Todd Nelson, The Education Watershed

It begins with a trickle, this very simple notion: Education is a watershed; we are its stewards.

That is, we are the stewards of our children’s childrens’ education. Our present efforts and sacrifices are for beneficiaries unborn, and our present efforts and sacrifices will nourish us as well. And who are our forebears, of whom we are the beneficiaries?

The concept of watershed will redefine our work as teachers and parents and friends; our work as stewards of a unique educational vision; as caretakers of a particular school and community; as nurturers of something the world needs.

And I suggest that if we explore this metaphor describing education, we will have new ideas, embrace new challenges, and imagine our journey downstream in expansive ways. This river takes care of its own.

Lesley and I come to this watershed from Castine, Maine, a small harbor town at the mouth of the mighty Penobscot River. Our Castine experiences make me think differently about many things, especially schools and learning. Here are a few pictures.

For centuries, the Penobscot River meant access to the interior of the state, when Bangor was known as “the lumber capital of the world;” when the British Royal Navy sought massive pines for His Majesty’s Ships masts, to say nothing of strategic control of Northern Maine, then part of Massachusetts; and the river meant trade and migration routes for the Penobscots, Abenakis, and Etchemin—the indigenous peoples.

In the age of sail, the big river’s currents launched great clipper ships on trans-oceanic trade routes. Castine sent ice to the tropics and India; bricks to the east coast cities of the US; sea captains for the global trade; and, more recently, bottles with messages bound for distant shores from the students of the Adams School where I was principal. The Penobscot River education watershed reaches far…if you have the imagination. And the message in the bottle is a pretty romantic one.

The kids’ bottles were tossed into numerous currents from the town dock and from boats: the Gulf of Maine, the Atlantic Gyre, the Gulf Stream, and local inter-tidal and Penobscot bay eddies. And then we waited.

Within a year, the Castine bottles started turning up in strange places: on Crane’s beach in Ipswich; in the Bahamas; on outer islands in Penobscot Bay; in the Azores—twice! And then last spring I got a phone call one morning from Morocco. A teacher who had substituted in Castine, and now taught at an international school in Rabat, found a bottle while walking the beach. What are the chances?  It had been in the water for five years; its senders were now high school sophomores.

We held a Skype video-conference. Our students met his students—A digital age teleconference made possible by messages in wine bottles conveyed on the ancient ocean currents…the wine dark sea. (Nava?)

The story of Castine, a postage stamp-sized piece of land is, in one way, about succeeding colonial empires battling for cannon placement and regional authority—Dutch, then French, then English, then American turf. For now, Castine is American. The town story is also about superseding technologies, as lumber, fishing, the frozen water trade, granite, and shipbuilding were made obsolete by steel skyscrapers, steamships, refrigeration, and global competition. For now, tourism, a little fishing, and papermaking are holding their own.

Who knows? Perhaps President Sarkosy will reclaim Castine in the name of its French forebears! Then Les Castinois could retire at age 62! He would find a more grateful reception than he’s getting in France. I digress.

The story of education stewardship should involve imagining myriad futures and occupations, things that one’s forebears might find unimaginable, for we are the superseding technologies. And it is about caring intensively for the purity of the local water, what flows downstream, and where that stream goes; caring intensively about the quality of childhood itself; how it evolves into adulthood; and where that adulthood goes in terms of service, learning, leadership, and fulfilling lives.

SRV is a “small” harbor town where we protect the purity of our source. We are heirs of past stewards, trying to be worthy in the present, and protecting the future downstream from us. When we budget for another school year, pay teachers and supply materials for all their classes, it is really an investment in the health of a living watershed extending lifetimes and localities beyond the Delaware River valley. New literacies will flow from our time in this place—and which already reflect on the quality of our present lives.

Here’s the thing about stewardship of an education watershed: the future is now. We can’t put off the responsibility as heirs, nor pause to consider whether or not to purify our contribution to the stream. The current never stops and won’t tolerate deliberation. The vessels of our exports and imports of commerce, communication, and care are loading now.

We send messages in bottles of individual lives into diverse currents, entrusting them to unique voyages—hoping to hear back when they wash up on foreign shores. May our messages to the future be a contribution that is valued, relevant, and useful. May our students be captains of great voyages; may they bring “ice” to the tropics and find their own bottles washing ashore on exotic beaches.

We are shipping new avatars of ice, lumber, bricks, and granite to harbors downstream from our time and place. While it’s hard to anticipate the exact nature of future cargo, as with any watershed, the decisions made upstream affect lives a long way off—thank goodness…

…Because we can assume the future value of the civility, ethical decision-making, imagination, and creativity we’re producing at SRV. Education trends are also like superseding technologies—the pendulum is always in motion—which challenges us all to imagine what progressivism like ours will mean to education. This is stewardship of our grandchildren’s school—to be sure that its rich opportunities persist, but also to assure that it is the kind of school our grandchildren will need. The children downstream are the measure of our success; those children will be the success of our measures upstream.

So—our little postage stamp of eight acres in Rose Valley has a lot to ship to a waiting world. We are at the mouth of the mighty Progressive River, with cargo bound for an expectant, hopeful future. It’s vital it gets through!

But you know that. I do realize I’m preaching to the choir. But I also hope that I’ve given a few new lines in the SRV script that we all can use to do our job well. I think of the watershed every morning when I go to work.

I see in you so many kinds of capital. The fund of wisdom, skill, empathy, generosity of all kinds, makes us strong—and will make us successful stewards of the SRV-educated lives that flow out from our time in this place to the next generation…even to Morocco. I’ll see you there.

February 12, 2013: Another Castine bottle has washed ashore in Europe—Spain this time! It was Mrs. Thomas’s bottle and its contents were intact after seven years in the North Atlantic.