In 2012, Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber announced a goal that by 2025, the state would achieve a 100% high school graduation rate. Although Oregon today graduates only about 4 out of 5 students, that aspiration sparked the creation of OPB’s “Class of 2025” project.
Journalists at OPB began tracking 27 students starting in first grade at Earl Boyles Elementary School in Southeast Portland through their senior year. For the past 12 years, the production team has documented the students’ triumphs and setbacks, transitions to new schools and social dynamics, along with the family members, teachers and administrators who’ve been helping them reach this milestone. The first podcast episode featuring some of those students at David Douglas High navigating their senior year is now available, and a TV documentary featuring other seniors will be released in November.
Joining us to discuss “Class of 2025” are three high school seniors: Joel, Josh and Anais.
OPB editor and “Class of 2025” executive producer Rob Manning and Elizabeth Miller, an OPB education reporter and the reporter, producer and host of the “Class of 2025” documentary, also join us to reflect on the project and what it reveals about Oregon’s education system.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. In 2012, then Oregon governor John Kitzhaber announced a lofty goal: by 2025, the state would achieve a 100% high school graduation rate. That has not happened – the state’s latest graduation rate is around 82% – but the goal did spark the creation of a 12-year reporting project here at OPB. It’s called the “Class of 2025.” OPB journalists began talking to 27 students who were then in kindergarten at Earl Boyles Elementary School in Southeast Portland. And they kept following members of the class of 2025, documenting their triumphs and setbacks, their transitions to new schools, their social dynamics.
Later this hour, we’ll talk to the OPB journalists behind this effort. But first, I’m joined by three of the students they have been talking to for a dozen years now. They are all now seniors at David Douglas High School. Josh, Joel and Anais, welcome and congratulations.
Josh: Thank you.
Joel: Thank you.
Anais: Thank you.
D. Miller: Anais, I first interviewed you almost exactly 11 years ago, when you and your classmates had just finished first grade. We did a whole hour with students, parents, teachers. This is a short excerpt from that show.
[Recording from 2014 “Class of 2025” interview playing]
D. Miller: What’s your favorite part in first grade?
Anais: My favorite part of first grade is math.
D. Miller: A lot of future mathematicians here. You know what, sometimes people say they hate math. So what do you like about it? You have to try to convince people who are afraid of math or that they don’t like it, why should they love it?
Anais: Because it gets you smart.
D. Miller: That’s a good reason.
[Recording ends]
D. Miller: Man, watching your face as you heard your first grade self was pretty priceless. What’s it been like for you to have this record of your time in school, and sometimes your thoughts about school as you’re doing it for 12 years now?
Anais: Honestly, thinking about doing school like that, not going to lie, it’s hard, and wild too. But listening to that recording, math is a little iffy. I’m still good at it.
D. Miller: But it’s not your favorite subject anymore?
Anais: No, I do not like it.
D. Miller: Josh, I want to play part of an exchange from that same show. This is from 2014, when you also were just finishing [first] grade.
[Recording from 2014 “Class of 2025” interview playing]
D. Miller: What’s this first grade been like for you, Josh?
Josh: Uh, good.
D. Miller: What was your favorite part of the year or something that stood out from the school year?
Josh: Having fun. And being in McDonald’s class because she’s the best teacher in the school.
D. Miller: Yeah? What makes her such a good teacher?
Josh: That she helps people that is in trouble. And tell people when somebody’s hurting someone, they have to go to the office and talk to Mrs. Guynes, because she’s a good … hm, what’s it called … princinal … principal.
[Recording ends]
D. Miller: You got it there, you got principal eventually. [Laughs]
I love the way you put it there, that Ms. McDonald was the best teacher in school because she helped people who needed help. [It] seems like you recognized, as a first grader, that she was paying attention to you. What other teachers do you remember from your time in school?
Josh: At that time, I remember Miss Wolf, I remember Mr. Francis, Miss Bretsch. I remember those teachers at the time, those are the teachers I had.
