Scott Sell is a study in perpetual motion. As the William Bingham Fellow for Rural Education on Frenchboro, his days are a dizzying sequence of activities that range from preschoolers’ sleeve-tugging demands to equally exhausting Internet research for a future telemedicine unit on the island. During the school year you can find Scott teaching music, art, physical education and writing to Frenchboro School’s 13 K-6 students, or reading stories to a rapt foursome of three-year-olds in the preschool program.
At other times, he might be down at the town office, transcribing the notes from a Board of Selectmen’s meeting, or at the library updating its collection. Maybe he’s giving one of his free weekly lessons in piano or guitar to a handful of budding musicians who are happily engaged in playing “loud, messy” rock `n roll. He might be out on the ballfield explaining bunt strategies to the baseball team he coaches…or helping a fisherman paint his boat… or organizing the town’s next Game Night…or playing the fiddle at a local get-together (he’s an accomplished musician on several instruments)…or, well, you get the idea.
If you’re lucky enough to catch Scott during one of the rare quiet moments when he stands outside on his porch, coffee mug in hand, watching kids swoop down the road on their bikes, you’ll see something else: pure contentment. This is a guy who loves every hectic minute of life on a small Maine island. Scott, a Connecticut native, arrived on Frenchboro after earning his B.A. in English, with a concentration in writing, from Goucher College in Maryland. He spent an intensive semester with the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies in Portland, conducting documentary fieldwork, interviewing and archiving.
Since September, Scott has immersed himself in Frenchboro’s unique year-round culture. The challenges and joys he once could only imagine now fill each day, and include finding his place in a tightly knit community. When asked about moments when he has sensed acceptance as someone who didn’t just “work” on the island, he takes an uncharacteristically long pause. “There have been a few dozen of those,” he finally replies, “mostly because everyone here has been so generous and welcoming.”
Recently, Scott has added “sternman” for the island’s oldest resident to his ever-growing job description. Before heading out at dawn on summer mornings, he joins a group of fishermen around John Lunt’s kitchen table, and learns about working waterfronts and resource-based economies from a whole new point of view. “I was never getting perspectives from the fishermen,” he says, “although I did get lots of ideas and opinions from teachers, parents and selectmen — to talk to them about the work they’re doing has been a wonderful thing as far as integrating me more fully into the town.”
Scott will begin his second year on Frenchboro this fall. He’s already planning a monthly coffee-house project where kids can share stories and songs; it’s a way to harness the creative energy that was on display at last March’s talent show. Music lessons will expand to include drums, and his growing band of future rock stars will clamor for even more time to “jam.” Between the classroom, town business, library and historical society work, and projects that haven’t even appeared on the horizon yet, Scott’s life will almost certainly continue at a non-stop pace. And that suits him just fine. q
Nancy Carter is vice president of knowledge management at the Island Institute.