OASIS High School Graduates Choose Alternative Path

OASIS Alternative Education graduates with their teachers. From left, Denis Riordan, Jill Sherman, Melissa Lewis and Corey Wiscomb

— by Margie Doyle —

Orcas Alternative Student-Initiated Studies (OASIS) High School students
Denis Riordan and Melissa Price celebrated their graduation on Saturday, June 7 at the Episcopal Parish Hall with teachers, family and friends.

Orcas School District Superintendent Barbara Kline welcomed the graduates and guests. She said it was one of her career highlight to serve OASIS students who “work independently and make their own choices. Lots of young people could never do what these people do on a daily basis.”

She thanked the OASIS High School teachers in attendance — Robert Dash, Brett McFarland,Jill Sherman, Serra Benson and Michael Buckner, and acknowledged founding OASIS High School teacher Marta Branch, in the audience.

Kline also praised the school board  — Scott Lancaster, Janet Brownell, Tony Ghazel, Chris Sutton and Greg White, all in attendance — for “going places where other school boards are afraid to go.”

The graduates spoke of achieving this milestone. Denis Riordan said, “It’s on my generation to take the next step to recuperate the world.” He said that through his OASIS education he learned a lot about himself, and thanked his parents for their love and support. He plans to continue his passions for good food and culinary arts in Bellingham next year.

Melissa Price spoke humorously in thanking her parents and teachers, “for making me graduate” and her arms and legs for “being by my side and supporting me.”

Earlier this week, they presented their Senior Projects to fellow students and community members. Price described her welding adventures in “Sparks,” which showed her in welding gear making a sculpture of stainless steel scissors and steel pipes. She thanked her parents and welder Pete Welty, as well as her teachers, for helping her explore her love of this craft. Riordan talked about preparing an 11-dish meal, all made with local and non-genetically engineered foods for a party of 12. He presented a slide show of his preparations for this dinner and his research into genetically-engineered agricultural products. He plans to continue his adventures in cooking, clearly the passion of his young life.

Teachers Corey Wiscomb and Robert Dash spoke eloquently of the challenges and rewards of alternative education.

Wiscomb praised the evolution and progress that alternative thinking brings about in energy, art and music. Modern artists such as  Marcel Duchamps challenged the nature of what art is, and the conformity that led to ugly scenes in the early 20th-century world, Wiscomb said.  Their alternative expression gave “freedom for people to think for themselves.” Musicians took gospel music and made from it the blues, rock and roll, jazz and hip-hop. Responsibility to an alternative consciousness creates “evolution in a beautiful way,” Wiscomb said.

He continued, “To struggle in an alternative path is hard and painstaking; you endure harsh criticism… A place like OASIS becomes really awesome — that you can take the alternative path and succeed.”

Wiscomb cited Sir Roger Bannister’s breaking of the 4-minute mile record some 60 years ago. One person achieved the “impossible” and within weeks, the impossible-to-break record was being shattered by others all over the world.

He credited Melissa Lewis for her pursuit of welding, art and martial arts, and he praised Denis Riordan for his commitment to the practice of yoga. Alternative education, said Wiscomb, functions outside of convention and offers a choice. “Don’t let the alternative approach stop here,” he advised the graduates.

Teacher Bob Dash took to the podium to tell the graduates, “Cultivate a wild mind.” He warned his advice may sound “strange or deceptively simple,” but explained that, by wandering in nature, he found “my gateway to wonder, mystery and … eternity.” He  said that the “byte-sized mind” has become re-wired to make such a gateway to learning obsolete. He urged that we “resist the seduction of nanobots, artificial intelligence and other technologies at least occasionally to slow down, daydream, witness nature, sit still, observe, touch, smell.

“Answers will come from intimacy with nature,” Dash said, before quoting from the poem “To the Primal Wonders” by Nancy Newhall:

You shall know not one small segment but the whole of life, strange, miraculous, living, dying, changing.
You shall face immortal challenges;
you shall dare, delighting, to pit your skill, courage, and wisdom against colossal facts.
You shall live lifted up in light; you shall move among the clouds.
You shall see storms arise, and, drenched and deafened, shall exult in them.
You shall top a rise and behold creation…

Julian Haroldsen and Angel McEachron also graduated from OASIS this spring, but did not participate in the graduation ceremony on Saturday. Superintendent Kline expressed regret that they were not in attendance.