in cars, and I tried to tie in the subject as often as possible.

My students were also all interested in several aspects of pop-culture. Music is a large aspect of my students lives and I constantly used examples of songs, artists etc. to relate to lessons. This helped my students connect what they know to what

I was teaching.

Parental involvement in my students’ education was limited in many cases.

Several students did have parents that were supportive in their schooling, allowing me to have phone contact in cases where parents were concerned about their student’s grade; however a vast number of my students did not have parental support at home to help them with their studies. This, I feel, had a great impact on the success of my students in the classroom as well as the actual attitude they hold towards school and its importance in their future.

When discussing the academic atmosphere of my classroom with my mentor teacher, I discovered that my classroom is a good sampling of the student body at Perrydale. Everyone is pretty much “average”. There are over achievers, and there are slackers, however if those students are compared to the over achievers and slackers at a large school such as South Salem High School, the margin between the two shrinks greatly.