Island's teacher retiring; only 40 students in 30 years

DECATUR ISLAND, San Juan County — Teacher Karen Lamb started her school day recently the same way she's done it for more than 30 years on this serene island of about 70 full-time residents.

She asked the entire student body — all three of them — to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance inside their tiny, red schoolhouse in the woods.

Next, she led eighth-grader Shannon Dunlap, seventh-grader Orion Odegard and third-grader Sky Barker in a round of patriotic songs, starting with "There Are Many Flags."

"There are many flags in many lands," they sang. "There are flags of every hue. But there is no flag, however grand, like our own red, white and blue."

Then the girls, age 14, 13 and 8, sat down at their neatly arranged desks to work on math lessons while Lamb, seated at her desk just two feet away, looked on.

Cozy does not begin to describe life at the Decatur School, one of 10 so-called "remote and necessary" public schools in Washington state that serve hard-to-reach and sparsely populated communities.

Of those schools, Lamb's is the smallest.

But next month, Lamb, 61, will teach her final class at Decatur. She's retiring at the end of the current school year.

Locals on the island and former students threw Lamb a retirement party Saturday to celebrate her career.

As the island's sole public-school teacher, Lamb said she has taught perhaps 40 students in grades one through eight. Some have spent their entire elementary and middle-school years in Lamb's classroom. She taught her own three kids, now adults, here.

"When you teach the same children for so many years, they become friends," she said. "They're like family members almost.

"My [own] children had to call me 'Mrs. Lamb,' " she said.

Just to remind her students — and herself — where the line between teacher and friend is drawn, though, Lamb keeps a sign posted in the classroom that reads: "I don't give out grades. YOU EARN THEM."

Still, she said, "It's hard. I think I'm too easy with grading."

If the Decatur School feels like a vestige of simpler times, it's because Lamb works hard to make it that way, and because life here beats to a different rhythm. The only dangers are hunters who boat in from other islands, Lamb said. Phone service arrived only in the 1970s. Cellphone reception is fine, as long as you stand in an open space and point the phone toward the mainland. The roads are narrow, windy, mostly topped with gravel and littered with potholes.

"Orion used to drive her grandfather's golf cart to school," Lamb said. Today, however, the 13-year-old rides about two miles to school on a Suzuki QuadSport vehicle. The Suzuki was parked outside, with Odegard's helmet and lavender fleece gloves resting on top.

Dunlap, the oldest student, sometimes catches a horseback ride with her home-schooled sister, Lamb said.

No need to do roll call each morning, because with a student body of three, Lamb can clearly see who's present and who's absent.

Skip class? Why bother? State ferries don't stop here. Decatur Island has more sheep than people, and cedar-studded pastures instead of shopping malls. The closest thing to a hangout is Alma's Country Store about a block from the school down a gravel road, and it's run by Lamb's jovial cousin, Sandy Crosby.

No use trying to doze off, copy your neighbor's work or pass notes during class, either. Lamb sits so close to her students she can reach out and touch them. Not that the sweet-natured teacher, who describes herself as bashful, would ever be too tough.

The class does sing-alongs twice a week. Lamb organizes cool field trips (Hawaii in 2002, Great Britain last fall) with money from school auctions and other fundraisers supported by old-timers and residents of a handful of exclusive housing developments. Her students also perform theater pieces for island residents, which can be a real feat, requiring each pupil to play two or three characters.

Since the island doesn't have a public library, Lamb has filled a storage room in the schoolhouse with books that locals can browse and borrow.

As a teacher, Lamb is a stickler for basics such as science, social studies, literature and good penmanship. And manners.

"I tell my kids that no matter what you do, if you aren't kind, you're not anything, and I really believe that," she said.

At lunchtime, Lamb and the students hopped into her minivan and drove to the country store, where she reminisced with Crosby about attending Decatur in the 1950s.

"I was the only student for six months," Crosby said. "I should be really smart."

Not only is Lamb the sole teacher for the island's one school, she's a walking encyclopedia of island lore, much of which involves her ancestors. She has called Decatur home on and off since childhood.

Her mom's side of the family, Norwegians from the Great Plains, arrived on Decatur Island in the 1930s. But the first on her father's side, great-grandparents John P. Reed, an Irishman from Pennsylvania, and Tacee Weldon Gustoff Reed, a Tlingit born in Alaska, arrived in 1867.

The Reeds and subsequent generations went into the farming, shipping and fisheries industries, greatly shaping life on the island. Signs of maritime life exist even today at an old shipyard run by Lamb's family, but most adults now make a living in construction, landscaping and other jobs that serve the island's vacation and retirement homeowners.

The former Decatur School building was closed in 1963 for lack of students. The Lambs purchased the building to save it from demolition, and now it sits on blocks near a charter-boat dock, next to the 1870s cabin that Lamb's great-grandparents built.

In 1974, Lamb and her husband, George, set up a kindergarten classroom in their Victorian house for their oldest daughter, Kendra, who was the only school-age child then on Decatur. But when another family with two children moved to the island, the school district asked Lamb to teach them, as well. Other children, including two more of her own, followed.

"I'd basically just wake up and go downstairs to the living room in something that wasn't pajamas," said Lamb's middle daughter, Tacee Webb, 33, who still accidentally refers to her mom as "Mrs. Lamb."

"Then the school bell rings at the end of the day and it's like, 'OK, you're Mom again.' "

Lamb's husband built the current schoolhouse on family property 25 years ago.

Lamb said she's retiring because her memory isn't what it used to be, but also to spend time with her grandchildren and travel.

A Lopez Island School District official said a search is under way to replace Lamb in time for the start of school next fall, when just two students, Orion Odegard and Sky Barker, are expected to be enrolled. Shannon Dunlap said she's not sure whether she'll be home-schooled next year or have to commute to a school off the island.

What will this year's students miss most about Lamb? All the one-on-one attention, Dunlap suggests. Lamb disagrees.

"The Dove ice-cream bars!" she said. "Once a week, I treat them to Dove ice-cream bars if they've been really good."

"And most of the time," she added with a motherly grin, "they are."

Tyrone Beason: 206-464-2251 or tbeason@seattletimes.com