Do you remember going on school field trips as a kid – the excitement of heading somewhere new and the novelty of a school day outside of the regular classroom? For a group of one and two-room island schools called the Outer Island Teaching and Learning Collaborative (TLC for short), the concept of field trips is raised to an even higher level each fall with two multi-day events that bring students and families together, on an island and off.
The TLC is a 15-year-old collaboration coordinated by Island Institute to support the smallest island schools and help reduce isolation and increase learning and fun. Since its inception, in-person field trips have been a critical aspect of the TLC, enabling the TLC community to come together multiple times during the school year. The trips help strengthen the connections that students, teachers, and families have with each other by getting together in person both in the fall and in the spring. Because they are fortified with the lasting energy that being in-person provides, these friendships stay strong throughout the long winter months due to multiple touch points each week on Zoom.
In mid-September, dozens of TLC-ers from Chebeague, Cranberry Isles, Frenchboro, and Monhegan descended on Cliff Island in Casco Bay for Inter Island Event, a 2-night camping trip held annually on an outer island. Inter Island Event has been going on for 30+ years, long before the TLC, and is a wonderful grass-roots tradition that is unique every time, based on the hospitality of the host island’s people and places. It had been many years since Cliff Island had hosted Inter Island Event and they put on quite a show, in that they literally arranged for two incredible professional music performances, one on each night! The first was by island resident and world-renowned fiddler Bonnie Rideout, with her mom accompanying her on piano, and the second was with Robert Slyvain, a dynamic Acadian musician and teacher. Attending concerts is a rare treat for outer islander students and everyone had a great time enjoying the power of listening to and making music together.
During the day, we were busy with a poetry-writing workshop and art projects, exploring the island’s inter-tidal zones, eating great food and snacks prepared by our hosts, and playing team games. Sports that involve multiple players are not really possible for most TLC schools due to very small student enrollment, so to be able to play softball with two full teams and the perennial TLC favorite, capture the flag, was a really big deal! Cliff Island’s teacher, parents, and community members, including many kids, outdid themselves as our Inter Island Event hosts this year and we thank them for such a memorable gathering.
Buoyed by the energy of Inter Island Event, everyone returned to their own island and settled into the rhythm of the school year, which for TLC schools includes a lot of connecting virtually for weekly book groups, morning exercises, teacher meetings, and the occasional celebration, like our annual Halloween party! We also set our sights on gathering again in early November for our official TLC fall field trip. The TLC organizes two field trips each year, one in the fall and one in the spring. We travel all over the state of Maine and sometimes even further afield. For a number of years, we have been wanting to visit Gould Academy and the Bethel area and in early November, a group of over 60 of us from Cliff, Chebeague, Cranberry Isles, Isle au Haut, and Monhegan islands did just that!
Our friends at Gould Academy could not have been better hosts. We ate our meals in the dining hall which in itself is a big learning experience. TLC students either go home for lunch, or eat a bag lunch in the classroom, so learning how to navigate a school cafeteria along with lots of lovely, hungry high school students was definitely different. On campus, we toured the school farm and sugar shack, met with international students and learned about their home countries which included Spain, Japan, China, and Korea, did activities in the art room, and played team games inside their gym and on the field. It was very special to be an extended part of the Gould community for a short time and gave TLC families something to consider down the road when their children are approaching high school.
In addition to all that the Gould campus and people had to offer, we also loved spending time in the Town of Bethel. There were several highlights, one of which was having a pool party at the Bethel Inn. Like being able to play pick-up team sports, access to a swimming pool, especially one full of island friends was a rare treat, as was performing in youth open mic night at the local theater, which several TLC students really enjoyed. And perhaps best of all was the time we spent at the Maine Mineral Museum. The museum exhibits and educational activities were so engaging and we learned a great deal. The museum has 5 billion-year-old meteorites that you can touch and even a chunk of Mars and the moon that you can hold in your hand. Amazing!
The academic and social learning opportunities that both the Inter Island Event and the TLC Fall Field Trip provide are one of the essential components of the high-quality educational experience that these tiny one-and-two-room island schools offer. It is a much bigger undertaking than a typical field trip and asks a lot of the students, teachers, families, and hosts, but the rewards are so worth it. With the TLC’s fall trip season complete, we are looking ahead to the spring field trip, which will be in mid-May. We will be based at Wolfe’s Neck Farm in Freeport where we will host a party in honor of the TLC being 15 years old! That trip, like all the ones that have come before it, promises to be a fantastic gathering. As one teacher sums it up,
“You can’t understand the profound positive nature of these field trips until you experience it in person.”
