Barbara Lawrence - The Hermit Crab Solution

The Hermit Crab Solution: Creative Alternatives for Improving Rural School Facilities & Keeping Them Close to Home

The original mother of invention, Nature, programmed the hermit crab to adapt existing structures to its own use. The hermit crab searches for an empty shell and moves into it; when the crab grows too large, the shell is abandoned, perhaps to be recycled by a smaller crab. What rural communities can learn from this unassuming specialist in adaptive reuse is that finding and reusing cost-effective accommodations can be a brilliant survival tactic.

The Hermit Crab Solution: Creative Alternatives for Improving Rural School Facilities and Keeping Them Close to Home can help educators consider a range of such strategies to help rural people keep their small schools where they belong—in their communities. Implementing these strategies may take longer than the hermit crab’s search for a new place to live, but the results can be equally satisfactory. Finding solutions to facilities issues that challenge the viability of small schools takes time, effort, persistence, and creativity, but crafting a school facility that serves all members of the community and helps to sustain its viability is a goal worth achieving.

Four chapters cover the following themes:

the case for keeping rural schools local
the condition of rural school facilities and obstacles to their improvement
creative solutions to rural facilities challenges (11 examples)
lessons learned and strategies to consider for planning with the community, identifying assets and liabilities, working with policy, and funding the project

The ideas presented, which have grown out of strategies and practices created and implemented by rural communities, will inspire you to look carefully at assets and alternatives hidden within your community.

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