This blog entry was published in the September edition of The Maine Apprise, the newsletter of the Maine Principals’ Association.
As I toured schools across the state this past spring, I heard a lot from principals and assistant principals whose jobs are becoming more demanding by the day. We’re expecting our schools to prepare all students for college and careers in a constantly changing world. The expectations haven’t dropped even as funding has become tighter.
By Blake Bourque
A robotics team offers students a chance to develop some of the essential skills that will make them successful in the professional world.
Concerns about shrinking school budgets and standardized testing, enthusiasm about the new Common Core state standards, and an eagerness to have a singular guiding vision for education in Maine.
Posted in Dispatches, Featured, Funding, Listening Tour, Standards
SEARSPORT – Representatives from more than 40 schools in Maine, Canada, Scotland and elsewhere have toured Searsport District High School over the past year.
Their mission?
Learn from a rural school of about 200 students – more than 60 percent of whom qualify for free- and reduced-priced lunches – that has executed a transformation by shifting entirely to a system of standards-based education.
Posted in Dispatches, Featured, High School, Instruction, Listening Tour, Standards, Waldo County
PLEASANT POINT RESERVATION – The students at Beatrice Rafferty School take Passamaquoddy culture classes, learn the Passamaquoddy language and draw on the knowledge of community elders living on Pleasant Point Reservation.
It’s part of the 110-student school’s efforts to offer its students not only a traditional academic education, but an educational experience that incorporates the culture that surrounds them.
MACHIAS – Third graders at Rose M. Gaffney Elementary School recently sampled cow tongue, made hand-dipped candles and fashioned a game using paper cups, pencils, string and wooden balls.
They worked with their art teacher to create silhouettes of themselves and dress them in pioneer-era styles.
It was all part of a hands-on unit designed to teach students a bit about the life of the American pioneer.
There’s something that stands out to me about the schools I’ve visited since becoming Commissioner that have taken major steps toward implementing a standards-based model of education.
It’s not just that students at these schools are making choices about how they’ll learn and how they’ll demonstrate to their teachers that they’ve met the expectations set out for them.
Shelly Moody gets her students started on a project about ecosystems.
OAKLAND – The students in Shelly Moody’s classroom at Williams Elementary School can explain everything about the lesson they’re working on, how it fits into the broader unit of study, and why it’s important.
The knowledge comes from the classroom’s transition in recent years to a standards-based model of education in which Moody lays out the expectations for her students, makes sure they understand them and allows them to choose how they’re going to meet them.
READFIELD – It’s time for reading class in the second grade at Readfield Elementary School.
Rather than remain in their assigned classrooms, students from the school’s two second-grade classes combine forces, and their teachers break them into reading groups based on ability level.
Maine Learning Technology Initiative allows algebra teacher to develop curriculum without textbooks.
FREEPORT — Alex Briasco-Brin has never taught using a textbook.
Freeport Middle School algebra teacher Alex Briasco-Brin works with a student.
Instead, the Freeport Middle School algebra teacher has created a variety of applications for his students using the Apple MacBooks they all receive as part of the Maine Learning Technology Initiative.
Beatrice Rafferty School students perform a Passamaquoddy song.
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