The old Mt. Ararat High School had an open design concept, which one former teacher says led to a lot of learning distractions.
TOPSHAM — A brand new Mt. Ararat High School opened for the first time to students Tuesday, but some teachers expressed bittersweet memories about its predecessor, which is now being demolished.
Contractors are tearing down the old building to make way for a track and competition field that soon will be constructed as part of the new high school project.
The old Mt. Ararat High School opened in 1973 to students from Bowdoin, Bowdoinham, Harpswell and Topsham. Built with an open-room concept, Mt.
Ararat High School was known as “the school without walls.”
Linda Libby taught at that school for decades before retiring, and went on to substitute teach.
The first two weeks of training before the start of school at the old Mt. Ararat didn’t show teachers how to teach in an open-room school, Libby said. There were a lot of distractions and many learning spaces didn’t have windows, she said.
Libby said she is excited for the teachers at the new building, who will have enclosed classrooms and windows.
Still, she has cried when seeing photos of the building coming down.
“It’s the ideas and the people and the kids,” she said, “all these wonderful experiences that working in that building as a teacher and then as a sub has meant to me.”
Dennis Edmondson attended Mt. Ararat High School when it opened, graduating in 1977. By the time he returned to the school to teach history in 1984, the school had installed some walls between learning spaces. But many rooms still didn’t have walls on all four sides.
Edmondson said that when a teacher showed a film, students in nearby classes turned their attention toward the film, and their teachers threw up their hands.
“It was an experiment, the whole building,” he said Tuesday.
Seeing the building being torn down didn’t affect him as much as he expected, Edmondson said. Because of the pandemic, it wasn’t possible to celebrate the school before its demolition.
Right now, there are bigger fish to fry, he said.
Principal Donna Brunette said she anticipates the old high school building will be completely demolished by sometime in October.
Darcie Moore — 207-504- 8232
dmoore@timesrecord.com