D. Miller: What do you think makes a teacher great?
Josh: Just how you’re able to, at that time, handle younger children and how they acted. Responding well, understanding what the kids needed. I feel like a lot of teachers did that. So that’s what stood out to me in my opinion.
D. Miller: Joel, what about going forward? Because that was first grade, but you guys are in 12th grade now, you’re done, graduation is tomorrow. But what do you think stands out to you from the teachers over the course of school that made an impact on your life?
Joel: I mean, some teachers put some effort in, you know what I’m saying? I’m just saying there are some teachers that would actually take the time after school to help you and I think that helped me a lot during school.
D. Miller: Who would recognize that you needed help with something and then would give you extra help?
Joel: Yeah, like I would ask and they would take the time out of their day after school to help me. So that was really important to me.
D. Miller: We couldn’t find tape from you from that first grade show, but we do have tape from second grade. This is what we’re going to listen to: an interview that Rob Manning, who created this project 12 years ago, did with you in second grade.
[Recording from “Class of 2025” interview playing]
Joel: I like reading in second grade. And I don’t like people, when I do math, people get on my nerves.
Rob Manning: People kind of distract you while you’re trying to do math? You wanted to do your math and they were bugging you? OK, yeah, I wouldn’t like that.
[Recording ends]
D. Miller: So that was second grade, Joel. And then seven years later, you talked to our reporter Liz Miller. This is when you were in ninth grade, zooming forward.
[Recording from “Class of 2025” interview playing]
Joel: My mom makes me go to school every day because she tells me to get my grades up, go to college and get a house for her. That’s what gets me going every day, getting a house for her and stuff. I promised her that, so I’ll make it.
Elizabeth Miller: When did you make that promise?
Joel: Middle school. My grades weren’t that good in middle school. But freshman year, I had to step up. If I don’t do good then I’ll be a super senior and I don’t wanna do that. I just want to be done with school.
[Recording ends]
D. Miller: Does that still motivate you, getting a house for your mom?
Joel: Yeah, for sure, that’s the goal. It’s always been the goal. It’s gonna happen, I just know it is.
D. Miller: What’s it been like to take part in this project, Anais, for so long? Liz or Rob or other reporters at the very beginning would come and stick a microphone in your face, ask you how you’re feeling, what you’re up to, what’s going on. What’s it been like to always have these people asking you those questions?
Anais: Honestly for me, I feel like at the beginning of it, I was trying to get used to it, but it felt really weird. But later on I got used to it, like, “oh, this is just like a normal conversation.”
D. Miller: And pretty quickly you got used to it, because it happened for so long that you had no choice but to get used to it?
Anais: Yeah. But also, it was like asking an old friend like, “hey, whatchu been up to?”
D. Miller: So, at a certain point, these reporters who were adults, they felt like old friends?
Anais: Yeah, like in a way.
D. Miller: I bet they’d be happy to hear that.
Josh, were you ever inspired to work harder in school or to go to school because you knew you were a part of this project and the question of this project is, is Oregon going to meet its graduation rate?
Josh: I did, honestly. I felt like, at times when I felt like I was going downhill and I had no motivation, I thought about like, “oh wait, what if they’re there?” Like, I can’t not show up anymore. I’ve often forgotten I’m in this project, but thinking that I’m part of this and I’m kind of representing the class in a way really motivated me. And oftentimes, especially when I was a freshman, sophomore, just like finding my way, I was like, “this project is gonna be something I can look back at.” And I’ve done what I need to do.
D. Miller: Let’s listen to another tape from our immense archives, hundreds of hours of tape of you and all of your classmates. Josh, this is from when you were in seventh grade.
[Recording from “Class of 2025” interview playing]
Josh: What I say to my 20-year-old self is that I want to build a stronger relationship with my family all together, and make a healthy relationship, and just hope the best for my friends and family. And yeah, make it to NBA. I like to play for Oklahoma Thunder, because I like that team. Also the Houston Rockets too.
