What does it mean to be an islander? What defines island culture, community, and interpersonal experiences? How do island students learn about their culture, and how can they pass on their knowledge to outsiders? Moreover, what happens when college students attending a prominent liberal arts institution enter in collaboration with elementary students attending a one-room island schoolhouse?
Anne Henshaw, Director of Bowdoin’s Coastal Studies Center, has been pursuing the answers to these questions. This past spring she taught a course on the Anthropology of Islands for Bowdoin College. Her intention was for students to “examine the powerful sense of cultural identity that islanders share, and the many challenges and opportunities they face in an age of globalization and limited resources.” Recognizing students could optimize their educational experience with first-hand learning Professor Henshaw designed the course as a service-learning project. Students taking the course would spend part of their semester working outside the classroom via a collaborative community service project.
Desiring an island community to collaborative with, Professor Henshaw contacted Mike Felton, Educational Outreach Programs Officer for the Island Institute and a Bowdoin graduate. Felton recommended Cliff Island, in Casco Bay, due to its proximity to Bowdoin and the island teacher’s high interest in collaborating.
Judy MacVane, the schoolteacher for Cliff’s one-room schoolhouse, was interested in working with the Bowdoin course for several reasons. A long time educator and island resident, MacVane recognized the social benefits of college students interacting with her elementary students. Bowdoin student Mary Stevens would later write in her field journal, “I am beginning to become aware of what our presence on the island means to these kids, broadening their horizons. Just as we are learning something from them about the nature of island living, they are also benefiting form us socially. I feel like this is going to be an interaction in the truest sense.”
In addition, MacVane had already begun a community service project with her students for which the Bowdoin students could provide clear support. The school was trying to bring LobsterTales, an Island Institute supported educational program, to Cliff Island. LobsterTales tracks lobsters from fishermen to consumers, and includes a website – www.lobstertales.org – where visitors can learn about the communities involved.
MacVane was intrigued by the educational possibilities of the project. Her students could use the site as an educational resource. If the community joined LobsterTales, Cliff students would also need to research and design a Cliff Island community website linked to their community page.
“The LobsterTales website will be of enormous value to Cliff Island,” Bowdoin student Cotton Estes wrote in her field journal. “If nothing else, it will bring reality to the great distances to which their small community actually extends. The smallness of Cliff in contrast to the spatial extent of the lobstering industry is a striking juxtaposition.”
Working with the Island Institute and Cliff lobstermen, MacVane began the initial stages of the project in the winter. Despite her efforts and interest, however, the project remained dauntingly large for a single teacher to carry out successfully. After initial discussions, Professor Henshaw and MacVane determined the LobsterTales project would be an ideal collaboration between the Cliff Island School and the Bowdoin anthropology course. Bowdoin students could help Cliff students research and document the cultural, historical, economic and scientific components of the Cliff Island community for their website. While the Cliff students would create the content, the Bowdoin students would actually build the website. The combined project would provide numerous opportunities for each group to learn and support each other. Still, with small class sizes – five Bowdoin students and seven Cliff students – the workload for both groups would be heavy. MacVane and Henshaw never hesitated though, recognizing the benefits of such collaboration would be powerful for all involved.
Thus, the collaboration between Cliff Island and Bowdoin College began. Four times from February through May, the small anthropology class from Bowdoin trekked out to Cliff Island on the early morning ferry. Bowdoin student Eliza Lende described the first trip in her field journal:
“We sleepily rolled into the ferry terminal, hats pulled down over our ears and boxes of donuts for the Cliff Island children in our hands. It’s cold this morning and early. Really early, 4:50 a.m. early. This is our first of four visits out to Cliff, where over the course of the semester, we will be creating a web page for the Island Institute with the seven K-5th graders of the Cliff Island School. Today we aren’t really sure what to expect. The plan is to spend some time exploring the island with the children as our tour guides, learning about the people, places and things that make Cliff what it is in their eyes. We also will be trying to try to paint a clear picture of the project for both the Cliff Island students and ourselves.”
