NAHANT — Every school district has a superintendent, but very few can call theirs “Captain.”
It is only fitting that a coastal town like Nahant has such an opportunity, even if the summer tides take School Superintendent Rob Liebow much farther north.
When he isn’t working in the Nahant Public Schools, Liebow can often be found on and around Mount Desert Island in Maine.
There, he works aboard two historic wooden vessels: the Sea Princess, a tour boat, and the Sea Queen, a mail boat and ferry.
He once owned the Sea Princess, operating narrated tours from Northeast Harbor alongside his family. Yet his connection to the boat stretches back even further. Liebow first stepped aboard as a 12-year-old deckhand, beginning a relationship that has lasted a lifetime.
Under the watchful eye of the boat’s owner, Wilfred Bunker, Liebow learned not just how to steer through fog and tides, but also how confidence, courage, and what real teaching looks like — pushing someone to do what they don’t yet believe they can do.
“He basically brought me up and taught me everything that I use now as a father and as an educator,” Liebow said, recounting times when Bunker encouraged him to undertake challenges while on the boat, even when Liebow himself was unsure if he could do it.
“He knew I could do something that I didn’t know I could do myself, and that is the gift of an educator,” Liebow said.
Those lessons, first learned on the deck of the Sea Princess, now anchor Liebow’s belief that the best educators see potential in students long before the students see it in themselves.
“That’s why a teacher has to understand they have a responsibility greater than delivering their knowledge about the Pythagorean theorem,” he said, highlighting the importance of mentorship and going beyond just the classroom when educating students, and “whether the kid could have faith in themselves and know that they could go to this college or that college, that’s a job of an educator.”
Before beginning his tenure as Nahant’s Superintendent, Liebow served as a teacher, assistant principal, principal, and Superintendent of a 13-school regional district in Maine before moving to Rockport, where he served as Superintendent there as well.
Liebow’s connection to the island is lifelong — he spent his childhood summers there in his family’s Cranberry Island house.
“It’s not where I was born, but it’s where I spent all of my summers,” he said. “It’s where I consider home.”
