Midcoast resident Heather D. Martin wants to know what’s on your mind; email her at heather@heatherdmartin.com.

Hello, hello, hello and Yuletide greetings to all.

Last week, I gave myself the present of writing down some notes, a quick sketch if you will, of my ideal community. I had more to say – so I am keeping that rolling right through the holiday season up to the end of the year.

OK, so, where did we leave off?

Well, I had spoken about housing and health care and my overarching sense of recalibrating things to place value on the things we really need. Which is oddly so often not where actual value gets placed in the real world.

This has come into stark relief for me because the custodian at the school where I used to teach has announced his retirement. Whoa.

First off – bully for him. He has earned it. A more deserving person of a joyous retirement I have never known.

That said, egad! What a loss. At the risk of sounding extreme, I literally cannot imagine a person more important to the school. I can’t.

Not only did he oversee the general cleanliness and well-being of the building, he did the same for everyone within it. Present, mindful and caring, he is, in so many ways, the deepest meaning of a “teacher.”

Which brings me back to my fantasy town because, in said town, that is exactly what school custodians will be recognized as. Taking a cue from Japan, where students help clean and caretake their shared learning space, cleaning the school would become a part of the regular learning day with the custodian there as a teacher to guide them in technique and tool use.

In Japan, the belief is that cleaning up after yourself instills a sense of communal responsibility and respect for self and others. I happen to agree. It is also a way to fully engage students whose way of learning is more tactile and object oriented. It gives space for another type of student to be seen as a leader.

The same would be true in the cafeteria. In my imaginary town, part of the learning day is spent gardening in a greenhouse as well as planning and preparing meals. Every student would learn the basics of how to select and prepare healthy foods, as well as the joy of growing the things you eat.

Chemistry lessons occur in the “real-world” application of learning how fat and heat interact with each other, or how salt can be used as a preservative, or why pasteurization was such a massive breakthrough.

Food prep incorporates more than chemistry, though – there is also mathematics, reading, writing, history, culture and art. An entire year of learning can happen, all while engaged in a productive activity that also allows the student that amazing endorphin rush of being “of use.”

There would also be time set aside each week for community engagement – course work that revolves around mowing lawns or shoveling drives, stocking food on shelves or reading to animals waiting for their homes. Elders would be invited into schools to share their knowledge – and learn the new skills of the coming generation.

It taps into something very real and deep when we serve another person and know we have helped. It is important for our elders to know the future generation, and for our children to be on speaking terms with their history.

We sit at a moment where there is a lot of uncertainty and angst. It’s a rough spot to be in. I can’t swear I know what is coming next. What I do know, however, is that with instability comes room for something different.

Maybe, possibly, if we all “get on the same side of the boat at once” and lean in to the sort of change we want, one toward kindness and the core values we say we miss, we can swing this great experiment of ours around and set it on a smoother course.