An expedition of hope

Erin McKain Hale believes that learning is an expedition: always challenging, usually adventurous, often unpredictable, and more engaging and memorable when done with others. And sometimes it takes you places you never imagined going.

Take Hale’s own journey. When she graduated from Lewis & Clark with a bachelor of arts in psychology in 1999, she never considered being a school counselor. But now that she’s been helping at-risk high school kids chart their own meaningful explorations of life and learning, she wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.

After earning her master’s degree in school counseling here in 2004, Hale started working as the counselor at Portland’s Renaissance Arts Academy, a campus of Marshall High School. Marshall was transitioning from one large comprehensive high school into four distinct learning environments: Biz Tech High School, Pauling Academy of Integrated Sciences, Renaissance Arts Academy, and Marshall Night School. By fostering high expectations, critical thinking, a strong work ethic, and respect for self and others, the structure emulates many of the attributes that first drew Hale to study at Lewis & Clark.

“Marshall did not move to the small schools structure in stages,” Hale says. “We jumped into the program. Staff and students immediately took on new challenges. Now we’re starting to attract students who used to go elsewhere, and kids are making purposeful decisions about where they want to go and what they want to study. Most of the kids here have lots of things going on at home that affect their lives at school, so we provide a lot of health resources and social services on site that meet critical needs. Kids come to school here and experience being part of a real community. They build relationships with teachers, counselors, and each other that reinforce their innate resiliency. This work gives me hope.”