Learning from the World
A Visit to Camino de Paz Montessori SchoolBy Deborah Madison
"At first the kids don't like to get dirty," says Celia Harlow, one of the teachers, "but after four weeks they're fully into it."
As if to prove her point, Stephanie is wrestling a chicken free from the flock. Dust is flying, wings are flapping, and she's got a big smile on her face when she finally gets hold of her favorite red hen.
Camino de Paz is nothing like a public school. Students get dirty, but they're not text messaging, nor are they connected to iPods. They are, however, very connected to one another and their tasks at school, which include, in addition to familiar subjects, tending to animals and plants, activities that become springboards for a different kind of learning.
At present there are a dozen middle-school students who come from Chimayo, Truchas, Santa Fe, Velarde, Espanola and Santa Cruz. Patty's dream is to grow the school to include some forty students, including high-school students.
Many readers may already know Camino de Paz from its presence at the farmers market where one can buy their salad greens, eggs, soaps and felted items like purses and hats. To produce those handsome hats and purses the students not only care for the Angora goats but also shear, card, spin, dye from dyes of their own making, felt and weave their wool. Such layered involvement speaks to Patty's vision of what an adolescent school program should look like: kids living close to the land, in a community and, through their activities, connecting to the larger community by participating in it. (It's through these sales that the kids fund their field trips.)
"Maria Montessori believed that work was noble," Patty says. "And people who were trained by her have been saying that we won't realize the real potential of adolescents if they're not put in a context of working and serving. In l996 there was a movement towards starting adolescent programs in rural environments, and that's what we've done, too."
There are so many ways to look at this school and so many things to say about it, the work of Maria Montessori and this exceptionally delightful group of teenagers, that an entire issue of edible could easily be devoted to Camino de Paz alone. But of particular interest to us, of course, is their relationship to food, and it's clear the moment you enter the gates that animals and plants play a very important part in the students' schooling.
"Animals teach kids about caring, compassion and stewardship," Patty says. "Teens are rarely in a situation where some other living thing depends on them, and animals bring that out. Animals are day in and day out. Sometimes the kids will spend the night here waiting for the birth of an animal. Animals give them an opportunity to put something else first in their lives, even if it's just a chicken."
Spotted goats and their kids, the Angoras and their kids and a big Rambouillet sheep are dozing in their pens under a shade tree. Two Belgian draft horses, Bess and Colonel, stand in their traces, waiting to work. Turkeys and chickens are busy pecking and chattering, and one canˇ¦t miss the five big greenhouses and the partly plowed fields.
"The students start and end the day with animal and plant care," says Patty. "It takes about fifty minutes to clean pens, feed, water, gather eggs then wash and box them, open and close hoop houses, pull weeds, transplant lettuces and tend the chickens. Then they come in for classes: Xlanguage arts, math, social studies and science."
This year their focus is on energy and sustainability because the school received two grants for solar electric systems. But they also learn about conducting businesses from their activities while taking part in preserving the agricultural traditions of the area. The kids work in small crews, and every week each crew gives its report to the others. There's a lot of interchange and exchange of ideas.
The kids were clearly much more excited about the animals than they were about lettuce and chard. They all had stories about their own experiences that they shared, along with their excitement.
"My friend Jesse and I helped give birth to four goats. I helped hold the mother goat down. She was in lots of painˇXit was pretty and disgusting at the same time," says one boy.
"We have a sheep named Donovan," says another. "The goats love him so much that they'll jump through their fences and lie down on him. He has a crush on Flower, one of the goats." They all laugh at that.
"One time we were running the sheep through the pasture and one of them fell in the acequia," says another Stephanie, this one with dark hair. "She was really heavy, and it was hard to pull her out."
Sometimes the roosters will attack you. You try and run!" says blond Stephanie.
"One time Bess, the horse, got out and chased Antonio all around the school building. They both freaked out and were running all over. Finally, he lost her," says Keane, describing Antonio's adventure. Bess, although 2000 pounds is also pretty frisky, and when Antonio told us how he could hear her breathing behind him, his awe and excitement were still evident.
As they climb in and out of pens, picking up goats and chickens and telling stories about them, it's clear that students are at ease and affectionate with the animals. It's a complicated business, though. They talk about the pain of seeing the goats attacked and killed by a vicious dog and how the owls hunt the baby chicks. Now Annie, a guard dog, stays with the goats, and an electric solar-powered fence protects the pullets.
Eventually some of the animals are slaughtered and eaten by the students. But before they are taken away, the students all gather around them and thank them for their lives and talk about what they appreciated about them.
"It's interesting," comments one of the boys, "because before, I knew about chickens and where they come from, but here you get to bond with the animals. It helps to stick the whole thing of how it is in your mind. It's really cool."
"It's the cycle of life, and some kids get very emotional," Patty says, "But then that provokes a discussion about life and death, what and how we eat. Processing the chickens becomes an anatomy lesson. Every activity is a point of departure, to go on to something else."
We watch a couple of boys standing around the electric fence. They have figured out if they squeeze the wires with one hand, they won't get a shock. But when they touch someone else with their free hand, that person gets zapped! It looks as if they're just goofing around tormenting their classmates, but Patty and Celia are right there, and neither of them tells the boys to cut it out.
"Well, they're learning about closed and open circuits," Patty observes. There's a lot of learning by doing at Camino de Paz.
This all looks ideal to us: the animals, the gardens, the depth the kids go to in their learning, but as Patty points out, "The kids pooh-pooh us talking about organic and all that. Still you have no idea how all of this is going to manifest later."
But when it comes to taste, the consensus is, "our chickens are tougher, but they taste better."
"People aren't trained to eat seasonally," observes Patty, "but we do that here. From December to January everything pretty much shuts down in the greenhouses. We were making salads with store bought lettuce but no one was eating them. The kids thought it was 'yucky' lettuce."
The students cook lunch, set the table and clean up. Each week a team of two makes up a menu of the dishes they're going to make.
"We look in a cookbook to see what we want to eat," says one, adding that cookbooks with pictures help a lot.
They eat their own vegetables and meats, as well as bison from Picuris pueblo, and other local foods. The students cook lunch for the other students, teachers and staff, about eighteen in all. They didn't act like it was a big deal to cook lunch for nearly twenty people. It's just something they do, so we happily accept Patty and Greg's invitation to join everyone for lunch. Jesse, the lead cook, has made Pasta Alfredo and a salad from greens picked fifteen minutes earlier. We all sit at a long table outdoors and serve each other. Jesse gives a blessing, thanking one of the Stephanies for growing the lettuce, the Italians for the pasta, and finally, "well, just everyone."
We drink water.
"No dessert?" I ask one of the students.
"Maybe on birthdays," he shrugged. No sweets, no big deal.
But then, we suspect that most every day is pretty sweet at Camino de Paz.
Camino de Paz
P.O. Box 669
Santa Cruz, New Mexico 87567
505-986-2000
www.caminodepaz.net