[Recording ends]
D. Miller: The first part there – we can talk about the NBA in a second – it was about strong relationships with your family. What’s it like to hear that now?
Josh: It’s great. I feel like I’m building more relationships, getting older. I’m getting to have more talks with my parents especially, and my siblings. That part was really cool to hear. I honestly forgot I even said that, so it’s really cool that at that time I was pushing for a stronger relationship with my family. So it was really nice to hear that me, in seventh grade, was wanting that, especially at 20-years-old. Yes, it’s very nice to hear that.
D. Miller: You mean that you’re surprised by your maturity as a seventh grader?
Josh: As a seventh grader, yeah. Not a lot of people care for those things at that time. There’s many other things I could have said, so that particular thing is crazy to hear.
D. Miller: Are you headed for the NBA?
Josh: It’s tough, it’s tough. [Laughs] That’s a giant stepping stone. Basketball is definitely something I still love. To get to the NBA, it’s a jump, it’s hard. I wouldn’t knock it, you know? I wouldn’t knock it.
D. Miller: Joel, let’s turn to the pandemic. It hit all of us in March of 2020, but few people in society were as affected as school kids. And this was really a sensitive time, the spring of your seventh grade year – that was March of 2020 – meaning, for the rest of that year and for a chunk of the whole next school year, eighth grade, there was either no in-person school or hybrid, meaning very little. What do you most remember from that time?
Josh: Like going on the Google Meets and all that. And then I’ll be playing my game, too, a lot.
D. Miller: So you’re supposed to be doing online class and Google Meets, and then you do some online [game], you and millions of other kids around the country?
Josh: [Laughs] Yeah, I just be playing my game. I don’t know, I didn’t really take online school serious.
D. Miller: What impact do you think that had, the pandemic years, on you and on your education?
Josh: I feel like I learn better in a classroom, like face-to-face. Through a screen, I can’t really do that.
And personally, it did affect my mental health a little bit. Because I would be in my room every day, and I would wanna hang out with my friends and be social. And it kind of took away some social skills also, because you’re being away from like a lot of people at that time.
D. Miller: Do you feel like you still feel those effects?
Josh: Oh, not really. Yeah, when I started high school, it kind of did feel a little weird at first because you started seeing people from middle school, like …
D. Miller: Like, “how do we do school again?”
Josh: Yeah. Like, how do we do that? But, you know, we got used to it. And now we’re here, graduating.
D. Miller: Anais, what about you? How do you think the pandemic impacted you?
Anais: Honestly, I’m glad it didn’t hurt my grades. Honestly, I had good grades during the pandemic. But with the mental health and physical health, I feel like that took a toll for a lot of things. Because having to catch COVID- well, I didn’t even really catch it, I caught it like once. But my family caught it multiple times. So with my mom constantly throwing up – and I had to watch over her to make sure she wasn’t choking on her own puke – was worrisome. Because it’s like, I couldn’t really call any of my other family members to come help me, because we were in that situation of like the pandemic being isolated.
So having to constantly watch over her, staying up most nights, just making sure she wasn’t choking or dying, it was hard.
D. Miller: A couple weeks ago, all of you got to put on your caps and gowns and do a grad walk through your old elementary and middle schools. Josh, what was that like?
Josh: It was great. I got to go back to elementary school. It felt smaller, obviously, because I’m bigger. But it felt great. I didn’t recognize a lot of teachers. But it just felt good seeing the younger people. That was me, that was all of us at one time, so it’s crazy to look at them.
And middle school was good as well. I’ve seen a little more teachers, but still it was a lot of new faces. And I had a younger sister there, so that was good seeing her and her friends.
D. Miller: Did she cheer you on?
Josh: Yeah, it was great. It was great.
D. Miller: Anais, I don’t think this is giving anything away that you probably wouldn’t want to share, but I heard from our reporter Liz Miller, who’s been spent so much time with all of you for so many years, that your mom was there [and] she was just crying. Which, as a parent myself, I can imagine. It’s hard for me to imagine not crying when I see my eventual, hopefully high school seniors doing something like that. What was that day like for you?
