A civics project gave students a platform to speak about equality, safety, fairness, and changes they hope to see on Mount Desert Island.
just now
The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by the Maine Seacoast Mission.
SOUTHWEST HARBOR—The middle school students of Pemetic Elementary School hold some truths to be self-evident.
For Asa, a student at the Pemetic School one of those truths is “we are all equal and nobody shall feel left out or treated unfairly.”
Everyone has a right to eat in the cafeteria, to be educated, to be treated equally.
All students should be treated equally, her schoolmate Ben concurred.
“All students should be treated with equality,” Ben wrote. “The students at the school should have the right to be happy, to feel safe in school, and the right to have downtime.”
Daisy said all students have the right to “speak up for yourself, to be educated.”
“I feel like the student should get more rights in society,” she wrote.
A student who wanted their declaration to be anonymous wrote, “All of us were created equally, and should be treated as such. We should not discriminate or be discriminated for our race, what and who we may love, and who we are…. We have the right to feel safe among our peers, the right to be educated, and the right to say what we wish and worship as we choose.”
Kids often get celebrated for sports. Their goals and saves, baskets and touchdowns get wooed over.
Kids often get celebrated for their grades or their art, their theater performances, their math or chess competitions, their debates, and achievements.
But this Monday at the Southwest Harbor Library some students were celebrated for something else—their ideas.
The students presented those ideas at the Southwest Harbor Public Library’s front room to a standing-room-only audience with thoughts, sometimes with passion, and often with nodding adults in the audience, murmuring yes, and applauding the middle school students ideas.
As one student whispered, it was pretty cool.
Mount Desert Island Historical Society Executive Director Raney Bench stood with a student’s presentation about veterans’ needs at the front of the crowded room. Activity surrounded her. Student displays were propped up on some tables and flat declarations of rights laid on others. Behind her was a giant projector screen that two young men would use to discuss a need for better bike lanes.
Conversations bubbled up and throughout the room that was full of families, caregivers, teachers, and kids.
“It’s so amazing,” Bench said, beaming. “The students have this unbelievable sense of inequality and natural rights.”
They are, she said, so tied in to what they want to see change in their community.
It gives her hope.
Monday, those middle school students had a chance to express their thoughts to their community.
Pemetic students collaborated with the Mount Desert Island Historical Society and Southwest Harbor Public Library to make the event happen for the students who’ve been working this school year on civics.
That might not sound as exciting as it is and was.
“We get to listen to these fantastic and brilliant students talk about what they care about most related to our democracy and the declaration of independence,” Bench said.
She came up with the idea of looking at exploring the Declaration of Independence’s relevance to students today. She pitched the idea to all the island’s schools.
“Lynn Ingram is the one who bit,” Bench said and the crowd chuckled.
Lynn Bean-Ingram has been teaching her Pemetic School students all about the country’s founding principles: equality, natural rights, and consent of the governed. That happens every year.
More than that, though, this year, with help from Bench and the Southwest Harbor Library, she’s had her students connect those principles with the issues that those kids see are currently being worked through in their own community.
Students could create art, write a poem or a speech, or create a video. Some made personal declarations.
The students also started to solve problems. They had ideas about how vapes are sold at stores and how to make them less enticing for students.
“They shouldn’t advertise them for everyone,” Penelope and Lucy advocated. “As minors, it’s important to speak up because we feel they are targeting toward us.
More than one group wanted better, safer, wider bike lanes.
And one group had a locals-friendly solution for paid parking.
One boy cared passionately about vets and how far they have to travel for medical services when there are no public transportation services from Southwest Harbor.
“Veterans get treated badly and they should not be treated this way,” he wrote. “Veterans are equal to everyone else, but they need certain benefits now that they are home from their tour of duty.”
His empathy and advocacy stemmed not from something he needed, but something someone else needed.
“They are so tied in to what they want to see changed,” Bench said.
On Monday, they had a platform for that advocacy and an emboldening experience in civic discourse.
“We are here celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. One idea from the Declaration is the right to change an unfair government,” two students explained.
The girls had asked locals what they thought was unfair.
The answer they found was paid parking, which exists in Southwest Harbor and multiple towns (in different ways) across Mount Desert Island.
Their solution?
A parking pass similar to Acadia National Park’s park pass, which is purchased annually.
“If you’re already paying a lot for parking, it would be worth it,” they said in their presentation, which gathered a lot of nods and murmurs and a few whispers of “good idea.”
The girls proposed you’d have to show proof of residency. Paid parking benefits towns with income, but also creates another cost for residents driving throughout the island or their own towns when paid parking is the closest or only option.
The goal was to move beyond reflection and recitation of the Declaration of Independence and instead find meaning and relevance by internalizing what the document means to the students’ lives today.
“And we wanted the students to find their own voice in that process,” Bench said.
Two boys presenting about the need for bike lanes explained that snow and ice can make riding bikes difficult and dangerous. Sometimes people use the sidewalks.
“Wider bike lanes can make things safer for everyone,” one boy said. “It’s about our natural rights. The Declaration of Independence says that everyone has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Life. People deserve safe ways to travel around their community. Liberty. People should have the freedom to choose how they travel, including riding a bicycle. Pursuit of happiness. People should be able to enjoy biking, exercising, and exploring their town.”
The students inspired one man in the audience so much that he asked if the town could incorporate student voices as it creates its next comprehensive plan, which is meant to be a blueprint for the town’s future.
“Normally I would teach this unit … through text books and primary documents,“ Bean-Ingram said. “This totally switched gears for us.”
It didn’t just encourage student engagement, she said. It demanded it.
Fifth and sixth graders learned about the work leading up to the Declaration of Independence. They looked at the preamble and made it their own, modernizing it and making it their own.
There were a lot of commonalities, she said. The right to feel safe, to be educated, to speak up, and and that all were created equally.
“Those were the things I saw over and over,” Bean-Ingram said. “It was very telling.”
One of those things? It was to be able to speak up, to have their voices heard.
It’s not just the ideals of the Declaration, but the ability to communicate their ideals through writing or slides shows was a big deal, Bean-Ingram said.
“Giving them platforms for their own voices and how they care and where they can speak in civic engagement and publicly be listened to is going to train and empower the next generation of voters so that voting is a natural extension of that work that they’ve been doing to understand their voice and find the space where they can share it. To me, that is the most inspiring thing,” Bench said.
LINKS TO LEARN MORE
Mount Desert Island Historical Society.
All photos: Carrie Jones/BHS
HELP SUPPORT THE BAR HARBOR STORY
When we started The Bar Harbor Story, we didn’t know if anyone would read it. But you showed up. You shared. You sent tips. Now—over 400,000 views every month later—it’s clear: people here care about their community and each other.
We’ve kept everything free because news should never be out of reach, but every one of our stories takes time to write, and your support keeps The Bar Harbor Story going.
If you value our work, please consider a paid subscription, a founding membership, or a sponsorship.
It truly helps us cover one more meeting, tell one more story, shine one more light.
Even $5 a month makes a difference. Click here to become a one-time supporter now.
Thank you so much for being here.
Founding member information can be found here.
Have questions about sponsorships? Just send Shaun an email at sfarrar86@gmail.com, he’d love to hear from you.
Discover more from Bar Harbor Story
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.