Town Meeting

The other night I was swimming. The water was salty and warm, and people were all around me. In the midst of the faces was the snout of an alligator floating, smacking its lips. I knew he was after me. I tried to swim away, but he grabbed my foot. I tried to wiggle out of my rubber boots, but I knew he would get me. And then I woke up.

Anxiety, right? What's the cause? Town Meeting. The great New England democratic process of deciding on the budget items for the town for the following year. On the warrant for this year's meeting: Whether or not to keep two teachers for the 2010-2011 school year. Having just eight students in grades K-8, I knew it would be an item that people would debate. Why do we need two teachers for just eight kids anyway?

My first year teaching here I was the only teacher for eight students. I had the support of a full time Ed. Tech, but I was the only teacher. That year I had students in grades 1, 3, 6, 7 and 8. I could fill up pages describing to you the stress, tears, frustrations, anxieties, struggles and joys from that year, but I will only say that I do not want to go back there again! So you can imagine my fear going into Town Meeting knowing that the debate on that warrant item would decide if I had a colleague to work with during next year or not. I decided I needed to speak about my opinion. I put together a speech. Basically I had one argument: The quality of the programs we offer at the school is at stake.

Currently we have two teachers teaching the K-8 range. With two teachers we are able to create an excellent young elementary program that looks, feels, and sounds like a young elementary program. The kindergarten group is practicing writing their letters, they're using pattern blocks and unifex cubes to learn basic math concepts, they're beginning to read little books, they're drawing pictures to go with stories they're creating and they have time during the day to play, make noise, dance, and sing. While they are busy developing a solid foundation, the second grade group is reading with each other or to the kindergarteners, practicing their reading fluency and their comprehension skills. They're learning spelling patterns and putting their language skills to work writing stories and illustrating their final drafts. During Math they are working on skip counting, finding patterns in the 100 chart, playing with symmetry, manipulating shapes with the same area to prove they take up the same amount of space, and practicing how to add and subtract two digit numbers.

In the classroom next door the middle school program looks, feels and sounds like a solid middle school program. Students are reading young-adult literature, analyzing theme and the author's use of literary devices. They're comparing characters and discussing character development. They're developing their writing skills, learning to write persuasive essays in response to literature and practicing creative techniques in their personal narratives and imaginary stories. In Science students are involved in inquiry. They're asking questions, developing hypotheses, testing their ideas with experiments and considering their results. They're building models to better understand complex concepts. In Social Studies they're engaged while they work together to develop projects that ultimately lead to community outreach. These projects often involve students' questions, research, discussion, creative and analytical writing, art, community service and public speaking. In Math the oldest students are learning pre-algebra skills, while the younger middle schoolers are working with fractions, probability, geometry, decimals, and more advanced calculations. To round out all of these activities, the students are using their laptops to connect with students on other islands. They're using programs like NoteShare and Skype to share and get feedback on their work, and they're making social connections to other middle schoolers, easing the social isolation they experience daily.

Now, can you imagine if these two distinctly different programs needed to happen at the same time, in the same classroom, with the same teacher running it all? The teacher would do the best she could, but I can tell you both programs would suffer and so would the students. And the teacher would suffer, too! Right now there are two of us to brainstorm solutions to dilemmas and to develop curriculum. Every day we meet to bounce ideas off of each other and to express our frustrations. It's during these daily informal meetings that I get the professional support that I need to continue to develop my teaching practices and to improve my classroom. Without another teacher here, I would struggle by myself.

Walking over to the Neighborhood House for the meeting, I was prepared, but very nervous. Sometimes these meetings get quite personal, and I had no idea what to expect from the debate that was sure to unfold. And ultimately this meeting would decide if I would be teaching by myself again next year. My stomach was a mess. Finally the meeting began and I sat there chewing my pen and listening as we went through item after item on the warrant. Finally article 17 arrived, the article dealing with all things school. I got my notes out of my bag and sat up straight, ready to defend the need for two teachers. But I didn't even need to open my mouth. With the first sounds of opposition, person after person in the community stood up and spoke about why we need to continue to support two teachers. Some of the people who spoke currently have children in the school and others spoke about their child's past experience at our school. Others stood up and spoke about the ways in which the school interacts with the community. And others stood up and spoke about the investment we make in the future of our community when we support our school to the fullest extent. I wish I could remember the exact words that people said, because they moved me to the brink of tears. The middle schoolers who attended the meeting with me were beaming as they heard the pride in the voices of their community. In the end there wasn't a second word of opposition to having two teachers. We voted 51 to 1 to keep us both.

What a statement. All around the country towns are slashing their school budgets, but here on this tiny island we agreed that the investment we make in our children is more important than the savings we could gain from cutting our staff. Way to go, little island.