Over the last five years, ever since I first entered a classroom as a high school teacher in Boston, being an educator has become one of the most important parts of my identity, and one I credit wholly to my Island School experience. 

When I applied to The Island School for the fall of 2013, it was with dreams of scuba diving, researching, and building community. And while I did leave scuba certified, having co-published a study on sustainable fisheries, and with friends whose weddings I’m now attending more than ten years later (shoutout Fall’13), the biggest impact The Island School had on my life was setting me up for a career as a passionate teacher and changemaker. 

My one hundred days on Eleuthera turned my previous understanding of school on its head. All of a sudden, learning did not mean sitting still at a desk for hours while information was dictated to me. Instead, it meant movement, inquiry, creativity, and collaboration. At fifteen years old, I learned to be courageous in my curiosity and came to view my teachers as facilitators in my learning, not the holders of truth I had once thought them to be. At The Island School, we found answers in our environment, following Chris Maxey to the sandbar where we questioned ooids and considered how we each could live more intentionally to protect the place we were calling home for a few months under the Bahamian sun.

I left Eleuthera not just with a new understanding of what education could be, but also a newfound confidence in what I could personally contribute to the academic and social communities in which I found myself.

Developing Place-Based Learning Opportunities Back Home

Upon returning to my hometown in Wellesley, Massachusetts, I set to work carrying out the Island School’s mission of Leadership Effecting Change.

Within months, I had set up a meeting with then-Vice Principal Jamie Chisum, during which fellow Island School alumni, Korinna Garfield F12, and I proposed the idea of creating a school-within-a-school using an alternative, hands-on learning teaching approach.

Already interested in the idea of project-based learning, Dr. Chisum made us the ambassadors of the program he hoped to develop, and over the course of the following year and a half, we brought the Evolutions program to life. The project-based, experiential program was offered for honors credit and created an alternative for students to recognize their potential beyond the confines of the “traditional” education model. As a senior, I was fortunate enough to be part of the first cohort of Evolutions students, along with eighty other eleventh and twelfth-graders who helped to challenge the notion that “successful” schooling could only look one way.  

Eliza’s Legacy: Evolutions Continues to Expand Learning Opportunities

At the beginning of 2026, when I was home for the holidays, I got to check in on the program, which continues to run successfully with its eleventh cohort of students.

It was inspiring to hear the inquiry-driven conversations taking place within the same walls in which the program originally took shape. I overheard students passionately discussing their ideas for a mid-year capstone project in which they could research any problem of their choosing, an opportunity to make learning personally relevant in a way that is rare to find in a more traditional academic environment.

During my visit, I talked to Thom Henes, one of the only teachers who has remained with the program since its start. He discussed the various iterations Evolutions has gone through since its founding, a testament to the innovation fostered through the program, as exemplified through the name itself. It made me proud to think about the number of students who have graduated from the program with an expanded vision of what learning can look like, just as I had in the open-air classrooms on Eleuthera. 

The successful development of Evolutions, coupled with the unrelenting belief in the power of young people that was instilled in me by my aforementioned mentors, including Maxey, Dr. Chisum, and Mr. Henes, helped to solidify my path into the field of education. After graduating from Wellesley, I attended the University of Wisconsin- Madison’s School of Education and spent my summers throughout college teaching at The Island School’s summer term.  I later attended Boston University, where I received my Master of Arts in Teaching English, which set me up for four years teaching high school English in Boston Public Schools, where I was fortunate enough to find a community as strong as the one I had found on Eleuthera. 

Exploring New Avenues for Education

Last spring, I made a decision to help me continue to grow as an educator, which led me to explore international teaching positions. Currently, I am in my first year teaching 8th-grade English Language Arts and U.S. History at The American School Foundation in Mexico City, where I have already met many amazing students and educators from diverse backgrounds and experiences. 

So many of the choices I have made leading me to this position can be traced back to my time on Eleuthera. It not only prepared me to engage in the world with care and curiosity, but to find ways to change little pockets of it. As I seek new opportunities in the field of education, and continue to grow as a learner and a leader, I keep the values The Island School taught me close: I continue to value the intentional communities I find in schools, to look for ways I can make education more relevant and engaging for my own students, and to open doors for my students the same way The Island School opened many doors to me. I know that while not everyone can have the opportunity to learn under the Bahamian sun, there are so many transferable skills and lessons I hope to impart on students through inquiry-driven and project-based learning, no matter where I find myself.