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When Mason Van Mechelan found himself out of place and in the midst of trouble at his old high school in Del Norte County, he and his parents decided it was time for a change.
Van Mechelan is from the small Yurok community in Klamath, Calif. Like many of his peers now at Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods, a small alternative charter high school partially funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, he said he found a big high school to be overwhelming. "My parents wanted me to go here," Van Mechelan said. "I wasn't doing good [at the local high school]. I was ditching."
Although the school is public and in its third year of operation there are only 34 students enrolled. The small environment has a family-like atmosphere among the students that reflects the school's community on the Klamath Indian Reservation. The students and staff all know each other by first name, and each school week closes with a talking circle where everyone has the chance to share things that are important to them.
Students at the school have an opportunity to take certain college courses that are offered on site. Geneva Wiki, the school's director, said that this semester 95 percent of the students will be taking at least one college course.
In addition to academics that are structured to prepare the students for college, the students also learn things that are fundamental to their culture through art and emersion.
Ashley Powell, a student at the Klamath River Early College of the Redwoods school, is a poet who enjoys her ability to have creative freedom there. In her English class, she was given an assignment to write a response to a famous poem of her choice. Powell chose to respond to "I Cry," a poem by the late hip-hop artist Tupac Shakur. She entitled her poem "When I Cry."
"My poems are all about life and all the different emotions," Powell said.
Along with literary arts, students learn to create culturally relevant visual arts. For one art assignment Powell created a design of a butterfly for silk screening T-shirts. It's a process that uses silk and ink to make custom designs on clothes. On the shirt, she wrote "Wer-erp." In the Yurok language that means butterfly.
This program at the school comes from a community language immersion grant through the Humboldt Area Foundation, an organization that provides scholarships, grants and other funding throughout California's North Coast.
On the east side of Highway 101 that goes through the Klamath reservation, there are billboard signs written in the Yurok language. At the Klamath school, the students design posters with illustrations that are captioned in the Yurok language.
Annalia Norris, Yurok language and art teacher at the school, said she wrote the grant because she wanted to see more language used on a daily basis in the community.
"There is no other language that can describe aspects of our culture," Norris said. Norris said assignments like silk screening t-shirts helps encourage the student to learn their native language.
Encouraging cultural strength along with academic strength has given success to many of the students.
In June, Van Mechelan will be the school's first graduate. He said he is interested in activism and has applied for freshman admission at Humboldt State University.
"I don't think people realize what this school is all about," Van Mechelan said. "This school is for someone who knows what they want to do in life."
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