Frenchboro is a small fishing village clustered around Lunt’s Harbor on Outer Long Island, over eight miles off Bass Harbor Head Light. The 43 people that live here in the winter get three ferry trips per week, and there are no round trips, so when you are here, you stay here! Frenchboro School is in its 161st year with three students. I am the only seventh grader.
The remoteness of the island has many advantages, but it also has disadvantages. There are no medical services on our island. I remember the time I wanted to go down the big Dump Hill with an old rusty scooter I found. I got what I wanted, all right, because there was no one to stop me. In fact, there was no one even to see me. Suddenly, I had a big problem. How was I going to stop? I put my foot out on the road. Nope! That only burned the rubber off of my shoe. Instead, I lost traction and fell off on my face. Okay, so I got away with doing something foolhardy without a helmet, but I got hurt really badly and could not be brought to a hospital. The remoteness of the island can also work for or against any actual medical or dentist appointments. Getting on and off the island is challenging, and sometimes you have to spend three nights in a motel for a 20-minute doctor’s appointment. Of course, if you have a physical coming up or a shot, sometimes skipping it may seem like a good thing! If you keep putting it off, however, you may become sick. Beware! The dentist can be evil, but unfortunately toothaches might eventually come.
Remoteness from stores is also a good thing and a bad thing. Of course, we all save money by not being able to run to Wal-Mart or McDonald’s. But what if you need to pick up a birthday gift for your friend? Well, I guess you can’t because there just aren’t any stores here. Worse yet, what if it is my birthday?
School is exciting. There are hardly any students, so there are hardly any arguments. That is great, but the disadvantage is that I don’t have any peer relationships. With very few children in the school, we all get a great deal of individual attention, but I never get to do any group projects with other seventh graders. Although I don’t have peer relationships or group projects, I get extra attention for resource projects, computer time and reading. I love to read!
Last year, in sixth grade, I read over 7,000 pages. Although we have no team sports, we have yoga class twice a week, we roller blade in the basement at recess, we ice skate on the Fire Pond at night, and we always have the run of the whole island. Although we have no big cafeteria that serves hot lunches, we all have an hour each day to walk home to eat, and I’ll bet there aren’t many students whose teacher lets them make hot cocoa and popcorn on a regular basis. Although our school is one of the tiniest in the state or even in the country, it has the goodwill of many people. This year MBNA and the Island Institute have helped purchase accessories for my iBook and also arranged music lessons. I will be learning to play the violin!
My routine in school is a great one. I usually have two main subjects every day, so at the end of each week, I have accomplished much. Since I am in seventh grade, I have a laptop, a Mac OS X. I study quite a bit on it. Recently I have been looking up authors and doing research for an annotated bibliography on Pre-Columbian Native Americans. Since the beginning of the school year I have started a portfolio of my best work. It is getting quite full. I have many things in my favorite folders, Logical/Mathematical Intelligence and Visual/Spatial Intelligence. I have recently completed a Learning Style Inventory, and now I know where my weak points and my strong points are. I discovered why I do not like to take tests in the early morning. I am on target and really “on” in the afternoon, but in the morning I am known as the “grouchy scholar.”
Being the only seventh grader on the island is interesting all winter, but as you can see, it has many cons. In the summer when there is no school, life here is different from in the winter. There are more kids and people because this is such a beautiful place. Two-thirds of our island is owned by either The Maine Coast Heritage Trust or The Rockefeller Foundation. In the summer, we have hundreds of visitors from boats in the harbor. In the summer, we have a dockside restaurant, and the Museum is open. We can actually buy penny candy! My job in the summer is helping my grandparents run a Bed and Breakfast. I am a great cook!
As much as this island is isolated, it and my school have given me much throughout the years. In fact, my school is the island, and my island is the school. Each encompasses the other. For example, we can watch eagles fishing in the harbor from the school window. This is much better than a video or book on eagles! Another example is that my iBook screen saver consists of pictures of the 12 mosses I can identify here on Frenchboro. I love Frenchboro School and, when the time comes, I will be sad to leave it for ninth grade on the mainland.
Joe Charpentier is the only student in Grade 7 at the Frenchboro School. He wrote the original version of this article in the spring newsletter of the Maine Association of Middle Level Educators.