While the Bowdoin students were acclimating to the culture of Cliff Island, their presence intrigued the elementary students. Lende described the first meeting as an exciting event. “Even though there is still a good forty-five minutes until the school bell will ring,” she wrote in her field journal, “I can see anxious children peaking through the windows. They are running in circles around on the porches and trying to sneak glimpses of us. I am reminded about what a big deal for them it must be, to have older college students from the mainland spending time in their classroom. Our class has almost doubled the total number of people in the school. And we brought donuts, a novelty that is not overlooked by the kids. Finally the bell rings and the students pour in, a combination of shy and excited, but all eager to show us everything they know.”
Indeed, Cliff students worked to hard to teach the Bowdoin students about their island community. They took them on long walks around the island, introducing the Bowdoin students to Cliff while telling them many creative and historical stories about the area. Each outing was an opportunity for the elementary students to act as experts, educating their older colleagues. However, the Bowdoin students often learned the most simply by traversing the island with a local resident, thereby experiencing things normally inaccessible to outsiders.
Kim Stevens wrote about one such experience when she went on a photo tour of the island with a third grader:
“We appointed [him] to lead us… since he likes both taking pictures as well as playing tour guide. As we searched for buoys, we passed Billy O’Reilly painting his boat, The Easy Rider, readying it for the upcoming lobstering season. We stopped and chatted. Billy O’Reilly showed us his buoys and lobstering equipment while [the third grader] jumped around on the boats in his yard. It amazes me how open the islanders can be about personal property, how Billy just told us stories and didn’t even scold [him] for jumping around on his things. There is no public land on the island, so not only does that deter day-trippers, but it also means that someone privately owns every acre. Perhaps this is why people become so laid back about these sorts of things; it would be virtually impossible to maintain rigid boundaries in such a small space where people are bound to stumble onto your property all of the time. It would be needlessly wasted effort; something that Billy didn’t have time to expend as he busily readied his boat for the season.”
Concurrently, the Bowdoin students worked with the Cliff students, teaching interviewing skills, helping them research different components of the web page, and gently guiding them towards a well-designed final project. As the semester progressed, the teams developed thorough information for the historical, geographical, economic, cultural, and ecological components of the web page.
By the end of the term, the project was completed. The Cliff Island community website can be viewed online at www.lobstertales.org. Although the site is thorough and coherent, both MacVane and Professor Henshaw stress it is still ‘in-progress’. In fact, both educators are extending the collaboration beyond the end of the academic year. “I am planning a training session here at Bowdoin with Judy and other islanders so that they can update and edit the web site remotely,” Professor Henshaw wrote recently. “It is important to keep in mind that my students helped create the site structure, but content for the site is still evolving and [is] for the islanders to determine for themselves.”
Retrospectively, both the Bowdoin and Cliff students acknowledge the project was demanding and challenging. However, it was also deemed an overwhelming success. Cliff students learned high-level research and interview skills from their college counterparts, while acting as local experts for their own community. Bowdoin students, however, remained conscientious of the skills the elementary students already possessed.
“While we were attempting to instill the goals of a college education within the kids, and to help them with their socializing skills, I think at times, we lost sight of the talents that they already possessed,” Stevens wrote in her field notes:
“Resourcefulness, innovation and freethinking ability: aren’t these the qualities that we lament are lacking in American children today? Aren’t these the traits that college professors spend painstaking hours attempting to cultivate in their students who, despite their conventional intellectual attributes, often have difficulty thinking outside of the box? The Cliff Island students are miles ahead of the average student when it comes to the capacity for creative thought. Surely something can be learned from the Cliff Island model.”
The Bowdoin students agree they learned a great deal from the Cliff Island students throughout the experience. Lende concluded in her field journal, “As anthropologists, we came to the island to learn about the children’s understanding of lobstermen, and of their home. We came to teach the kids how to be anthropologists too, and conduct interviews. Although we spent time teaching the students and guiding them, the Cliff Island students ended up teaching us just as much, more really, than we left behind.”