Once a semester, The Island School community pauses its usual, separate departmental programming so that all divisions can come together to work on various improvement projects. Across campuses, Semester, Deep Creek Middle School (DCMS) and Early Learning Center (ELC) students and faculty join the facilities, energy, visiting programs, and research teams in bettering not only how our campuses look but also how they function! To kick off this spring’s Community Project Day, everyone met at the flagpole for a community-wide circle before grouping off into advisories and focusing on their advisory assignments.

Members of the semester, research, and middle school teams painted fences and tables as well as gardened at DCMS. The school’s nurse, the middle school’s principal and CEI’s research interns are all pictured alongside semester students in DCMS’s outdoor classroom.

Wood shed clean-up crew! Much of The Island School’s furnishings and equipment are made on-site in the wood shop. A team of community members spearheaded the work space’s reorganization as well as its general clean-up to rid it of dust and debris.

A few projects are more creative and kid-friendly than others, giving the youngest students at the ELC a chance to tangibly contribute to the beautification of campus. These kiddies decorated bird feeders that now hang in their playground and around their classrooms, where the native Bahama mockingbird and occasional hummingbird can pop by for a visit. 

Volunteers from the Semester, ELC, research, and farm teams convened to landscape the area around Beach House, one of the dormitories for Semester students. They picked up bits of trash, re-lined the various pathways surrounding the structure with conch shells and rock; and raked beneath the building itself before replacing the deck’s lattice. 

Coming together at mealtimes is a sacred time of day all around the world, and at The Island School, the culture around eating is no different. Everyday, everyone on campus meets at the outdoor dining hall for breakfast, lunch and dinner, and oftentimes, community members sit with friends they may not otherwise interact with. To make more space for our ever evolving and growing community, one advisory focused on building new tables that were added to the patio behind the cafeteria’s deck. 

Housed within the first level of The Island School’s Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) are four rooms (or “bays,” as they are referred to around campus), including the all-encompassing “Bay 4.” This recess holds every resource the facilities team needs to keep the water system, the buildings, the electricity—really any sort of mechanical network—on the school grounds running. And it was due a bit of love! A few extended advisories were tasked with the bay’s organizational reset, and they left the space completely transformed.

In addition to weeding and cleaning the ELC’s chicken coop for a few new hens, one advisory deep-cleaned the classrooms and repainted some of its signage. They also decorated cornhole boards with marine creatures, peace signs and flowers so the school’s littlest community members can have a new game to play at recess!

After spending the morning hours working within extended advisory groups, the entire community came back together again for a hard-earned BBQ lunch in Deep Creek. Everyone fueled up on burgers, hotdogs, and cookies before participating in The Island School Inter-Advisory World Cup, a semester highlight. In the school’s version of the world-famous soccer tournament, extended advisory teams play one another in three-minute halves until only one advisory is left standing…amid all the fun and rivalry, Gia’s Pink team came out on top, as they didn’t lose a single game, even before the play-off rounds!

Community Project Day provides us with a wonderful opportunity to slow down and connect with our community—something we are grateful for each and every semester. To see more photos from our community projects, click here! Or check out the World Cup action here.