At the recent Sustainable Island Living conference and Island Teachers Conference island residents from Maine’s fifteen year-round island communities were joined by visitors from the U.S. Virgin Islands, Prince Edwards Island and the Downeast Coast of North Carolina. All came together to share ideas about how to ensure a vibrant future for islands, and who better to talk this out with than other islanders who know implicitly that the world would be a better place if everyone lived like they were islanders.
The sense of boundaries, the limited nature of resources, the interdependence and independence of island living all came through as themes in this year’s discussion. There was also a growing recognition that connections beyond any one island or archipelago are necessary for long-term sustainability. A panel of young islanders pointed out that they see new residents as an important part of sustaining their communities. They saw the animosity toward seasonal residents as a thing of the past. They wanted more people moving to their islands and enrolling children in island schools.
We are all aware that Maine’s islands and coast attract many people who migrate here for the summer from islands where they overwinter around the world. Those that I meet through the Island Institute often care about the island communities that they live in abroad, and bring the concerns and work of sustaining those communities with them to Maine. Many retire here and their children marry into Maine’s island communities.
With this in mind, I found myself this past summer amongst a group of people with ties to both Maine islands and St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands. I had been invited by members of the school board for the Gifft Hill School in St. John to participate in a portion of a long-range planning retreat for the school.
St. John covers approximately 20 square miles of land that is accessed primarily by a ferry that runs from St. Thomas to the island town of Cruz Bay, one of two hubs of economic activity on the island. The population of St. John is just over 4000 making it nearly four times more populous than Maine’s largest year-round island community, Vinalhaven, which comes in at 1200.
The Gifft Hill School has a mission of “opening hearts, minds and doors.” This mission is, remarkably, the exact same mission that you will find at the Islesboro Central School here in Maine. The school is roughly 35 years old, and has built itself up from seven students at its inception to roughly 90 students currently in grades k-12, many of whom benefit from scholarships. It provides the only island high school because the public schools stop at eighth grade.
Those from the Gifft Hill School were eager to learn about how island schools in Maine place each child first, recruit young families, engage with the philanthropic community, deploy distance learning technology, all while building on the strengths of their place in the world rather than talking about what they don’t have.
At the Island Teachers Conference we learned that the same issues facing Maine’s island schools and Gifft Hill School in St. John are a microcosm of the challenges for education in the state of Maine as a whole. What was even more exciting was to learn that the state of Maine is looking to overhaul education from the student on down by shifting to individualized standards-based learning. This approach to education places each student on an individualized track where they can pursue any interest to its fullest. A student who loves math can work through math courses at her own pace, and same goes for social studies, English, language arts, or any other aspect of the curriculum.
Islanders were stunned, excited, and perhaps even a bit concerned to hear the state department of education saying that the way forward for our state was to do exactly what island schools have been doing in the classroom for decades—place each child first and recognize the role of the community while individualizing education.
Rob Snyder is executive vice-president of the Island Institute based in Rockland, Maine.