Fairy Trees & Lobster Boats

And here are the real island girls on their boat ride to school.

Up until recently, my idea of a one-room schoolhouse came straight from Little House on the Prairie. Remember those big thugs in Farmer Boy who sat in the back of the classrooms, plotting to beat the snot out of their teacher while the terrified little kids sat up front? I remember being appalled when I read that part of the book as a child. Imagine being in first grade and having classmates who were already growing beards.

But the one-room schoolhouses that I visited on the islands put those old notions to shame. The teachers told me that the older kids, or “olders” as they call them, watch out for the “youngers,” and that the students relate to each other more like an extended family than simply classmates. The olders naturally assume a leadership role for the youngers, while the youngers are included in the olders’ activities. I actually saw this in action at one of the biggest island schools (17 kids total, in K-8th grades). After my presentation and some writing workshops, we went outside for recess, and I watched as one little boy took a spill on the playground. His face crumpled up as he got ready to wail. Instantly, several of the older kids swooped in and included the little boy into their game of Four Square. Crisis averted. A seasoned parent couldn’t have handled it better.

I suppose the school I was most curious about was the last one we visited, in which there were just two 8th grade boys. How on earth does that work, I wondered? Don’t the boys get bored of each other’s company? And what the heck does gym class look like?

In fact, the school operated very much like a larger school, with a structured, curriculum-driven routine. The two boys were both very bright and enthusiastic but as different from each other as chalk and cheese. Perhaps in a larger school they wouldn’t have been friends— one boy hunted in his spare time and wanted to become a lobsterman; the other boy was an inveterate reader, who had an eye toward moving to a city one day—but in the classroom they acted as a team. According to their teacher, one of the skills that kids in tiny schools develop is the ability to get along with others. When there are only two kids in the school, or even 50, there’s little room for petty conflicts to fester. You need to learn to work things out, which may arguably be one of the most important skills a person can acquire in school. And gym class? Well, team sports were clearly not on the menu, but a local man was in the process of teaching the boys croquet.

As for my pre-trip jitters . . . happily, I didn’t get seasick despite some rough seas. Even better, the islanders did not find any major blunders in my books. In fact, they were thrilled that one of my subplots dealt with a particularly knotty issue that nearly all Maine island kids struggle with: once children graduate from 8th grade, most will need to go to high school on the mainland. Although some children can commute, many can’t. That means that either the whole family has to move off the island or the child has to leave home. Some of the kids board with other families on the mainland or occasionally at the high school itself. Imagine being 14 years old and not only leaving your family, but also going to a school in which there are more kids in a single class than there were in your entire island school (and sometimes on the entire island itself). It is undoubtedly one of the most stressful transitions for young islanders and their families.

There were so many memorable moments on our trip, but one of my favorites happened on Frenchboro Island. The three little girls who comprise the entire student body at the Frenchboro Island School took us for a walk in the woods to show us their fairy houses. The woods were mossy and green, with rivulets wending through it. We carefully walked across wooden planks spanning shallow gullies while the girls chattered excitedly about their fairy houses. The two older girls showed us what they had built—a fairy town with its own post office and fairy general store. It was pretty impressive.

We started to head back to the school to do some writing when the littlest girl said that she wanted to show us her fairy house ,too. We followed her through the muck of damp, fallen leaves until she stopped at the stump of a tree.

“There it is,” she said.

I looked. Then I knelt down and looked harder, because I really wanted to see her fairy house.
But there was nothing there.

“Where is it?” I asked her.

“It’s right there,” she insisted, pointing fervently at a spot on the ground.

“I don’t see it,” I admitted.

“That’s because I haven’t built it yet,” she answered.

I smiled. Though this little girl had not yet mastered the art of tying her shoe, she had discovered one of the great secrets of writing—to vividly see the unseen. To conjure worlds out of thin air.