The community school in the news…

Where learning has roots: inside of mount desert island’s community school

In a yurt, the children sit on a braided rug, hands on their hearts, excited to answer a question from their teacher Kreg McCune.

“Let’s think of that word, ‘was,’” Mr. Kreg says. “If you can think of a way to use ‘was’ in a sentence, put your hand on your heart.”

“There was a dinosaur a long time ago,” one student says, kneeling.

Another student sits still, her voice vibrating through the yurt. “I was beautiful.”

Wonderful. Wonderful, Mr. Kreg tells them. He pulls out an easel-style chalkboard,...

Community School students turn MDI into outdoor classroom

Colorfully dressed first through eighth graders at the Community School embarked on a paddling trip early on a brisk Thursday morning through the winding narrows of Northeast Creek. They were accompanied by teachers and parents in well-loved canoes.

This canoeing trip is one of the Community School’s annual trips, said board president Johannah Blackman. “It’s helpful for them to do the same thing every year at every age,” she added. “It helps the [older students] teach the younger students … that’s what I love about these intergenerational moments.”…

A Sense of Self and Place: The Community School

On an early spring day in Seal Harbor, Maine, sunlight streams through the windows of a classroom overlooking Acadia National Park’s Stanley Brook. Inside one corner of the warmly lit room, shoes and jackets have been neatly ordered beside a bookshelf, while a blackboard is covered with a richly chalked drawing of a gnarled tree, its roots entangled in an underworld exploration of Norse myths and fables. The walls of the adjacent room are hung with colorful fabrics creating a cozy burrow for a study of winter ecology. Nearby, a family of felted gnomes sit…