Building Community: Discovery High School students have unique back-to-school experience

Following an 18-month stretch of shuttered school buildings, remote learning, hybrid classes, mask mandates and canceled sports seasons, the start of the 2021-22 school year was never going to be completely “normal” for Camas-Washougal students.

With that in mind, staff at Discovery High School decided to use those first couple weeks of the new school year to shake things up and, they hoped, help students bond with their peers.

Instead of heading straight to their classrooms on the first few days of school, Discovery students came together for a mixed-grade, schoolwide project that emphasized students’ interests and unique skills by allowing them to form student clubs that will meet throughout the school year, during the students’ regular school days.

“In addition to creating a sense of belonging and community as we return to school during the pandemic, we are also emphasizing and evaluating collaboration, communication and craftsmanship,” explained Discovery Principal Aaron Smith. “Our kids are very engaged in the process.”

Discovery High science teacher Corinne Lorch said the school’s leadership team knew students would have a greater need to become part of a school community after so many months in remote and hybrid learning. The trick was figuring out how students could use project based learning and design — the core tenet of Camas’ newest high school — to build community, strengthen connections to one another and create new traditions.

The answer? Coming together for the first seven days of school to brainstorm ideas for student clubs, find other interested members and then pitch the idea to school administrators.

“To start, we had students reflect and share about their interests, strengths, areas of growth and more,” Lorch said.

Students came together into groups bound together by a love of sports, gaming, art and other interests.

“These groups then collaborated to see how to transition these passions and common interests into a club idea. After an initial club fair at the end of the first week, clubs were solidified,” Lorch explained.

After the three-day Labor Day holiday weekend, Discovery students returned for the second week of the schoolwide project, figuring out how their clubs might contribute to the overall school community and creating short pitch videos to show to Smith — or to the school’s student leadership team if students wanted to become an official Associated Student Body supported club — on the final day of the project.