Gluten Free Baking

Start baking your own gluten free baked goods! Students will learn to make a gluten free sourdough starter and use applesauce as an egg replacement for various recipes. Bake along or learn tips and tricks for baking gluten free cookies, cinnamon rolls, naan, muffins and scones.

Home Improvement for Sellers

Add value in the right place to sell faster for more money! Learn how to evaluate what improvements are necessary and find the fastest way to improve your curb appeal based on best practices in real estate, remodeling, and home staging.

Food Freedom

During this 6-week course, you will learn all about the macro and micronutrients that provide nourishment to your body. Which foods to eat and which to avoid for optimal health, the importance of digestion and how to improve it, Which fats improve your health, how to balance your blood sugar, how to read food labels. How to eat healthy on a budget. We will discuss different types of diets and how to determine which is right for you. Your instructor, Karen Davis, is a Certified Nutrition Specialist and is passionate about all things nutrition. Learn in a judgement-free, interactive style class.

Reiki Level 1

Are you curious about energy healing? Come learn this Japanese healing technique in a welcoming and fun environment! The intention is to create deep relaxation, to help speed healing, reduce pain, and decrease other symptoms you may be experiencing. Workshop will include a Reiki 1 attunement and a Reiki 1 certificate.

Barre Fusion

Enjoy a low impact, high energy, music-driven movement experience that blends the best of Dance, Pilates and Yoga. Strengthen and stretch the whole body with standing exercises using a barre (or chair back) and mat-based Pilates moves.

Collage from Your Junk Drawer

Recombine pieces of paper, photographs, fabric and other ephemera — both 2D and 3D — onto one surface to create an original image. Explore how collage can be a tool of visual expression, formal beauty or used for story-telling.

The Personal is Political: Art and Social Justice

Explore Portland through the protest art that local artists are currently making. Via mini-lectures, discussion, and your own experiments, we investigate what makes an artwork political, relevant and effective. Everyone is welcome.

Yoga in French and English

Yoga and French? Body and Mind? Let’s flow together! Enjoy Iyengar/Vinyasa yoga and learn some French. Taught by a native French speaker and longtime yoga teacher. All levels of French and yoga students are welcome.

History of Persia and Modern Day Iran

Learn about the fascinating history of the Persian Empire and modern-day Iran. This course explores the evolution of Persian civilization, including art, culture and historical events that influenced the course of Persian/Iranian history.

Improved Self Talk With Less Conflict

Is your self-talk full of conflicts and criticisms? Have you tried to “think positively” without a lasting effect? Discover tools and strategies to shift your thoughts quickly, resolve internal conflicts and take new perspectives on old conflicts.

Did you know that experts believe more than will require computer skills and technology knowledge as soon as 2020? If you’ve had a job in the past ten years you’re much more likely to believe it’s 100%, but who are we to argue with the U.S. Bureau of Labor? This statistic might be staggering, but not when you realize how quickly technology has infiltrated every moment of our lives. In China they are even using computers for a social credit system! Yikes! At we are not using artificial intelligence quite yet – but we DO recognize everyone uses computers, and sometimes we could all use a little refresher to improve efficiencies and make our lives easier.

Tech in the Home Office or the Job Market

You would expect to need computer knowledge if you’re training to work in tech, but there are a wide range of personal activities and jobs that require a significant level of computer proficiency.

• Small business owners require a variety of digital literacy – from Quickbooks to social media technology
• Medical and health professionals are now responsible for managing spreadsheets related to budgeting, reporting and compliance – as well as handling secure electronic health records on computers or with handheld devices
• Many entry-level or gateway positions require employees to be versatile with spreadsheet, word processing and presentation software

What Are the Most In-Demand Computer Skills?