Anais: For me, it felt like any other day. It didn’t really feel special to me. But I remember …
D. Miller: You could make something up right now, so the radio audience would be impressed. [Laughter] But you’re saying it was like any other day?
Anais: Yeah. I mean, to me, it felt like any other day because I feel like doing that was just like casually visiting the school, because I do that anyways with picking up my niece and nephew from there. But as soon as I got off the bus, seeing my mom cry, I feel like that’s when it really hit me. Like, I’m going to be done with school. I’m no longer going to be having to worry about certain things, rather than now bigger people things – whoa.
But seeing my mom cry was a weird experience, especially because she doesn’t really cry a whole lot.
D. Miller: My understanding is that there has been some question about whether you would be graduating tomorrow, because you’ve had to redo one class. Where does that stand right now?
Anais: Actually, not that bad because I’m almost done. So right after this, I’m going to be finished with it.
D. Miller: After our live conversation right now, you’re going back to school to finish some stuff up?
Anais: Yeah, it won’t take me that long. It would probably take me like 10 minutes to finish.
D. Miller: And then that’s it? And then you’re going to walk tomorrow, fully graduate from high school?
Anais: Yeah, definitely.
D. Miller: Congratulations.
Anais: Thank you, thank you.
D. Miller: Joel, what does it mean to you to be graduating from high school?
Joel: It means a lot. My mom is gonna be there, my dad, my siblings, my cousin’s gonna be there. It’s gonna be worth seeing that smile on their faces, because that’s what they wanted from me my whole life. Then my mom’s gonna start crying, like she even started crying when I got my cap and gown. I was trying it on and she started crying, I’m like “you’re such a crybaby.” But I understand though, like if I was a parent, I would be emotional as well.
But yeah, it’s gonna be worth seeing everybody happy, you know what I’m saying? I get to see my friends graduate. Yeah, it’s gonna be a good day tomorrow.
D. Miller: Josh, what about you? What do you imagine it’s gonna be like?
Josh: It’s gonna be great. A whole lot of people, one space, walking the stage. Through all these years, I’ve been struggling with school, ups and downs. It’s gonna be over now. It’s gonna feel crazy with a whole bunch of my family there. I’m excited. Right now, I’m trying to play it cool. But I know it’s gonna be crazy after it’s all done tomorrow. So I’m excited.
D. Miller: What are your hopes for the future now?
Josh: Honestly, I made an impact somehow. And my younger siblings as well, my younger siblings made an impact. Showing you can do it like I did it, especially getting through high school. I’m just excited for her to see that especially.
D. Miller: Joel, what about you? What are your plans for the future?
Joel: You know, just working, hustling, you know what I’m saying? But I’m gonna be successful for sure – that’s the main goal. I know I’m gonna be successful. Not to have an ego, it’s just I’m confident in myself.
D. Miller: Anais, what about you?
Anais: It’s a little iffy, because I want to do trade school … which I can do over at Portland YouthBuilders. But at the same time, I want to continue with the path of stage. So if I do that, I’m going to go to Mt. Hood.
D. Miller: Stage, because one of your extracurriculars this year was working in stage crew doing lighting and other stuff for theater? And you got the bug, you like that now?
Anais: Yeah, I really do. I especially like the fact that I got to work with a lot of the saws, a lot of the power tools, being able to make the props, help with some costume. I feel like I gained a value with that, knowing that I was able to work with that and being able to build that community.
D. Miller: I want to play one more part from the show, Anais, that you were on with Josh 11 years ago this week, when you were just finishing first grade.
[Recording from 2014 “Class of 2025” interview playing]
Miller: I’d love to hear your advice for kindergartners right now – what they should know when they’re getting ready to go to first grade. And what’s your name?
Anais: Anais.
D. Miller: What advice would you give to kindergartners?
Anais: Give some respect. Keep safe. Always try.
D. Miller: That’s good advice.
Anais: And be ready.
