This Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were Mighty Oak’s Fall break. I have talked in the past about how important it is to rest, to enter into a Sabbath and allow yourself to recuperate mentally, physically, and emotionally during these breaks. For our students that is what the break was, but a few of us spent time building a fence, buffing floors, and cleaning sidewalks. Why spend time doing these things? Why work on these improvements, instead of resting; these projects that, if they had not been done, would not have been noticeable amidst the boarded up buildings and precarious houses that are all throughout our neighborhood? Because these projects are just as important. We see that importance if we look back through history.

There have been 150 years of prayers that have been prayed on Saint Cecilia’s campus. Opened in 1873, I am sure many of those prayers had been for a great community; a great community for the children to grow up in with a beautiful future on the horizon. I know for a fact that our neighbor Ms. Betty, who has spent her whole life in Portland, had been praying for a good school to open in our neighborhood for her nephew to go to. I like to believe that God is using Love City to answer some of those prayers that have been uttered over the past 150 years. Many times, God does use people to help answer the prayers of others, weaving people into one another’s lives for his plan. 

When we started Mighty Oak at the beginning of 2021, we were still in the midst of the pandemic. We all wore face masks, knowing each other by half of our faces. As the pandemic slowed we all became comfortable going maskless once again, revealing ourselves to each other once again. For most of our students it was a relief, they couldn’t get their masks off quick enough. However, there were a few that kept their mask, not for virus protection but as a form of hiding. 

When you start with Kindergarteners, you are able to lay foundations. You are able to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses early. You have years to strategize and build a system of support around that student. In an ideal world, all of our students would have started and stayed at Mighty Oak for the entirety of their schooling. A unified system that is able to surround our students with everything they could need. That is not an option we had in the beginning. 

This week, Shawn and I got the pleasure of spending a lot of time with our middle school class. It is a class that has historically had problems in the classroom, that have struggled with staying engaged and with controlling their emotions. To all of the teachers and substitutes that have worked with the class, they have said it is unlike any class they have ever taught before. Most of those working with them have not been able to see their potential, have blamed the issues on learning and emotional problems that could not be solved. Others have said the mix of students is not possible to work with. They spoke as if there was no hope for them, no solution. Shawn and I did not agree, and this week we got to work.

To those who were there that day, it was a public humiliation. A brutal show of power to make sure the people stayed under control. They beat him, mocked him, flogged him, forced him to drag his own means of death to what was meant to be the place where he breathed his last breath. When they hung Jesus on to the cross to die, they had placed a crown of thorns onto his head in an act of mockery, not realizing the reality it was portraying. To those looking on, they believed they were witnessing a public execution, in reality Jesus had already been anointed, and what the spectators were really witnessing was Jesus’s coronation. An enthronement by crucifixion.

A new school that is based on community, that believes in trying alternative approaches to be able to teach students in the best way possible. A school that wants to focus on relationships and preparing students for life more than being solely geared towards college prep. A school that will not allow students to bring their lunch so that they can learn about nutrition as well. A brand new school starting right in our neighborhood, in the middle of a pandemic. Mighty Oak should not have been an easy sell. It took a lot of trust for parents to send their students here. Thankfully, it was trust that we had been able to build for 6 years prior to the launch of Mighty Oak. Now we are getting to see the payoffs of that trust, not just with our students but also with our parents. 

Wednesday was our first day of school, a beautiful day filled with Peace and Joy. There is nothing better than seeing the fruit of hard work. Getting to see blood, sweat, and tears turn into hugs from returning students and beaming smiles of new ones. Preparing all summer for a peaceful transition that was so smooth it took most of our team by surprise. These first few days of school have already come with many examples of why we believe so much in community schools.

As school gets ready to start back up, we have been in a stage of preparation. All summer we have been preparing our facilities, putting in carpet and doing repairs. This week, our teachers returned for training to prepare themselves and their classrooms for the year. On Saturday, we are hosting our Back to School Bash to prepare students in our community with all the materials they will need for their school year. And last night, we worked on preparing our 8th graders to have a great year where they help us to set the tone of the school and support their community.

