Island kids take to the hills!

For this year’s fall field trip, the Outer Islands TLC headed inland to the foothills of the White Mountains! This adventure brought us to the Hurricane Island Outward Bound School campus in Newry, Maine.

Ocean planning in the classroom

I teamed up with Green Fire Productions, a nonprofit video production company, to film classroom footage of John Van Dis of Edna Drinkwater School and Marci Train of Long Island School for the newest Ocean Frontiers documentary.

Teacher can lavish attention on island’s school’s students

Dick Broom provides a profile of Jan Keiper, the lone teacher in the town of Frenchboro on the remote offshore island of Long Island. According to the 2010 census, the town had a population of 61. The estimated 2015 population was 79, but residents say the year-round population is no more than 40.
In this article, Keiper talks about the advantages and challenges of teaching in a tiny school on a remote island, including support received through the Island Institute’s Outer Islands Teaching & Learning Collaborative. 

Hands-on learning in schools large and small

What kind of school gets kids to build their own racecar? How about asking students to carry their trash around for a week? Or compare themselves to a favorite vegetable? Those are just a few of the student assignments I heard about at this year’s Island Teachers Conference, and they all have a common result: Students are diving deeper into their surroundings, and learning more along the way.

Stories of outer island life to screen

Maine’s outer islands are famed for their close-knit communities and heritage of storytelling. Figures of Speech Theatre partnered with the Island Institute and the residents of Maine’s outer islands to bring some of these narratives to life using shadow puppets captured on film.

Once a TLCer, always a TLCer

The Outer Islands Teaching and Learning Collaborative has reached a milestone: the first class of students involved in the TLC are about to graduate high school. In March, they got to see each other for the first time in years.

Aquaculture workshop for teachers a success

On Feb. 21, teachers from Casco Bay to Down East convened at Herring Gut Learning Center’s campus in Port Clyde for a day of immersion in the field of aquaculture with the goal of developing strategies for incorporating it into their curricula. The workshop was the result of the increased recognition aquaculture is receiving in the state of Maine as a viable option for coastal communities to maintain a robust economy with diversification into fields other than commercial fishing.