Keeping busy
There are sixty-five students who go to school at Long Lake Central. As production manager at the Arts Center, I’ve spent the past few months working with area students on the documentary project “My Adirondack Life,” and this is a figure that has stuck with me since I first learned it when we did initial interviews. Students from Long Lake, Indian Lake, Newcomb, Tupper Lake, North Creek and Old Forge have been documenting their lives, and the unique experience that is growing up in such a remote area. And in all of their schools, most of which are K – 12, numbers are mind-boggelingly low.
I went to school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I went to different schools for elementary, middle and high school. Most of the time, classrooms had upwards of 40 students in them. There were metal detectors in my high school and my graduating class hadover 400 students. In Philadelphia, this was considered small. I can’t fathom a classroom that only has five students in it. Field trips were one or two classes of kids going somewhere, not the whole school. And we certainly never took a field trip to go sledding.
And I never considered how busy these kids are. I was on the field hockey team in high school and a member of the robotics team (yes, I built robots – I was that cool) and I thought that had made for a busy high school experience. But the students of the Adirondacks have me beat. Scheduling filming sessions has been nosmall feat because everyone does everything. Every kid is involved in every club and a member of every team because otherwise there wouldn’t be enough of them to justify having the club or the team. I have come tothe conclusion that the kids are the busiest people in the Adirondacks, leavingin the morning probably before or just after the sun has risen, and returning after it’s set. They travel lotsof miles and many hours for soccer, basketball, baseball games. You would think that in a town of lessthan 500 people, everyone would be bored and complaining about how there’snothing to do. That hasn’t been my experience. Some of them may be restless, and ready to see other parts of the world, but they’re not bored. They don’t have time to be.
Laura Marsh
-Assistant Director / Production Manager
