Maine Voices: Accentuate the positive – COVID, a rural school and other challenges

There’s an unusually formed faculty in North Anson. The primary rooms of the college type a rectangle. However at one finish, the structure adjustments dramatically.

At Carrabec Excessive College in 2015, college students Ted Gower and Alaena Merril learn to swing dance as a part of a program designed to advertise socialization and a very good exercise, based on teacher Jack “Kap” Kaplan. Standard Wednesday and Friday dance routines within the Carrabec fitness center are led by Kap, who even will get teenagers to get up at daybreak for a noncredit workout-team constructing program. David Leaming/Morning Sentinel, File

The oblong form morphs right into a wider round igloo form. The big domed fitness center makes the entire faculty appear to be an exclamation mark.

Exclamation marks specific celebration, and there’s a lot to have a good time at Carrabec Excessive College. Our faculty has been challenged by the pandemic, and the socioeconomic challenges in extraordinarily rural Maine are daunting. However just lately the college workers gathered to inform our story.

A theme rising in schooling is to regulate the narrative. Inform your story, so others can’t inform it for you. The tales lecturers shared on our workshop day celebrated our college’s lecturers, delicate abilities for job success (management, teamwork, group, communication, and so forth.) and, lastly, sports activities.

Our neighborhood unites for basketball playoff video games within the Augusta Civic Heart. This yr, for the primary time in a era, each girls and boys groups made the playoffs. It’s uplifting to cheer on our athletes and chat with their mother and father within the stands.

Each faculty has trophy instances, however our complete faculty has change into a showcase of participation and achievement. Tons of of workforce images line the halls with a thousand smiling faces. Plaques and certificates of accomplishment are in every single place too. Whether or not acknowledging our Nationwide Honor Society’s journey to assist the Winter Particular Olympics or this yr’s Mountain Valley Convention championship math workforce, you possibly can’t stroll the halls with out seeing fashions for greatness.

The Math Group’s championship is a primary in 25 years. Likewise, each basketball groups excelled after we most wanted one thing to cheer within the third yr of COVID disruptions. Banners within the cafeteria have a good time the mathematics workforce and two basketball gamers who scored their thousandth level this yr: junior Luke Carey and senior Cheyenne Cahill.

The cafeteria additionally shows Maine-themed murals, and particular person artworks are displayed in hallways to and from the cafe. Every eating desk has a big bouquet of paper flowers designed and created by college students. The once-annual present is now museum-like, with rotating installations, guided by our artwork trainer, Heather Vaughn. The cafeteria meals’s been getting more healthy yearly, a nationwide development. I like to recommend the fruit smoothies served throughout breakfast.

Throughout break and lunch, college students shoot baskets within the fitness center, also referred to as The Thunderdome. The Carrabec fitness center is the dot on the backside of our exclamation mark, and that’s becoming. This yr, lastly, we had been in a position to cheer on the basketball groups in individual. The Thunderdome can be house to Willpower.

Jack Kaplan, Maine Secondary PE Trainer of the Yr in 2017, describes Willpower as a mentoring and character-building program. It meets three mornings every week at 5 a.m. They meet within the best-equipped gymnasium within the state. Willpower is voluntary, and college students obtain no credit score, however Willpower college students are sometimes the highest athletic and educational achievers within the faculty. In 40 years of educating, I’ve by no means heard of a trainer like “Kap,” who will get highschool college students to voluntarily stand up at daybreak for a exercise and workforce constructing towards moral citizenship.

There’s loads to exclaim and smile about at Carrabec, and the Thunderdome is the area the place smiles are most prevalent. Two traditions in well being and health courses are Wacky Wednesdays and Freaky Fridays, which typically function a enjoyable and even foolish dance routine. Whereas many teenagers are cautious and may even groan at first, “Kap” charms them, and by the tip of the dance, nearly everyone seems to be smiling. College students who I by no means see smile smile within the fitness center.

It may be arduous to smile in the event you reside a hardscrabble life in extraordinarily rural Maine. However I’ve by no means seen so many individuals, with so little, give a lot. That’s my faculty, formed like an exclamation mark, the place celebrations of excellence are rising.

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