Smith Island Students, Part Two: Ewell School

From the time you start school on Smith Island, to the moment you head off to Crisfield for eighth grade Janet Evans or Ms. Janet as her students know he, takes care of your schooling.

Evans is both principal and teacher at Ewell School and with eight students under her watch, teaching everyone what they need to know takes a lot of effort.

“You shuffle and juggle and do the best you can and there are days when I get very little done and there are days when I get a lot done. You just keep on chugging, you just have to,” Evans said.

To an outsider it might seem as though students get the short end of the stick by only having one teacher. But once you get an inside look at the way things work at Ewell School as we were able to do, you understand that just because their schooling experience is different doesn’t mean students aren’t learning what they need to.

Talking to students you learn that because Evans might find herself shorthanded at times the kids learn how to be self-starters.

And often instead of waiting for Evans to come help them, they turn to each other for help.

“If I’m stuck on something like, when a person says something (and) instructions are too hard for me to understand I ask one of the older guys to help me out,” said Faith Corbin, a third grader at Ewell.

As Evans sees it, it’s an unique part of her school that helps her students grow.

“I think it also give them confidence, you know that like, wow I’m teaching this little guy how to do this; and it gives the little guy more respect for the older kids and that builds their personality, their character as well,” Evans said.

That ingenuity is what drives Smith Island students long after they leave the doors of Ewell.

It’s part of the reason Angeline Marsh; a sophomore at Crisfield High School has been able to achieve straight A’s all her life.

“We had to learn stuff on our own and that was really difficult, but I think we learned a lot more than the kids here because we tried to learn,” Marsh said, recalling her time at Ewell.

What students may lose because Evans can’t cover the curriculum as fast as teachers on the mainland can, they gain in the one on one relationships Evans has with every one of her students.

The fact that she’s had most of her students since they day they began school means she knows just how to reach them.

“You can understand where they’re coming from, you’ve had their brothers, their sisters, your having their parents, and now you’re getting their grand children and you know you’ve been around awhile,” Evans said.

What they get from Evans though is only a portion of what makes these students who they are, Smith Island itself also plays a huge role.

“It’s a different culture over there, which is a great thing because I feel like that these students are very warm and friendly often times easy to get to know,” said Chantel Russum, principal at Crisfield High School and Academy where Smith Island students attend. “The culture over there is one of tight knit, you know they help one another and I just feel they’re outstanding students.”

For kids like seventh grader Deacon Smith-Hunter living on Smith Island and attending school at Ewell is all he’s ever known.

“It’s really, really sociable. Everyone knows everyone, everyone’s friends with everybody it’s sociable, everyone helps each other out nice little community here,” Smith-Hunter said.

The only downfall Deacon admits is that a little more friends to play with would be nice.

But where there’s a lack of the students, the tight knit community makes up for it.

“They know that they’ve got a lot of people behind them, not just mom and dad. Their neighbors are just like second moms and dads, but they’ve got a lot of people pulling for them,” Evans said.

Despite that strong sense of community, when the time comes to ship off to school in eighth grade the process can be a little traumatic as Crisfield High School graduate Rebekah Kitching recalls it.

“The first day I got back, I cried cause you go from twelve kids in one school, one classroom all day to, you switch periods, five different teachers like a hundred kids. So the first time I came back I cried, I don’t even remember why I cried but it was culture shock definitely, even in place as small as Crisfield its different, very different,” Kitching said.

As any Smith Islander will tell you though, the students adapt quickly and make it work because that’s what Smith Islander do, they figure it out.