Jessie Campbell '07 learns lessons in self-reliance, teaching in Monhegan Island's one-room schoolhouse

Story and photos by Marc Glass (Spring 2008 issue)

After a day of teaching the eight students who comprise the entire enrollment at Monhegan School, Jessie Campbell ’07 often walks a short jaunt to the island’s east-facing rocky cliffs. (At only 1.7 miles long by about a half a mile wide, the island offers jaw-dropping ocean views for a stroll in any direction.) At her back lies the central coast of Maine—some 12 nautical miles and an hour-long ferry ride to the west. To the east, there’s nothing but the Atlantic all the way to the Azores.

To Campbell’s way of thinking, the isolation means her classroom must be all the more inclusive. And the proof is in how she conducts morning meeting. Each of the six boys and two girls, ages 4 to 12, sits around a table and listens attentively as the details of childhood island life are shared in earnest terms. When each finishes reporting, he or she turns to the left, shakes hands with a classmate and says, “Good morning!” with gusto. Thus, in a one-room schoolhouse that’s never locked, the themes of respect and community are established for the day.

Apples are hard to come by on the island, but that doesn’t stop Campbell’s students from showing their appreciation.

“They usually bring me dessert, a plate of brownies or blueberry cake when they come back to school after lunch break,” Campbell said. “One of them wrote me a letter that said, ‘P.S. You’re doing great.’ I was amazed the student somehow knew I needed to hear that. I don’t have the option of receiving positive reinforcement from fellow teachers.”

By majoring in elementary education at UMF, Campbell fulfilled state of Maine teacher certification requirements for grades K through 8. Little did she anticipate that she would be teaching nearly the entire span in a single classroom when she graduated. While most first-year teachers thrive under the guidance of an assigned mentor teacher, Campbell’s closest support, her superintendent, visits but once a month. As the only teacher at Monhegan School, her grade book covers all traditional school subjects, including art, music and physical education.

Anyone who’s spent any time teaching knows pupils can sometimes behave like predators in the presence of an overworked first-year teacher, trying to find her way. How, then, do Campbell’s students treat their fledgling teacher, who must prepare and teach a multitude of lessons by subject and grade level?

“They’re fabulous. They’ve tried every learning activity I’ve given them and they’ve usually liked it,” said Campbell of her students, the children of lobstermen, fishermen and others who work the surrounding cold Atlantic waters. “They’ve been raised in a small, tight-knit community where they’ve come to see everyone as their teacher. They’ve only had each other growing up, and they’re going to be friends forever. We don’t have detention at the school. We sit down together and talk through any disagreements. It’s embedded in them to see the good in other people.”

By necessity Campbell employs cooperative learning techniques, involving, whenever appropriate, the older children in the teaching of their younger classmates. (The strategy benefits all her students, as veteran educators know one of the best ways for children to demonstrate mastery of learning is to teach their peers.) Despite the climate of cooperation she’s cultivated, Campbell said there are occasions when she’s completely on her own. She knew as much after she attended her first individualized education program meeting held for a student struggling with behavioral issues.

“The official state paperwork to record the minutes of the meeting and the goals of the learning plan has a space for a signature from the person responsible for carrying out the plan, the special education director,” Campbell said. “On Monhegan, that’s me. I signed it.”

Without the benefit of on-site mentoring from a veteran teacher, she turns to professors within the UMF elementary education program for wisdom and guidance.

“I call them my Ministry of Magic,” said Campbell, referring to the fictional governing body that oversees the United Kingdom’s magical community in the Harry Potter series of books. “If I need advice on a lesson plan, I can’t go to the faculty lounge in the school for help. I call my professors at UMF.”

Monhegan may be remote (school officials chartered a lobster boat to bring her to the island for the interview), but more than ocean separates her island teaching experience from what she encountered student teaching “in shore” (Monheganese for anyplace off island). She realized as much when she passed back the first set of spelling quizzes—all 100s.

“They tried to hand the quizzes back to me. One of them asked, ‘What do you want us to do with them?’ Learning isn’t about the grade for them. It’s about mastery. They don’t perform just to meet expectations. They delight in doing well just for themselves,” she said. “School is big for them. It’s social, it’s academic, it’s home for them.”

But making a home on Monhegan isn’t easy for a young, single teacher. Long before the ferry service from Port Clyde slows to three times per week by the end of October, the island shrugs off summer tourists to shelter its year-round population of 60. After “town” water is shut off in anticipation of the first frost, cisterns are necessary. The phone system is less than reliable, and contact with adults dwindles with the winter closing of a pizza joint down the road from Campbell’s two-bedroom rental.

“I used to go there for lunch while the kids went home to eat just to visit with the owners who spend summers on the island,” she said. “For someone for whom cooking isn’t a forte, the loss of good pizza is a big problem.”

Lest you think Campbell goes without, there is the venerable North End Market for food and supplies. Apart from the summer months, the market is open only a couple hours each day. “People just help themselves to what they need from the shelves and write down what they took on a slip of paper,” Campbell said. “We settle up at the end of the month.”

In her Carhartt rain suit (the only suit she happened to purchase for the school year) and her LaCrosse fishing boots (recommended by UMF Education Center custodian Alan Hart when he heard she was going to Monhegan), Campbell looks and acts every bit the native, ordering coal for her stove, purchasing supplies through the island-wide food co-op and helping to haul traps on the opening day of lobster season. But it’s clear that Campbell’s assimilation to island life is deeper. She practices, by necessity, an Emersonian ideal prized by islanders: self-reliance in society.

“People on the island will help you, but you need to try to do for yourself first. I think people have come to respect me for that,” she said. “The biggest reality check is that there aren’t the same cushions and supports I enjoyed at UMF. Out here, you have to learn to depend on yourself when you’re having that occasional bad day. The only person who can pick you up on Monhegan is yourself.”