For Morgan Witham, Isle au Haut was always “just on the horizon.” Growing up on Little Deer Isle, she says, “Isle au Haut was just always there. Whenever we were going home to Deer Isle, I’d look out over Caterpillar Hill, see Isle au Haut and think, `we should visit there.’ But we never actually did. It seemed pretty far: in childhood geography, even the 16 miles between Little Deer Isle and Stonington loomed large. Plus, it was in the other direction. We always headed towards the mainland when we went off-island. ”
But this September, Witham finally made it to Isle au Haut — not for a visit, but to begin as the Willoughby I. Stuart Island Fellow, placed with the Isle au Haut School and the Revere Memorial Library.
Witham is the first Island Fellow to serve on Isle au Haut, and her fellowship completes the Institute’s goal of placing a fellow with each of the year-round island communities. And while they were the last community to request a fellow, once Morgan arrived, it didn’t take long for Isle au Haut to use her skills. This September, there was no lead teacher on-island as the recently hired teacher was required to fulfill the terms of her current contract on the mainland before moving to Isle au Haut. So for a month, Witham and the two ed-techs ran the school, implementing lesson plans sent from the mainland each day.
Witham had previously worked in schools in Sullivan, Winter Harbor and Gouldsboro, and envisioned returning to teaching after she completed her Master’s thesis in American and New England Studies at the University of Southern Maine. She had not anticipated working in a one-room schoolhouse and had never before worked with such young, or with so few, students.
“It’s really hard to grasp the idea of a one-room school.” she said. “You always read about it, in the Little House books or Anne of Green Gables, and it seems to work so well and to be so quaint. And then you get here and wonder how you are going to teach seven kids at such different levels, many of whom need very specific attention.”
Adding to these new challenges, Witham has the difficult task of leading two daunting subjects; health and physical education.
Physical education is particularly difficult.
“You look at the lesson plans for phys-ed, and the first direction is `split into groups of ten,’ so that’s not going to work. And then the kids are so rough sometimes. There are six boys and they are very physical: I’m having a little trouble trying to explain to them that they can’t get hurt when I’m in charge.”
So Witham is developing a more varied curriculum than might normally be associated with gym class. Drawing from a background in theater, which she studied at Grinnell College in Iowa and practiced in productions at The Grand in Ellsworth, Witham has begun a ballet unit — somewhat to the dismay of six of the seven students in the class — to teach a focus on body control. This, she hopes, will lead to a decrease in the “always accidental” pushing and shoving that seemed to occur in previous gym classes.
If successful, and the students follow the rules that they brainstormed and signed (in red ink) into a “behavior contract,” then they can move to “stage combat.” While seemingly a dubious choice of exercises if the goal is to encourage more “gentle” behavior, Witham insists that the unit will teach valuable lessons: “the most important aspect of stage combat is working with, not against, your partner.”
Only when the students demonstrate ability to control themselves and their bodies — and work together collaboratively, not antagonistically — can they proceed to controlling objects like balls, bats, and the more traditional array of physical education props.
“In other words, I just really want to want to make sure that they don’t hurl things at each others’ heads and get hurt,” Witham says
But aside from the challenges of gym class and the abnormal start to the school year, things are going very well on Isle au Haut. Witham has high praise for the community, which has welcomed her to numerous potluck suppers — “there are some amazing cooks out here!” she says — and weekly viewings of “Grey’s Anatomy.” She laments having missed “Moosefest,” a smorgasbord of foods all made with the moose that a resident bagged this hunting season, when she had to travel to Portland for family commitments. And she proudly reports that her compost pile has attracted the cutest deer family on the island.
“Everything is just slower and more deliberate out here,” she says. “If I’m having pizza for dinner, I make the dough. It’s wonderful.”
Morgan Witham is very glad that she made it out to Isle au Haut.
Cyrus Moulton is knowledge management project coordinator at the Island Institute.