D. Miller: Be ready for what?
Anais: For class.
D. Miller: What does it take to be ready for class? What do you have to do?
Anais: Learn.
[Recording ends]
D. Miller: I gotta say, it seems like really good advice that came from you, as a first grader: give respect, keep safe, always try and be ready to learn. Would you give different advice right now to an incoming kindergartner or a high school senior?
Anais: Just adding on one more thing is to believe in yourself, with the fact that although you’re going to have your bad days, there’s always going to be like a light at the end of the tunnel. I would say just believe in yourself and know that you’ve done your best at the end of the day.
D. Miller: Joel, what about you? What advice would you give to students now who are just starting out?
Joel: Just pay attention, have fun. And yeah, that’s about it.
D. Miller: Josh?
Josh: Be coachable.
D. Miller: Be coachable? Like, listen to your elders?
Josh: Yeah, the elders and people who are just giving advice, listen often.
D. Miller: Josh, Joel and Anais, congratulations and thanks very much.
All: Thank you.
D. Miller: Josh, Joel and Anais are three of the folks who have been a part of OPB’s “Class of 2025” project for 12 years now. They are all about to graduate from David Douglas High School tomorrow.
Rob Manning started [“Class of 2025”] a dozen years ago with a simple but profound idea. Then governor John Kitzhaber had announced a kind of North Star for the state’s K-12 education system: by 2025, every student would graduate from high school. They decided to follow the first cohort, the eventual class of 2025, from kindergarten through their senior year.
Rob is now OPB’s education editor. He joins us now, along with reporter Elizabeth Miller, who covers K-12 education for OPB and has been making radio stories, podcasts and video documentaries about these students since they were in seventh grade. Rob and Liz, congratulations and welcome back to Think Out Loud.
Rob Manning: Thank you.
Elizabeth Miller: Thanks for having us.
D. Miller: Rob, why start this project? I mentioned Governor Kitzhaber’s goal, but it’s a big leap to say, “let’s do this thing.”
Manning: Well, it started as really a kind of a thought exercise that I had with Eve Epstein, who was the managing editor at OPB back in the early 20-teens, I guess we’d call them. And it was right as Kitzhaber was making this announcement and I remember telling her, “that’s a real group of kids.” They’re going into kindergarten and this is not some totally ethereal goal that one day we’re gonna do blah blah blah. No, the “one day” is in 2025 and the very palpable result is supposed to be a 100% high school graduation.
We looked at it like, on the one hand, that’s impossible. No state, nobody ever reaches 100% graduation. But on the other hand, why not? This is the expectation, we’re supposed to be graduating kids from high school. You go into the public school system, the thought is that you are going to get the support that you need, you’re going to find school engaging and you’re going to stay with it. And at the end of the day, you’re going to earn your credits and you’re going to have a diploma.
But the truth is somewhere in between. What is the experience of these students that makes them not graduate? What makes the difference between graduating and not graduating? And there’s a thousand answers to that. So that was fascinating to me and to Eve, to be like, “let’s find a group of students and follow them, and see what comes up in their lives and what makes them successful, and what stands in their way. And let’s tell the stories about that.”
D. Miller: Why David Douglas?
Manning: So I met Ericka Guynes, who was the principal at Earl Boyles Elementary, just as Eve and I were kind of coming up with this idea. I didn’t realize at the time, but we were just talking to Ericka last week, she was only in her second year as an elementary school principal. So I don’t know if she totally got what she was saying yes to. But I think she did. I had a conversation with her as this goal was coming out. Earl Boyles was starting to make investments in preschool, and they were being very progressive and really trying a lot of new ideas. So I ran this idea by her and she was receptive to it. I ran it through their communications office. Dan McCue, the communications director at the time [who] I’d worked with on previous stories, he was kind of like, “have you talked to any other school districts about this?”
