O U T H E R E I N T H E R E A L W O R L D
Going Back to School
by Eva Murray
This year, three students start school on Matinicus Island. If you think that means the teacher won’t have much to do, consider that one of them is in 1st grade, one in 5th, and one in 8th. That means one is beginning to read, one is just transitioning to being “a big kid” and developing independence, and one is thinking about the reality of leaving home for high school off-island next year. There will be plenty to do.
The kids from Matinicus Island have hung up their Grundens, parked their golf carts and four-wheelers, and got around their last chocolate-chip cookie ice cream sandwiches of the summer. Most of their friends, unfortunately, have left for the winter; these buddies and playmates might manage to come back out to the island for long weekends, but their day-to-day routine of school has been shifted to the mainland and the world of big yellow buses, lunch lines, and locked doors. One family has moved to an island off Portland, and the older student there will have a daily commute on the ferry, a trip which most of the Casco Bay kids enjoy. The realities of economics and health care have forced several families with children away from Matinicus over the past couple of years, and our current school population is a pair of siblings with island native heritage and a bright, beautiful little girl whose parents work here.
It’ll bounce back. At least it always has before.
Our little scholars endure none of that foolishness about school starting in August, at any rate, and there is no chance of preseason sports practice to drag the team-player types into regimented mornings a week or two ahead of the rest (actually, there are no team sports at all, making this a very odd place to grow up). Island kids start school after Labor Day (“as God intended,” says a neighbor). Since this community cannot guarantee a summer rental for the teacher anyway, teachers usually being itinerant types and rarely situated such as to have island homes of their own, there is no point in opening school in August; some pay-by-the-week neighbor is likely still occupying the teacher’s berth. It used to be that Matinicus teachers rented the parsonage for ten months after the last volunteer summer minister had left. In 1987, when I arrived here as the teacher, I was fed and boarded at the home of Harriet and Warren Williams, from whose spare bedroom I could hear the harbor bell buoy, until they could pry out the preacher. The minister that month was a fellow from somewhere up Bangor way and they say he just wouldn’t leave. The church clerk didn’t know whether it was because he loved this island (although he never came back,) or because he wasn’t looking forward to the boat ride (I don’t recall the weather,) or if perhaps he thought these folks still needed more churching (don’t get me started.)
Our one room, kindergarten-through-8th grade school is as normal as the day is long to the handful of students who show up each morning and to the generations who have gone before (including my two), yet island parents sometimes find themselves subjected to a barrage of interrogation about the very idea, and not all of it is what you might call open-minded. The prevailing mythology out there still seems to be that children cannot possibly learn their multiplication tables unless they are lined up with dozens of others their same age in a large building with institution-green painted cinderblock hallways. That is absolute nonsense, of course, as most anybody who has attended a small school can attest. In fact, if a student is motivated and interested in some favorite subject he can get himself years ahead in a tiny school, assuming he has a sympathetic teacher. A good teacher, flexible and creative, is the making of the place. On the other hand, if Little Suzie and ol’ Mrs. Haddock can’t seem to get along, nine years together would be an awfully long sentence for the both of them, and thus a customary term limit is respected. Teaching on this particular island is nobody’s career.
A couple of years ago we were pleased to receive a visit from Betty Heald, the Matinicus teacher from 1963, now living in Lincolnville. At the time we realized that I had been the teacher exactly half-way between her term and the current year, with 24 years between her tenure and mine and another 24 between me and Mr. Duncan, that year’s teacher. Comparing notes, it seemed as though my 1987 classroom had more in common with the mid-1960’s than it had with the present, with the notable exception of indoor toilets and electric lighting in the schoolroom. Talking with Mrs. Heald I discovered that there was more similar than different between our experiences, and although the physical plant had changed, little had changed in terms of the children’s—or the teacher’s—daily lives. The big difference between my teaching experience and now is of course the Internet. The sense of isolation one feels in a tiny island school has been knocked way back, and you really have to dwell on it if you want to feel cut off from the world. Outer island students work together online, they have book groups on Skype, and they talk—or type—to each other at will. Everybody posts photos of the first day of school on Facebook. The kids from islands up and down the coast of Maine see each other’s new shoes. These children are all friends now anyway, having been on field trips together and having visited each other’s islands over the years. Say what you like about the technology (and I sometimes have something quite uncalled-for and smart-mouthed to say,) but it really does make the small group of island school kids feel just a little less small.