Jasmine Smith ’09
Cultivating a sense of place, self, and community
By Kiera O’Brien ’18
Somewhere along the 211 mile stretch of the John Muir trail in California, Jasmine Smith ’09 began to shape the outlines of her next big adventure. “I was at a point of, ‘Okay, now what?’” Smith, founding director of the Community School of Mount Desert Island, recalls. “I was directing the Summer Field Studies Program at COA, teaching part time at The Bay School in Blue Hill, and had set up a homeschool classroom in my house at the time. Local families were starting to ask me what was next, if I would consider starting something more formal on MDI.”
For Smith, trekking the Muir trail with her partner, Nick Jenei ’09, was a catalyzing moment. “In that walking, the vision for the Community School began to form. I thought, how can I fuse the feeling and community-based nature of the one-room schoolhouse model with this notion of journey, adventure, and outdoor education? How do these pieces come together?”
Smith honed her vision for a place-based independent school on MDI in dialogue with the community. “There was no independent school on the island at the time. I had many of my own ideas and had worked in the public schools so I felt like I could be a good bridge, but I really wanted feedback from the community.” In January 2014, she hosted a series of open community roundtables at the island libraries, posing the question: “What are people’s hopes, dreams, and expectations for an independent school on MDI?”
The conversations that arose out of these roundtables proved to be both informative and deeply affirming. “I heard time and time again, and I agree, that the public schools here have their strengths. At the same time, I heard that a different model could work for different kids, and families deserve options.”
Somewhat to Smith’s surprise, the interest was also immediate. “As the round tables gained momentum, people began asking: Okay, so how do we apply?” Smith, just 20-something at the time, decided to take the plunge. “It was big! I knew this had the potential to be a piece of my life’s work. The momentum was there and something in my heart and intuition just said: Go for it.”
In the fall of 2014—eight months after offering the idea up to the island community—Smith, along with founding teacher Bethany Anderson ’12 and 12 students, gathered for the first year of the Community School of Mount Desert Island. Since then, the school has grown to support 40 students spanning grades K-8, and has found a permanent home in a historic farmhouse-turned-schoolhouse along the tidal Babson Creek in Somesville.
Even as the Community School continues to grow and adapt, the core mission remains the same. “At the Community School, we cultivate a sense of self, a sense of place, and a sense of community. These three pillars are woven throughout all we do here.”
This place-based educational model shares much in common with the human-ecological lens, a connection Smith credits as integral to the Community School’s ongoing vibrancy. Since its inception, the school has employed nine COA alumnx as teachers, facilitated close to a dozen COA internships and independent research projects, and collaborated with over 60 alumnx community members in the greater MDI area. “The existing COA network on the island has really made the Community School what it is. The human-ecological experiment is working—it’s alive and well.”
From the outset, Smith’s vision for the Community School ran parallel to the experimental, engaged spirit of education championed at COA. “One of our founding board members was Ed Kaelber, COA’s founding president.” Smith recalls Kaelber’s humility, humor, and faith during the earliest days of the project. “Every time we ran into a roadblock—and there were many—he would share a parallel roadblock encountered in the founding of COA. His stories kept me going. It was hard to fathom that the college, an organization I respected so deeply, was ever in a parallel stage because it felt so vulnerable.”
Kaelber’s advice continues to resonate with Smith in the face of our ever-vulnerable present: “Ed spoke to vulnerability so beautifully, always encouraging you to move towards that vulnerability, the discomfort, because it meant you were on the edge of something important and worthwhile.”