[Laughter]
D. Miller: “Are all the eggs in our basket?”
Manning: “Why are you asking me?” And I had sort of shared this idea with a couple of other school districts previously, who wanted nothing to do with this. But I think partly it was to Ericka’s credit that she was like, that’s how we should be held accountable. We should be looking at what the individual outcomes for students, what’s working and what’s not. And let’s look at it over time, don’t just parachute in, judge us by our test scores and jump out. Look at what we’re doing, tell us where things are going wrong, tell us what we’re doing right and give us a fuller picture.
D. Miller: So I mentioned in my intro before that the most recent statewide graduation rate in Oregon from 2024 is just under 82%. How does that compare to what it was when Kitzhaber made his pronouncement?
Manning: Well, it’s better. It was 68% back in 2012, so it’s definitely gotten better. It has sort of stalled in the last few years. Some of it might be kind of a COVID effect, it’s hard to know exactly why. But we seem to have kind of plateaued a little bit in the low 80% range. But it has come up quite a bit since those 68% days. We’re still in the bottom third of states nationwide. We’re getting better, other states are getting better.
D. Miller: But we started from below them.
Manning: Yeah.
D. Miller: Liz, what do you think is behind that improvement though?
E. Miller: I think one thing that this goal did, that Governor Kitzhaber did, was just raise awareness. “This graduation rate is not great, let’s work on it.” But then there are also dedicated funding things to help improve career technical education. What Rob was saying about how we make school more engaging, how do we connect school more with the real world? And some of those efforts to connect school with the real world, I think you can really point to that has helped improve graduation rates across the state and in districts like David Douglas.
But again, it’s stalled. And with COVID, depending on where you look, it hasn’t recovered yet.
D. Miller: Has former Governor Kitzhaber said anything about where the state is right now and the fact that we have not attained his goal?
E. Miller: The main thing I take away from my interview with him, when I talked to him back in the beginning of junior year, is that without a plan, it’s hard to reach any goal. And the thing about the timing is the plan was really starting to come together when he was in office, but it fell apart pretty soon after he left office.
So what we’ve been doing this spring is kind of talking to the folks, because he’s not really active in education policy anymore. And so we started talking to the folks who still are. And some of those folks, like Ben Cannon with the Higher Education Coordinating Commission, he was in Governor Kitzhaber’s education policy arm, helping with that. And now, he’s still in education.
D. Miller: The other side of the pipeline.
E. Miller: Exactly. So we’ve been talking to him and we talked to Governor Kotek about what happens now? You have this goal, not going to reach it. What do we do now? How do we shift forward? And Governor Kotek, when we talked to her, she’s shifted her goal to 90% by 2027. And the thinking there, she told us, was I saw what was realistic. And it’s not the end to say 2027, but we just got to keep improving
D. Miller: And a goal that’s a little bit more achievable, that you could maybe hit, is maybe more helpful than something that no state has ever accomplished?
E. Miller: That is aspirational, yeah. So it’s really been interesting to hear this many years later what folks think. And we’ve asked the students themselves, what do you think about this goal? And a lot of the answer is like, “it’s good to have a goal.” But they see their peers, they see themselves, for some of them, that it’s not possible to graduate in four years.
D. Miller: Rob, this gets to a related question. What do you think focusing on this one class … not all of them have even stayed in David Douglas, but there’s some kind of this initial kernel cohort of kids. What has focusing on these kids let you explore in terms of statewide policy?
Manning: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot of things. There are things that come up, particularly at certain grade levels, that I think was really interesting to explore when these students were at those grade levels. There’s this whole concept at third grade, you’re “learning to read” until you get to third grade, and then and then at third grade you’re supposed to make this shift to “reading to learn.” Content, everything is getting more complicated. If you’re not a strong reader by the time you get to third grade, you’re going to be struggling.
So we were able to confront that in a way that I think was helpful to have known these students for a few years. We know these students have been having trouble with literacy from the time they were in first grade, how are they gonna do? Or there’s a student with a learning disability, how are they gonna do? As compared to, here’s a kid who was practically reading by the time they were in kindergarten, how does that play out? So I think there are examples like that where we were really able to know these students, know their abilities, know their tendencies, that gave us insight into some of these higher level education conclusions that really helped us.
