Community Begins in the Family by Mary Lee Powell Michigan Avenue Elementary –St. Cloud, Florida All my elementary years were spent in a one-room school in Mount Union Ridge, West Virginia. There were between ten and fifteen students in first through eighth grade there, all taught by the same teacher, Vossie Hanes. Mount Union Ridge was in the woods, up a country dirt road, and Vossie used to take us into the woods and teach us about edible plants. We made a wildflower garden right there under the trees at school. I remember a pile of leaves we used to jump in off a bank in front of the school — we’d baptize each other in the leaves. Vossie Hanes would drive the thirty miles into Point Pleasant, the nearest town, and bring back a bushel basket full of books from the library for the avid readers. But many of the community’s residents didn’t read, or value reading, so the school’s connection to the community was not close. My own family valued reading highly. My mother taught my father and all of her children to read. She had read us Gone with the Wind by the time I was six. Vossie was very supportive of me and my family; she never gave up on her students. When I think back on my experience (having taught now for years in an elementary school with more than a thousand students) I realize that the sense of community that is still so strong within me comes from having a strong supportive family. When I talked about this with my son John, he said that he believes that strong communities grow from strong families who reach out and connect with other strong family cores. They form friendships and it expands. It is rare when a modern day school becomes the hub of the community. Consolidation and TV and the rapid growth of areas can “do in” community. But the strength you get from strong family bonds helps you become a leader who can help it happen for others, building community by trusting and opening your heart. It’s that trust — and helping students take charge and develop ownership in their own learning — that has helped us build and maintain the Cannery Museum.* Some of my sisters and their children and I are going to start a school in West Virginia. We’re going to bring inner- city kids into a community experience. We’re going to call it “Mountain Institute for Learning,” and our slogan will be, “Come walk a mountain mile with us.” *Editor’s Note: Mary Lee Powell is a Foxfire-trained teacher who has lived and taught in Osceola County, Florida for many years. With her fourth-grade students, she began the Cannery Museum in the early 1990's, the only museum we know of that is operated entirely by children (with help from adult volunteers).