Name: Olivia Gell

Where are you from? New York

Where were you before this? I was studying at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

What brought you to The Island School? A passion for Literature and belief in the impact of experiential education. When I learned about this school I had an immediate desire to become a part of this community composed of individuals with a hunger to both inspire and be inspired by others, as well as grow, be adventurous and expand creativity.

What is your favorite dining hall meal? Soup!

Name one thing that not many people know about you: One of my biggest pet peeves is bad hugs

What is your favorite word? It is a Spanish word- we still need one to capture this moment in English: “Sobremesa”- That moment once a delicious meal shared by wonderful company is finished but the conversation is still flowing endlessly.

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? Editing is a somewhat similar field, but also Psychology.

What are your top three movies of all time? Caddy Shack, Good Will Hunting & The Kids Are Alright

What songs and/or bands have you been listening to lately? Nujabes, Miles Bonny, Susan Tedeschi, Maxwell– all over the spectrum, I know.

–The Island School

Perhaps this seems redundant. On land, the physiological process of taking air into one’s lungs and then expelling it is also pretty essential. Yet when PADI, the Professional Association of Dive Instructors, declares, “always breathe slowly and deeply and continuously,” in their Open Water Manuel, they aren’t kidding around. Even several meters below the surface, divers should never hold their breath. The physical effects of changing depths, caused by tremendous fluctuations in pressure, must be regulated by a continuous cycle of inhalation, exhalation. Failure to do so could lead to arterial air embolism, pneumothorax, mediastinal emphysima, subcutaneous emphysima—conditions whose names alone are enough to scare most divers.

Luckily, I am not scared. Or at least, I am not as nervous as expected. I am a first time diver, but I am learning from a Divemaster who is patient, thorough, and reassuring. I came to The Island School this fall as a Teaching Fellow for the Human Ecology Department, and was offered the opportunity to be scuba certified alongside our students during orientation. Like the students, I am excited, anxious, and ungainly as I flop around on the deck of the Mary Alice with flippers, mask, and air tank. Our gracelessness ceases, however, as we roll backwards, one by one, off the boat’s side.

Below the water, below the undulating ceiling of the sea’s surface, below a point deeper than most of us can free dive, we hover. We are weightless, after all, mobile in three-dimensions, aquanauts in an alien landscape. We glide through space, suck air through our respirators, release bubbles that stream upward and seem to carbonate the sea. We breathe.

And yet, as our instructor finishes the day’s scuba skills—how to clear a mask of water, how to supply a dive buddy with air—and allows us to explore, breathing is suddenly less straightforward. As we pass by colorful coral reefs, through caverns teeming with marine life, it is hard not to gasp. Seeing a sea turtle or a sting ray or a baby nurse shark is like seeing a shooting star—it is a flash, a small miracle—something you can neither anticipate nor readily manifest. They are moments that take your breath away.

As I, like the students, settle into the semester here at The Island School, I am also looking to the journey ahead. For teachers, as well as students, this is a place to challenge yourself and grow. Our days will often be long and exhausting. We will all push ourselves to be better thinkers, athletes, and community members.

That being said, I hope there is also time to pause. Just as scuba diving grants an individual the opportunity to hover in space, The Island School’s remote location offers a similar kind of suspension. It is important to pause here as well; to watch cumulous clouds tower up, to listen to the story of a new friend, to taste the sweet flesh of a fresh sugar apple. In the semester ahead, amazing things are going to float past and surprise us. All we have to do is remember to breathe. 

“This morning I dived with a loggerhead. The turtle was missing a chunk of its shell. On its right hand side a shark, I assume, had taken a bite out of its shell and left its flipper intact but withered. We had been diving at Tunnel. I had taken three dives and was concentrating on relaxing under water, minimizing effort without concern for depth, and finding the point at which my buoyancy would become neutral and I would hover in the water column while excerting no effort. I had not yet found that depth. My buddy Max swam through the tunnel. As he swam, I spotted the turtle in response to Alex’s cry. Max surfaced, we turned and followed the turtle. He was perhaps five feet long. Perhaps 250 pounds. Perhaps 80 years old. We trailed it. Max asked if we could dive down. We could. I was concerned that as we dove, the turtle would startle and flee. Accelerating in to the obscurity where the visibility in the blue diminishes. But the loggerhead is not a fast swimmer, and it did not scarper. All 11 of us trailed the turtle. Maxey, Max, Peter, Alex, Ben and I dove and dove as we followed the turtle into deeper water. As it continued to swim, a dive required the active effort of forward, as well as downward  travel. On the surface, we remained active between dives to stay with the turtle. There was no opportunity to cultivate that purity of patience and relaxation that I had set out with. The turtle kept us with him. We dove, and swam beside  him. His fins coming in to sharper focus – the small claw on the flippers. The girth of the neck. The action of the front fins, the size and brightness of the eye. The length of the dives. We must have swum with the turtle for perhaps 30 minutes. Long enough that the turtle had to surface twice for air. He slowly made his way towards the surface, followed by the attendant ramora. As the turtle came towards the surface, the light that seems to fragment into columns, radiating from a point on the surface, brought the turtle in to cleaner focus. Others of our group could dive and have a moment under water. A rapid exhale, a large bubble a moment at the surface and the turtle dives again. At 40 ft, swimming beside the turtle, close enough to touch.”

To me, last night’s ceremony was an important ritual at a critical point in the semester–the students have just spent the past two weeks getting to know this place and each other.  They kayaked in the breathtaking aquamarine of Rock Sound, descended into the otherworld of the sea, ventured into the local community for a softball game, and generally acquainted themselves to the realities of living on a remote peninsula on a remote island.  So to have an official ceremony marking the end of their orientation to this place and the beginning of their full citizenship in the school community delivered a message that was both clear and necessary.