The other thing was really having a ground level view, especially Liz on the front lines of this when COVID happened. All the things that schools were dealing with, by the way, our project was dealing with in a huge way. Where even are the students? They’re not at school anymore, so how do we find them? How do we stay in touch with them? How do we know if they’re actually trying to learn anything?
D. Miller: How do we know that they’re not playing a video game as we’re trying to interview them, the way we heard there are video games during online class?
Manning: Exactly.
D. Miller: Liz, a lot of stories that reporters do, or conversations that I have as a show host, they’re one and done. They may be great, but you talk to someone and then you may never see them again. This project is the exact opposite, the entire DNA of this project is long-term relationships. What has that been like for you as, as Rob said, the reporter on the front line for six years now?
E. Miller: It’s really cool. It’s amazing to really get to know these students. You’re seeing them grow up. You’re seeing their interests develop. They’re being honest with you about what’s going on in their lives. That’s kind of hard to get sometimes from young people.
D. Miller: You heard before, it’s basically like an old friend.
E. Miller: Yeah, I got a little teary at that one.
D. Miller: I can imagine.
E. Miller: The one thing also that has been really cool, especially as these students are seniors, is the ability to look back – and Rob and I have talked about this a bunch recently – that they can look back at “oh man, what was I doing freshman year?” And [they] are able to reflect on that. That’s so cool to me like we’re really able to check in as they’re reflecting on their lives as they’re still going through it. And then seeing them at school is really fun, getting to know their teachers, hearing their interests in different assignments. It’s crazy, it’s a wild project and I’m really grateful to be on it.
And there are these kids at David Douglas, but there’s also students across the state. I just went to one of their graduations on Monday from Jefferson High School, Azaysha, and I was so excited for her. Her whole family is there and then here’s this little reporter that’s just like, “hey, can I ask you how you feel?”
D. Miller: But you’ve been talking to her for years and years now.
E. Miller: Exactly. So her mom is like, “yeah, Elizabeth has been here the whole time.” It’s just amazing to be able to really see them progress and also just get to ask them what works in education, what hasn’t worked in education? How have you changed? These are questions that we don’t really get to ask students ... We ask them that often and now we finally get to ask them those final questions. And I feel like the answers are so fruitful because we’ve known them the whole time.
D. Miller: Rob, what does it feel like to have this project itself be graduating?
Manning: It’s definitely a lot of mixed feelings because it’s been obviously a lot of work, but it’s sad to see it end. It’s an amazing sense of accomplishment, definitely. It’s been great to work with Liz the last several years, to sort of have a real partner on it. I was off on my own for a lot of it, the early days.
And I just am so grateful to the families to have been able to sort of share their stories with us for so long.
D. Miller: That’s an important point. We didn’t talk too much about the families, but they have been a major part. First of all, they said yes. And then second of all, they kept saying yes. There are a lot of stories and obviously involve parents.
Manning: And sometimes, it’s been really interesting, the insights that we gain. I think especially with the families that are not in David Douglas, because we have to go to see them. And so it becomes a specific visit for them. And it means we’re gonna be with just them, it might be once a year or even less often, but we’re gonna be there for a couple hours and really get their story. I think like the story of Jason up in Southwest Washington, who for his whole life thought he wanted to be a paleontologist, and then he had this realization a couple years ago that he didn’t want to. And it became this whole sort of like, “wow, what is it like to sort of make this kind of an adjustment?” The family had to talk through what a struggle that was. It was so insightful about also just teen development. Like, this is what life is like for a family with a teenager.
D. Miller: Rob and Liz, congratulations and thank you for this project.
Manning: Thank you so much.
E. Miller: Thanks for having us.
D. Miller: That’s Rob Manning and Elizabeth Miller, who together, and with some other amazing folks at OPB, have created and run this amazing “Class of 2025” project for a dozen years.
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