Town Report 2006-2007

Adams School Principal’s Report
 
Friends:

Middle Day, as I like to call it, was on January 23, the point at which we have fewer than 87 (of 175) school days left until we graduate the four 8th graders and paddle off into summer. Whoosh! It seems physically impossible to do all that we do in a school day, much less school year. Adams Schoolers regularly defy the laws of thermodynamics.
I think the school year really began on August 19th, when we had an old-fashioned barn raising for our timber frame nature cabin. Parents and community members assembled the mortise and tenon joints and pulled the structure together that day. Everyone signed the front girt for posterity. Now we’re adding windows and shingling the sides and roof. We’re almost there, but groups have already used this work-in-progress for science and music classes. This might be an apt metaphor not only for how Adams School works, but how powerful learning takes place. Take good materials, the right tools, good models and designs, add community support, imagination, and desire. Stir well.
Although we do not yet know how Adams School might be affected by the latest round of state-level rethinking of school structuring, administration, and funding, here at the building level in Castine the possibilities have never been better. Small is an asset.
Many of our accomplishments this year are visible to any spectator or passerby: the new playground and nature cabin; special programs like African drumming and technology workshops; laptop computers in constant use; myriad concerts, plays, athletic games, cheering, and readers theater performances; fund raising activities; community volunteers and speakers, ranging from Assistant Attorney General Thom Harnett to Chef Kaiserian; local facilities and opportunities, like MMA gyms and Schooner Bowdoin. Were it not for the Castine Fire Department, we couldn’t even contemplate a school ice rink!
But if you follow our progress through the school’s more and more extensive web site or weekly newsletter, you know that learning here is a nexus of all these activities plus habits of mind like curiosity, respect, responsibility, and compassion.  
We have only one new teacher this year. Emily Gibson filled our vacant Spanish position in January. It’s good to have the second language back in the curriculum. Congratulations to Charlie Deans on his 19 years at our school.  Barbara Thomas began working at Adams when her daughter Mary entered kindergarten. When her granddaughter, Caitlin Eleanor Tobey, enters in 2011, along with five other known kindergartners in town, we’ll celebrate Barb’s thirtieth year. For now, Caitlin is our mascot, affectionately known as Chicken Little thanks to her Halloween costume.
This is my third report to the town as your principal. I’m very appreciative of the community’s support of this little school. It is at the heart of what I think we all cherish in Castine. There’s a cultural capital at work here that gives a greater return than any kind of compounding interest!

    Respectfully submitted,


    Todd R. Nelson

Enrollment for 06-07

K    1    2    3    4    5    6    7    8
3    5    7    7    4    12    4    8    4    

High School total: 28. (GSA: 17. Liberty: 0. Bucksport: 0. EHS: 1 Bapst: 7. Boarding: 1 Homeschool: 2.)