Islesboro Central School has been awarded an $11,253 grant from the MBNA Foundation to boost its school library. Island Institute Fellow Sherry Marcum wrote the grant, which will be used to purchase library materials to directly support teachers’ curriculum.
Indiana native Marcum (who became an Island Institute fellow through an Internet posting) formerly served as elementary librarian for two schools in the Centerville, Ind., area whose student enrollment, grades K-6, totaled 943. Adjusting to the change of pace on Islesboro — whose student population totals 105 — she has discovered she loves all the water and seeing a sunset that’s not disappearing behind a smokestack. Besides implementing the grant, Marcum is helping the school’s library aides, Carolyn Leach and Cindy Gorham, to assess what materials need to be updated, weeded out, inventoried and cataloged in the present system.
Joining Harvard University’s “Teaching for Understanding” on-line professional development group has helped Marcum design library and research lessons that are integrated into classroom projects. She also keeps busy following Islesboro’s ferry crew around with a camera, documenting what it’s like to work on a ferry for a non-fiction children’s book she plans, detailing a typical ferry work day.
According to Marcum, “Being an Island Institute Library Fellow has already been a very challenging and rewarding experience. Dorothy (of Wizard of Oz fame) may have said `there’s no place like home,’ but I think there’s no place like Maine.”