A friend who moved to Maine sent me this lovely post about the first day of school at the two-room Ashley Bryan school, where children from two neighboring islands join to form a tiny school. It is an exciting day for everyone, children, parents, and community members. Even Ashley Bryan, Maine artist, was there to greet the children.
“It has become a tradition for parents and townspeople to gather in the schoolyard as students arrive for their first day at the two room Ashley Bryan School. Everyone is there to wish them well, to see who the new students are, and to feel good about our special island school and its community support.
“The crew from Great Cranberry arrives by boat and begins the short walk up from the dock. There are 6 students from Great Cranberry and one teacher and one aide who travel by boat every morning. This morning there were also all of the teachers for Art, Music, Phys. Ed and French. The principal was there too. It made for a solid group of educational energy surrounding the school. The inter island students were all happy to reconnect after a busy summer. All around the school yard parents of students, and other community members want to celebrate what a unique school we have.”
There are 16 students in grades K-8, representing every grade but 7. The pictures evoke a foggy island day.
“Teachers Lauren and Audrey asked people to exuberantly make suggestions of goals for the year and then Ashley Bryan read them out and worried that the students will have to work too hard to learn all of these things! I don’t know if you can zoom in on the list, but the suggestions are things like: Laughter, building, discovery, adventure, wonder, fun, awesomeness, cooperation and friendship.”
The children gathered for a group photograph. Then everyone gathered for a community photograph.
Think of it. Somewhere in our great nation, there are remote communities like this where no one worries about VAM and all the other nonsense now raining down on teachers and children. Arne won’t be closing Ashley Bryan. Nice goals for the year.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Interesting that the goals suggested by the community are the opposite of those espoused by corporate culture. Gates and his corporate cohorts want to turn schools into corporations like theirs.
YES, indeed! I taught in Jamestown Elementary, mountain schoolhouse. BEST ever! Taught families of childrens. We co-created curriculum, which was far beyond what is in CCSS and our own district curriculum guide (when there were curriculum guides rather than repressive standards and high-stakes testing). It was JOYFUL.
Nice that this still exists. This Maine community should be a beacon for education!
On another note… Here is a companion piece from Valerie Strauss “Answer Sheet” … I hope this teacher from OH makes it to Congress…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/09/20/why-a-kindergarten-teacher-is-running-for-congress/
And on another note… WAY TO GO CAROL BURRIS! Just watched you no nonsense chat in regards to common core on Sunday Morning!!!! Way to go!
I fondly remember first days of school like that — from my own childhood and from my own teaching career.
We will beat back the reformist Kraken and defeat the idiot economists and psychometricians and recreate joyful schools where children are celebrated and encouraged to explore.
I still, despite the Florida madness, sing and dance and laugh with my children and I will do so until I am taken away. The bullying from reformists simply strengthens my resolve.
We must. Our future depends upon it, and so do our souls.
Hooray for the Ashley Bryan school!
“Laughter, building, discovery, adventure, wonder, fun, awesomeness, cooperation and friendship”
It sounds like what happens in a Montessori classroom every day: a community of multi-age students free to learn and explore.
Aud,
Keep up the good work. Maybe you could start a foundation – Sand Dollars for education. you can count on my support.
Contrasting these lovely photographs with the accounts of first days from Newark, Philly, Chicago and LA brings tears of rage. All children deserve to be supported in these goals and surrounded by community at schools like this one.
As an author and columnist, I spend most of my time alone in front of a computer, so one of the two personal development things I commit to every year is a writing retreat for published kid lit authors, illustrators and editors called Kindling Words. It is craft focused, inspirational, and allows me to spend time with my colleagues in the kid lit world and compare notes. One year, Ashley Bryant was our speaker, and even as someone who makes my living with words, it’s hard for me to describe how incredible he was. Just sitting in the lobby of the hotel one morning he starting declaiming poetry and I was transfixed – it brought tears to my eyes with the wonder and beauty. Our kids need more Ashley Bryant and less Arne Duncan.
But, but, but, these parents need school choice, they need more innovation and relief from the status quo and the entrenched public school bureaucracy, don’t you know. This island community is a prime target for a Mandarin Chinese immersion charter school, for example. (sarcasm alert). It’s a beautiful, idyllic setting; bravo to them.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Reminds me of my own primary education in the ’50’s, in a rural village bordering a university town. Grades 1-3 in a 1-room schoolhouse built in 1823: 20 students ranging in ability from the a professor’s kid and a high school teacher’s kid to three little unschooled cousins of a local, whose dad had brought his brother’s family up from Appalachia. After lunch the 6yo’s napped on blankets while the teacher ran an arithmetic class for the 7’s and the most advanced 3rd-graders ran reading circles for the 8’s. Our futures held everything one might expect, from professors to engineers to teachers and office-workers to construction workers and soldiers. We all learned to read, write, and do basic arithmetic in that school.
Later in a further-flung rural area, the community organized a nursery school for my sibs’ generation (early ’60’s). Each family put in hours cleaning up; hired a good teacher, and began a long-running summer country fair staffed by our families to pay for it.
For both of those ventures, and the school described in the post, the motley elements of the community are united by the goal of educating their children and the willingness to spend many unpaid hours to make it happen. The education of the children is enriched by the variety of the community and its will in coming together to help each other.
It seems to me the lesson is that we lose a great deal– nearly everything– in the attempt to work economies of scale. Hands-on community initiative, labor and participation could be the ingredient that cannot be done without.
Such a good example of what cooperative learning can be. These children are very lucky.
Will they be administering PARCC?
Yes, seriously, I want to know – are they left alone to be an amazing school or are they forced to be part of the madness???
Annat, it sounds as though this little school on an island in Maine was forgotten by the feds. Aren’t they lucky?
I just spoke with Audrey, one of the teachers at Ashley Bryan school. She has to give the Smarter Balanced Assessments. She’s preparing to host a camp-out for all the smaller island schools this week.
Robert Thurston,
Sorry to hear that Common Core and SBAC has reached that little island school.
The last time I spoke with Audrey, the teacher at the school, PARCC had not yet been the testing instrument. She did, however, worry about the testing requirements of NCLB. I think at the time she had to take her students to the mainland to comply with Maine State policies.
Many suburban and rural Maine communities are asking for a delay of PARCC.