At Mighty Oak, we teach our students about God through Love. We do not have any hermeneutical or theological curriculum or assessments, so I wanted to share some conversations I had this week with our students. I interviewed one student from each grade and asked them what they know about God and Love, this week I will share the responses of our Kindergarten to Fourth Graders. These responses have been lightly edited by me for clarity in writing, but they are our students' words.
When Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and into the wilderness, they were stepping out on faith. They were leaving harsh conditions, but conditions where their basic needs for survival were met. Yet in the wilderness, they walked into nothing, with their only chance of survival being God’s provisions. Even through their disobediences and complaints, God provided manna and quail. Not just enough for them to survive, but an abundance where everyone was filled and there were still more provisions. In 1 Kings, Elijah is called out into the desert, and God sends his provisions by ravens. Throughout scripture and history God has provided for His people. At Love City, we are fortunate enough to get to witness God’s provisions for our community first hand.
One thing that I have learned over the years at Love City is that community has many different aspects, and it is multi layered. We may think of community as one thing, but then see it in places we wouldn’t initially have expected. There have been many times when I have been so focused on our community, that I’ve missed the fact that those that are called to join our mission are a part of our community also. They give of themselves, are dedicated to the people both in the neighborhood and at Love City, and often the miracles they see in their lives are just as important and impactful as the miracles we see in our neighborhood. This week we had a miracle in our community, it was with one of our staff members at Mighty Oak Academy, and that miracle overflowed to encourage not just me, or our staff, but our students and our neighbors as well. And since we view all of you, as our neighbors in this journey as well, I wanted to share that miracle with you all.
We just wanted to take a moment to say thank you on this week of Thanksgiving. Thank you all for your support, in prayer, time volunteering, finances donated, and all support that you give us. You help support us and the mission that we believe creates real change in our neighborhood and city. We hope that you all have a blessed time with family and friends this holiday. I wanted to give you a reminder that the Fish Fry will be closed this week. If you are anything like me, you might usually close out of the email and skip the advertisements at the bottom of these letters. But please just take a moment to look this week at some alternative ways that you can help by looking at our apparel options or contacting us about any catering needs you have this holiday season. Thank you, Love you all, and Happy Thanksgiving.
If you have followed Love City for awhile, you have probably stopped by for a Fish sandwich on a Friday. What started as a small fundraiser to raise money to pay the LGE bills for after school programs has continued to grow over the years. We take pride in the quality of our service and in creating an inviting atmosphere that brings people from all over the city together. Now it is one of our main regular sustainability measures that we have. It is an event that requires our entire team to pitch in every week to help put on, and it is a beautiful depiction of community.
Edification is the building up of individuals and community. It builds individuals by affirming who they are created to be, their uniqueness, their individual gifts and callings. It builds community because when individuals lean into who they are called to be, it helps fill community needs. A cyclical effect that then proceeds to edify more individuals. I like to imagine the edification that Jesus spoke over his disciples, “Matthew, you are more than a tax collector, you are not here to put this burden on your people but to help set them free”. Sometimes we don’t even have to imagine what those conversations looked like, we see it in scripture when Jesus tells Simon Peter and Andrew that they are more than fishermen, they are called to be fishers of men in the Kingdom (Matt. 4:19).
When you walk through the doors of the Fish Fry at Porkland, the first thing you are greeted by is a picture. It grabs everyone's attention. It is nothing flashy, it doesn’t pop out from colors but it always gets attention. It is a panoramic picture of the First Solemn Mass in the new Saint Cecilia Church. It was taken in 1927 on the steps of the church building with everyone from infants to elders, altar children to priests. Old cars and buildings that no longer exist surround the perimeter. It is a picture of community, and it continues to serve its purpose of building community to this day.
Some of my favorite moments to witness are those of compassion between students. These moments of care are so pure, jovial, and innocent; they reflect the Father’s heart, the actions of Jesus. I don’t believe these are moments that can be taught, no matter how much consideration and thoughtfulness or social emotional skills we try to teach and instill in our students, it is ultimately up to them whether they choose to step into a compassionate moment because compassion requires action. I think if anything, these moments are Loved into existence. From the overflow of Love a student feels, a compassionate act can be born.
Since the start of Mighty Oak, we have wanted to provide our students with experiences. Experiences that expose them to new things, that get them out of Portland, out of their comfort zone. If we get them out of their comfort zone, then we get them into a state where they are forced to learn more about themselves and the world around them. That is why we have art classes and culinary classes and community service projects. It is why we like to get our kids out of the building to learn.
The past month or so, our Love Letters have been filled with ways of getting involved with our mission. Ways of being able to get involved in the school, helping with lunches, coaching, tutoring. Ways of being able to help change our city with your time. Now, we have another way that you can get involved and help support our mission.
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.
