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Respect wins students a trip Mail Tribune / Andrew Kemp Jason Pardee searches for cool rocks on a field trip to Butte Falls for Patrick Elementary's fifth grade class. As a reward for good manners during their classroom hours, the students earned a field trip. Four-mile hike includes study of rocks and minerals By MELISSA MARTIN BUTTE FALLS - "Mr. Durbin, Mr. Durbin!" Two eager 10-year-olds beckoned their teacher over to the creek to look at a prize rock. "We just found a big thunder egg." Patrick Elementary School's John Durbin inspected the boulder that weighed almost as much as the student who cradled it. "You found quartz crystal - that's a piece for life," the Gold Hill fifth-grade teacher said. Might be the last This may be the last class of fifth-graders who spend a week camping if Patrick Elementary School cancels its outdoor school, which has been a 30-year tradition for Gold Hill students. "Kids hear so much about outdoor school, from the time they are kindergartners they look forward to the day they become fifth-graders and get to go," said Mary Wasniewski, who helped raise the $7,000 needed to finance this year's trip later in May. The kids and several parents will spend a week at a camp on the coast learning survival skills, investigating tide pools, riding a tour boat and rock climbing. Parents feel they can no longer raise the money each year by running concessions at games, selling raffle tickets at community events or peddling magazines door to door. "This is a little, tiny town and it has to divide its money between Little League, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and the PTA," Wasniewski said. "There isn't enough to go around and it's hitting the community up a lot." Durbin and team teacher Rob Lewis took 59 fifth-graders on a rock-hunting trip to Butte Falls this week. The field trip is part of an outdoor education program that makes this combined classroom at Patrick Elementary School in Gold Hill so popular with kids and parents alike. The Durbin-Lewis team is known for entertaining their learners in "Bill Nye, The Science Guy" style. But at the same time, they demand a level of respect that Miss Manners would be proud of. "We run a democratic classroom and it's all based on manners," said Durbin, a 22-year teaching veteran. For all the hours students spend listening quietly during a geometry lecture, promptly retrieving books from their lockers or remembering to say "please" and "thank you," they earn a field trip like the one they experienced Thursday. The fifth-graders hiked four miles along a fork of Little Butte Creek to search for quartz, jasper, agate and feldspar. Something told Anthony Fisher and Van Rosenzweig, both 11, to take a second look at what appeared to be an ordinary rock. It turned out to be a valuable quartz. "My grandpa told me that the dullest things on the outside can be the most beautiful inside," Fisher said. The group stopped for a picnic in a grassy field sprinkled with shooting stars and twinflowers. But first, they gathered quietly around Lewis while he showed them their boundaries. "Having two dads in the classroom is powerful," said parent Kathy Roberts, hiking beside her daughter, Anna, who was home-schooled until last fall. "They run a tight ship but they have a lot of fun, too. I've seen many kids flourish in this classroom." The two like-minded educators teamed up about four years ago. During the summer months, they tore out a wall between two classrooms and furnished it with handmade tables and shelves made from scrap or donated lumber. They turned a third, smaller room into a study area and locker bay. Lewis even brought in his daughter's sound system, complete with microphone headsets that the teachers wear to amplify their voices during lectures. They are also equipped with computer software similar to Power Point, so they can display equations or formulas on TV monitors during math lessons. "It's a high-tech classroom, " said parent Lisa Simpson, who hiked with her daughter, Colleen. And three times a year, the teachers leave technology behind to head for the hills. They took students to the lava beds near Bend last fall, and later this month they plan to spend five days camping on the Oregon coast. And wherever they go, their students mind their manners. "Hey, Durbin, look at this," one of the fifth-graders said after finding a treasure near Little Butte Creek. "That's 'Mr. Durbin' while we're on a field trip," the teacher said. "See that elderly couple over there walking on the beach?" he said, setting an imaginary scene from the group's next trip. "What will they think if they hear you forgetting to say 'Mr.' to them? It will mean a lack of respect. What kind of impression do you want to leave with people?" Reach reporter Melissa Martin at 776-4497, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.