Similar rituals pervade our semester.  For example, the simple, daily act of circling up at the crack of dawn to sing the Bahamian national anthem sends a powerful reminder of the values upon which our school is built.  Most importantly, rituals like this create the spirit of community that drives our members to push their limits and expand their horizons.  They generate a sense of purpose and reinforce the belief that anything is possible if we work together.

Tonight I introduced to students an overview of the final presentations they will deliver at the end of the semester.  We call it a “Demonstration of Learning.”  Essentially, we ask the students to summarize the most powerful learnings they have realized over their 14 weeks at The Island School.  In gathering my thoughts regarding what these presentations have signified for past students,  two thoughts kept bubbling up to consciousness.

First, the DoLs, as we refer to them,  represent the culmination of the students’ semester, a celebration of all they have achieved both individually and as a community.  They provide students with a final ritual that marks the completion of one incredible adventure and the beginning of another.  However, they also represent a culmination of The Island School’s 11 years of educating young souls.  After 5 years of working here, I am starting to understand what that is.

What makes our program transformative for so many of our students is not what we teach, nor how we teach it.  Our semester journey is a rite of passage for students.  It clearly delineates the end of adolescence and their initiation into global citizenship.  And by providing this experience for our students, I believe we are truly instilling in them our vision: Leadership effecting change.  I hope you will also find this to be true by semester’s end.

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.   Socrates

It is worth noting that this is not the work of ignorant people. Rather, it is largely the results of work by people with BA’s, BS’s, LLB’s, MBA’s, and PhD’s. Elie Wiesel once made the same point, noting that the designers and perpetrators of Auschwitz, Dahcau, and Buchenwald – the Holocoust -were the heirs of Kant and Goethe, widely thought to be the best educated people on earth. But their education did not serve as an adequate barrier to barbarity. What was wrong with their education? In Wiesel’s (1990) words,

‘It emphasized theories instead of values, concepts rather than human beings, abstraction rather than consciousness, answers instead of questions, ideology and efficiency rather than concsience.’

I believe that the same could be said of our education. Toward the natural world it too emphasizes theories, not values; abstraction rather than consciousness; neat answers instead of questions, and technical efficiency over conscience. It is a matter of no small consequence that the only people who have lived sustainably on the planet for any length of time could nor read, or like the Amish do not make a fetish of reading. My point is simply that education is no guarantee of decency, prudence, or wisdom. More of the same kinds of education will only compound our problems. This is not an argument for ignorance but rather a statement of decency and human survival – the issues now looming so large before us in the twenty-first century. It is not education, but education of a certain kind that will save us.”  – David M. Orr; Earth in Mind. p 7 – 8.

Students breathing bubbles at Tunnel Rock

Sunday night, as we (K1) sat under the stars, Remo pointed out constellations.  The stars were shining brightly and with a laser pointer, Remo directed us to Orion, Canus Major, Taurus, Ursa Major, and several others.  I’ve lived here for over seven months, but I’ve never spent that much time looking up at the sky.  The students leaned back in their crazy creek chairs, staring at the sky, and “oohing” every time they saw a shooting star.  The fire faded slowly and exhaustion from a day of kayaking crept over us.

Our second day, with sun shining, we paddled east toward Green Castle.  The current with us, we glided smoothly even taking out our tarp at one point to set sail.

We reached the blue hole before lunch time.  Looking down into the deep abyss, students debated whether to get out and snorkel.  “It’s just so cold!” many said.  Knowing they would have opportunities later in the semester to snorkel a blue hole (in much warmer waters!) they decided to beach the kayaks and stop for lunch instead.  With bellies full of PB&J, we paddled back the way we’d come, quickly reaching Broad Creek.  After settling camp, we gathered on the beach.  Some students wrote in place books, while others threw a frisbee around.  The sun set over the creek, and I remembered yet another reason I love this place.

This morning, knowing we were close to home, we took a nice sleep-in.  After breaking down camp, we mustered up the energy to get into the kayaks and head out on the water to practice flipping the kayaks and performing rescues.  I was amazed with the students’ ability to stay positive, even when faced with the frustrating task of bailing water out of their flipped kayak.  Smiles on their faces and with a real sense of accomplishment, students paddled back to campus, returning to what many are now referring to as “home.”

I awoke this morning to a howling wind and thought to myself “uh-oh”.  But by the time we gave K1 and K2 kayak trips a big group hug around the flagpole, the wind had already begun to settle

and the sun was rising strong across Rock Sound.  As Chris Maxey led a SCUBA psycho morning exercise, the kayakers experimented with different ways to pack their dry bags and boats with as much stuff as possible.  After breakfast, the kayakers were starting to head out on their 3-day trips, while the fledgling SCUBA divers leapt from the dock for their first underwater skills sessions.  So I grabbed my camera and ran to the docks to take a few pictures.  Enjoy!

Wow!  What a wonderful way for the students to spend their first night off.  Last night we traveled to Rock Sound to watch a local slow-pitch softball game.  The league leaders, the Rock Sound Defenders, lost an exciting bout against the third place Rock Sound Stallions.  (The Deep Creek Conch Stoppers, whom I and other IS faculty play for, are currently in second place ;-))  There were plenty locals in attendance despite the relatively freezing (mid-60′s) weather, several lead changes, and four home runs!  Needless to say, the energy was electric–amplified by the DJ’s booming all the current reggae hits between batters.  In terms of an introductory cultural immersion experience, I could not have been more excited for the students.  And I can’t wait to carry 48 riotous fans to the Stoppers next game!