Covid Harm Reduction

Are you teaching in person? online? outdoors? indoors?
Arctos is a place-based school, centered in and around Portland, Oregon. The vast majority of our teaching is in-person, both outdoors and indoors, because we personally cherish hands-on learning and face-to-face interaction. Harm-reduction protocols, such as outdoor classes, excellent indoor air filtration, and improved air circulation are employed for all classes. Masks and covid vaccinations are always welcome in Arctos classes.

We recognize that online learning is a valuable tool as well. The pandemic inspired us to offer online classes, and some of our current offerings are taught via zoom. When we meet online, our goals remain the same: To engage students in interactive, participatory, and experiential learning.

Arctos School offeringS

I'm a total beginner. Is the Herbal Immersion Program right for me?
Absolutely! Our students in those courses run the gamut from utter novice ("This is new and exciting territory!") to experienced health care practitioner ("I know my diagnostics, but I don't have a solid botanical materia medica") to seasoned naturalist ("I can identify these plants, but can they be used for anything?") to lifelong gardener ("Please just give me a reason to love these dandelions!"). We will tell you what we mean when we talk about infusions, tinctures, monoecious plants, and mucilaginous extracts. We're available for questions, and you'll find that your fellow students are also an amazing resource, too. Most of our shorter series, like Everyday Herbalism and Stress Less, are completely accessible to beginners, too.

Are you offering Arctos's intermediate program, Spreading Our Roots, in 2024?
We’re not offering that this year, but we’re excited to do so in the future. Reach out if you have a group of intermediate herbalists who are ready to take this class, and we can craft a course and schedule that works for your cohort.

I've already taken an herbalism course. What do you have to offer me?
Good question. The answer? A lot! Since herbalism is a vibrant folk tradition, there are many approaches. Every botanist has different insights; every herbalist has different methods. We are big fans of gathering knowledge from different sources, learning in different ways, and covering the same material time and again. If you get five herbalists in a room, you'll probably get ten opinions as to how to handle an illness, make a plant medicine, or work with a client. Learn from at least a few different plant medicine lovers, and we guarantee that you'll be a better herbalist for it. We welcome you in both our introductory courses as well as our intermediate offerings.

About Arctos

How long have you been teaching?
Missy and Gradey started teaching together as Arctos in 2006, offering workshops and medicinal plant hikes. In 2007, the Herbalism & Ecosystems program, a joint venture between both Gradey and Missy, began. Ten years later, Missy expanded that course to become the Herbal Immersion Program, and in 2023, Gradey stepped back to focus on his Medicine Garden nursery.

Before we started the Arctos School, both of us had a fair amount of teaching, facilitating, and training under our belts. See Our Story for more on how we came to collaborate.

Why should I study with you?
Virtually every herbalism program has something important to offer its students. We encourage studying with different teachers; an herbal education is never complete, and a broad base of knowledge benefits us all. Even learning the 'basics' of nettles or calendula with different instructors will, for attentive students, yield further knowledge and even greater questions. Herbal and personal relationships are varied and dynamic.

That said, Arctos programs are about conveying pragmatic skills with the goals of connecting people with the land, connecting people with their community/ies, and subverting unjust systems for the wellbeing of the most vulnerable. These pragmatic skills can be put to use in everyday life: ethical wildcrafting/weedcrafting for food and medicine; home medicine-making; cultivating plants and using weeds; practicing medic skills and using herbs for first aid. Our courses stress a reciprocity-based, sustainability-centered, conservative approach to harvesting wild plants and an enthusiastic endorsement of using common weeds as plant allies. We wear our beliefs on our sleeves, and we want to change the world. But we aren't the gatekeepers of transformational knowledge; we want to facilitate a collaborative process to create change.

About our Programs

I want to interview for one of the programs. What should I expect?
The interview is an informal one-on-one meeting. Don't worry about dressing up, preparing a résumé, or rehearsing a speech! I just want to outline the expectations of students, answer your questions about the program, and make sure that we're a good fit. Spoiler alert: Participation, attendance, and commitment matter to us.

What if I miss a class?
Arctos always encourages students to learn from each other. If you miss a class, please catch up on the material covered with another student in the program before the next time the class meets. That could look like: your classmate leading a plant walk for you; reading your classmate's notes; coming up with a Q&A session with your classmate; making medicine together; and more. This facilitates community-building between herbalism students and also enhances learning opportunities for those willing to pass along knowledge to fellow plant lovers. Missy will gladly answer any questions remaining after that connection, and is available for private tutorial sessions if needed (rates discounted for current students).

Do you have work-study positions? Do you accept trade?
As a tiny school, Arctos do not typically have work-study positions. If I am looking for a work-study student, it will be listed in the individual program description or posted on Arctos’s facebook page and instagram account. However, we are always open to proposals for partial trade. If you or someone on your behalf has a professional skill or resources that you’d like to trade, please approach us with a specific proposal, and we will let you know if that is a service or item that we could use at this time. You’re welcome to pitch anything you have to offer: carpentry, bodywork, housecleaning, CSA shares, graphic design, videography, raw honey, landscaping, etc. When we accept trade, it’s typically for 20-50% of the cost of a program, or up to full cost of a one-day offering, with the remainder paid with money.