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Commentary: The little school on Waldron Island seeks a teacher and students. Here are the benefits.
For over 250 years a large majority of children were educated in one of the over 212,000 one-room schoolhouses scattered across the United States. Today only a few of these schoolhouses remain, including four in San Juan County on Shaw, Stuart, Decatur and Waldron islands.
Each of these schools has experienced declining enrollment in recent years. Stuart Island School is reopening next fall after a decade of no students. Now it is Waldron’s little school that is in danger of closing.
Waldron Island School, grades K–8, was established in 1897. Like Decatur and Stuart island schools, Waldron receives extra funding from the state as a “remote and necessary” school. Through the years, enrollment has varied from as low as five to as high as 29. This spring the school graduated our two eighth graders who will leave the island in the fall to attend high school, accompanied by their mother, who was one of the teachers. To boost enrollment and to find a teacher, the Waldron community is actively recruiting for both a teacher and more students.
A one-room school
Why would anyone want to teach or attend school on a remote island? For a teacher, teaching in a one-room school is a rewarding and liberating experience, limited only by the teacher’s imagination and creativity. Teaching a multi-age classroom gives a teacher the freedom to innovate and personalize lessons to match the age, skills and interests of each learner, despite grade level or learning ability. The small teacher-student ratio provides all the advantages of a privileged private school (without the expensive tuition) and the tight-knit family atmosphere of homeschooling, but with the plentiful resources of a public school and unlimited access to a school library and up-to-date technology.
What are the advantages for the students? Waldron Island School is taught in a multi-age integrated format that is aligned with state academic learning standards with students learning at their own pace. Because of the small class size, the curriculum is tailored to the needs of each student with lots of opportunities for hands-on learning, field studies and individualized learning. Science and social studies thematic units are spiraled through a four-year rotation with language arts, field trips and art integrated into the themes.
Past field trips have included trips to Canoe Island, Seattle, Centrum in Port Townsend, Washington, D.C., Victoria, Mountain School in North Cascades, the Olympic Park Institute, Mount Rainier and Mount Saint Helens. Students have taken a road trip to follow gray whale migration, experienced a Spanish immersion exchange with a school in Costa Rica and paddled the Green River in the Southwest. Learning outside the classroom and working with community members is the norm. This year students have completed individual projects in sewing, blacksmithing, movie editing, writing, ceramics, carpentry, music, and citizen science.
Waldron Island School’s curriculum is enriched by visiting instructors in areas such as science, gymnastics, music and art; and the school’s fleet of kayaks and sailboats makes an annual waterfront program possible. Students earn great respect on the island as they publish an island newspaper, an annual yearbook and perform two plays for the community each year. Due to the small number of students, Waldron Island School often collaborates with the other small schools in the county, sharing such activities as field trips, science fairs, young author conferences and visiting artists.
Families, too, benefit from the Waldron School experience. Parenting is less stressful when children are safe to roam, spending much less time in the car. Access to fresh farm food year-round is an additional bonus, but perhaps the best reward is the sense of community that both parents and children develop. Many students return to Waldron when their own children reach school age, and the island is populated by at least 10 of the past teachers who never wanted to leave. Most who experience Waldron develop an enduring sense of place.
If you are a teacher or family who is intrigued by the idea of an island off-grid life, and are looking for a one-year or life-long adventure, you can find out more by visiting the school website.
In the words of Rachel Lyman Field, “If once you have slept on an island/ You will never be quite the same….” (from “If Once You Have Slept On an Island.”)
— By Joanne Colman Wester
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