With jobs that don’t require computer access becoming increasingly obsolete, computer skills that support productivity and collaboration are in high demand. Many organizations also consider intermediate to advanced knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite programs an asset – but many of the formulas and functions are now transferable to products made by Microsoft competitors. Consider the following courses to improve, refresh or elevate your computer-related skill set:

• Word: The premier word processing platform, ideal for creating everything from legal documents to invoices, business cards to college papers.
• Excel: Creating simple spreadsheets or complex numerical analyses requires use of Excel – especially for creating actionable reports.
• PowerPoint: Visual communication is extremely powerful, especially as businesses expand globally. PowerPoint allows you to create colorful and engaging presentations for meetings or seminars.
• Calendars: Whether it’s Outlook, iCal or Google Calendar – these platforms are used around the world both in desktop, web and mobile versions – and they’re increasingly performing sophisticated actions.

Not every job will require broad-scale office productivity software. There are plenty of specialty talents that require increased knowledge of software that can enhance your earning potential, too.

Desktop Publishing and Graphic Design Software

Printed and digital marketing and communications materials are a highly viable way to share your message with the world. Increasingly, many office roles require a basic understanding of graphic programs from the Adobe Creative Cloud. .

• Photoshop is advanced photo editing software that allows you to create nuanced designs by restoring, editing and manipulating images.
• Illustrator provides highly detailed, vector artwork that is based in mathematics and can be effectively scaled larger and smaller without losing image quality.
• InDesign is an exceptional desktop publishing platform that integrates well with Photoshop and Illustrator to create cohesive, multi-page marketing and advertising materials such as magazines, banners and brochures.

While some graphic design professionals choose to use either Illustrator or Photoshop for their primary design platform, a provides you with highly marketable skills for the future. In fact, some of the most in-demand skills include creating online advertising campaigns and launching social media programs.

Where will your future jobs take you? When you gain a solid foundation with computer skills and technology classes, you can acquire a type of agility that prepares you for whatever type of project you encounter in the future. Learn more about improving your computer skills with ˿����Ƶ’s comprehensive list of computer and technology courses.

Tasha Harmon, Instructor of Tools for Getting Unstuck

We all want to make good choices that will lead us to fulfilling work and lives, but how do we know we are on the right road?

We are often told that we need to know our life purpose or at least to have a goal and a plan. We all know people who had a clear sense of their life purpose early on – folks who had a clear calling. For them, that’s a good way to steer. But my own response to the what’s your life purpose question is “only one?”

For many of us, it’s not about finding a clear and simple single calling. And having a goal and a plan is great, but how do you choose a goal that you can be sure will bring you a life you love? How do you steer to that goal as the challenges and opportunities keep shifting around you, or when you learn something that makes you wonder if that goal you set is the right one?

What are core values?
We want signs to tell us we are moving in the right direction, but often there is no clear path in front of us that feels right. In truth, we make the path by walking. We create the future we want in the present, once choice at a time. Knowing whether we are creating the right path doesn’t require a clear picture of where we are going, it requires a clear sense of our core values, and of what is happening when we feel great about who we are being. Values – discovery, connection, focus, engagement, honesty, hard work, joy, listening, order, spontaneity, authenticity, and respect – are not principles, ethics, or expectations; they are the things that make us most ourselves.

When we live in ways that are consistent with our core values, we feel fulfilled.
The best way I know to make decisions is asking will doing x move me more deeply into living my core values, or away doing so? You can also get a better sense of why particular decisions are difficult by listing your core values and rating (using a scale of 1-10) how much each option honors and supports you in living into each of those core values. Sometimes decisions are hard because there is a big conflict between our shoulds and our core values. Sometimes they are hard because each choice support some of our core values and not others. Each of these patterns will show up on the list. If it’s the latter, then you can get curious about ways to honor the core values that might otherwise be negated or neglected in a given choice.

I invite you to make a list of your core values, being careful to leave off any words that make you tense up or feel constricted (those are shoulds, not core values). Once you have a list, play with it, explore what those values feel like in you and your life. Then you’ll have enough of a sense of them to turn to them as signposts on the journey toward creating a life you’ll love, now and in the future.

Tasha Harmon is a co-active coach, trained by the Coaches Training Institute, and a facilitator, living in Portland. She teaches the “Tools For Getting Unstuck” workshop at PCC’s Southeast Campus.