Inner city teacher Susan Love had reached her breaking point. Her classroom was infested with mice and cockroaches. Her unenthused students saw only a dim future ahead in the area’s high-crime neighborhoods. Add uninvolved parents, a low-morale faculty, and a first-year principal to the mix, and Love could see she had the perfect formula for a failed school year.

The following summer, she knew she either had to quit her job or change things for the better. Deciding a change of scenery might help her get a fresh perspective, she took a trip to the Caribbean. While relaxing on the beach, a conversation with another traveler changed her life—and those of her students—forever.

“On the island, I was talking with a retired businesswoman,” says Love. “As I told her about my frustrations with the American school system, she said to me: ‘At least you had an escape—you had this island adventure to look forward to. Your students don’t have that luxury. You need to make your classroom an island. Make it a place where your students can get away every day and envision the bigger world out there that awaits them.’”

“I know she didn’t mean for me to literally turn my classroom into an island,” says Love, “but that’s exactly what I started after I came home.” When her classroom door opened in the fall, her students entered to find a large thatched umbrella with tables and chairs, exotic silk flowers and plants in a mystical garden, a pond with a flowing waterfall, large wall murals of a tropical rainforest, and an inside rock waterfall. Festive multicolored streamers hung from the ceiling, adding to the charm and mystique of the tropical setting.

“Many of my students are of Puerto Rican or Dominican descent,” says Love. “So I thought a classroom that represented their cultures could help show them both their history and their future. For the rest of the year, I developed my own Caribbean themed curriculum, teaching how our environment may help shape us, but it doesn’t limit or define us. Like our immigrant ancestors, each of us is on a personal journey to a better future.”

The theme was implemented in second- and fifth-grade classrooms. A few older students wrote exciting adventure stories that included three students and the teacher as characters. Other students were intrigued by their classmates’ work and wrote their own “Ms. Love’s Adventures” stories. These works formed the basis of a “classroom library” that drew interest from students throughout the school.

The first Open House for their parents was an amazing success. More parents showed up in Ms. Love’s Island of Learning classroom than any other in the K-8 school. They wanted to see the students’ work on display both inside and outside the classroom.

“This is the first year my son has ever wanted to go to school,” a parent said to Ms. Love. Clearly, for the children, nothing had become more exciting than school. It was their safe haven for creative expression. More than that, Love’s students led the school in standardized Terra Nova test scores.

“All I did was give them something they could relate to: their heritage. And that helped them understand who they are,” said Ms. Love. “Once you understand who you are and where you come from—once you’re recognized as a unique person with value and, yes, dreams—you realize why teachers and other adults want to help you learn and grow.”

Inspired by her students’ response, Love has taken her island classroom adventures into the global school. “Why not share with all young people the message of empowerment and risk-taking—the heart and soul personal adventure?” The result is Love’s new eBook Ms. Love’s Mystical Island Adventure. The story follows a group of children who use their unique skills to save an imperiled island.

“I may be one of the characters in the story,” says Love, “but the children are its true heroes.”