After a two year hiatus due to CoVid, Water Wars returned this past Tuesday. Water Wars started as the way that Shawn wanted to celebrate his birthday, and was an immediate hit with the community that made sure to make it tradition.  Every year it is, to our knowledge, the biggest water balloon fight in the West End. The community was thrilled to see Water Wars make its return. We had over 4,100 water balloons this year and 30 water guns. Just as important as the fun this year was the message that Shawn kept going back to: Balloons over Bullets.

Families are the foundation of community. Families make up the hands that build the community, the feet that walk the community, and the voices that fill that community. This week, we got to see many of those families come together. We are constantly reminding our team that we are building community, not a school, and we will continue to give that reminder as it materializes more and more into the reality. 

This week at Love City we had our final out of town volunteer group working with us. Fifteen students and three adults from ECC, a church in a town outside of Dayton, Ohio stayed on campus and did life with us for an entire week. They helped us make camp lunches, paint at the school, and make t-shirts. They also got to live life with us as we celebrated multiple Mighty Oak birthdays at the park and spent time playing basketball, dodgeball, volleyball, and just hanging out. It was a beautiful week with lots of Love shown. 

As you receive this, millions of people all over the world are preparing for a special day, Shabbat, the Sabbath.  For some, Shabbat means a strict observance of dietary and lifestyle rules, to others it is just a time to gather with friends and families. It happens from sundown Friday until sundown Saturday.  In 48 hours, millions of christians will be entering a religious service; others who were holy enough to make it to the 9 o’clock service will be getting lunch right about now. All these people are observing the Shabbat, a holy day of rest. At Love City, we are coming out of our annual week long Shabbat. 

We are now in our second week of summer basketball camps. The kids have been loving it. Sometimes it is hard to see the impact that loving the next generation has, especially since we have only been loving our neighbors in Portland for the past 8 years. Today though, we got to see a glimpse.

This week Love City hosted our first volunteer group of the summer. Summer volunteer groups are a special time for us. Middle and High school youth groups from across the region come to spend a week supporting our mission and learning how Love City operates.  We love showing these teams how it is possible to love your neighbors through something as simple as picking up trash and beautifying the area.  

Ms. D sold the newspaper on one of the busiest corners in Portland for years. Showing love to everyone as they grabbed their newspapers every Sunday. She knows the schedule of every free food handout in Portland. Going to all of them in order to get food that she can give out to the people who need it but couldn’t get there. She has adopted dozens of stray animals over the years, taking care of them and nursing them back to health. She has no car. She rides her bike everywhere, using the TARC when she needs it. She has loved me like her own grandchild from the moment I moved to Portland. She is one of the people who I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that she was an angel in disguise all along. She is a Saint of Portland.

Our last day of our school year was last Thursday. Whether you support us through prayers, donations, or just encouragement, you gave our community a choice of quality education.  To say thank you, we wanted to have our teachers share about their experiences this year and give them an opportunity to tell you some stories that help show the impact that Mighty Oak Academy is having.

There was so much that could be talked about at Love City from this past week, our Spring Carnival, our Tuesday night community dinner, our last day of school. Through it all, there was a common thread, a thread that most people from outside of our neighborhood would not expect to see here. From a community that is statistically and stereotypically associated with poverty came a week of generosity.There was so much that could be talked about at Love City from this past week, our Spring Carnival, our Tuesday night community dinner, our last day of school. Through it all, there was a common thread, a thread that most people from outside of our neighborhood would not expect to see here. From a community that is statistically and stereotypically associated with poverty came a week of generosity.

At Mighty Oak, we believe in more than just educating, it is about empowering learners. It is about creating community minded problem solvers. What does it mean for us to go beyond just educating kids? It means removing the obstacles that prevent our kids from being who they were created to be.