Scenic Island’s One-Room School Goes All-Out for Only 6 Students

They call her Soozi. She calls them her children. And for just over six hours a day she is their teacher, nurse and counselor in a one-room schoolhouse on a remote U.S. island off the Canadian coast.

Stuart Island, five miles long, is nestled between the mainland and Canada’s Vancouver Island; it has no telephones or electricity, except for that provided by generators. Water is pulled from wells. The 25 year-round residents (more or less) come and go by boat or airplane.

Six of them are enrolled in the Stuart Island School, an award-winning building among the elms and evergreens.

Soozi Crosby, who taught last year in a one-room school in Agness, Ore., is making the adjustment to island living. In keeping with the school’s informal atmosphere, she encourages the children to call her by her first name.

She’s assisted by part-time teacher Cheryl Opalski and by Kent Soofer, who has a part-time contract to do maintenance work. When he’s not fixing the generator or gathering wood for the stove, he doubles as the shop teacher.

Half of the six pupils are Kent’s sons: Jesse, 12, Leo, 10, and Tad, 7.

Then there’s 10-year-old Derin Ross and her 7-year-old sister, Kelan. The newcomer is Indra Smith, 12, who arrived on the island this year and is staying with the Ross family.

The school offers kindergarten through the eighth grade, and teachers line up for the chance to take on that challenge: This year, when the teaching opening was announced, 45 applied.

“This is an educated-oriented school where I spend my time teaching the children to learn, not disciplining them,” Crosby says. “They want to learn, and in this environment they are able to get one-on-one attention and develop the life skills they need without the distractions and the problems that go along with large classes.”