As with many schools around the State of Maine, the nation, and across the globe, planning for the 2020/2021 school year has been an almost impossible task with not knowing what will be around the corner during the COVID-19 pandemic. Among those in the trenches of planning is the fearless team at MSAD 11/RSU 11. They have worked tirelessly this summer at engaging their community and being transparent in the processes as they work to respond to the pandemic situation.

“I believe that it is critical that schools continue to highlight their strengths and I’m especially proud of the collaborative work of the district and the process that (MSAD 11 Superintendent) Pat Hopkins has led us through in this district,” said MSAD 11 Director of Curriculum and Instruction Angela Hardy.

The team worked on a process for redesigning their school system by August 24 which included the launch of an 8 committee Return to School Planning Process. A Steering Committee was formed to facilitate the process after first developing a set of guiding principles for their work. The committees were composed of 100 people representing all levels of staff, the School Board, parents, and community members. Seven subcommittees meet weekly or more, led by administrators throughout the summer, to focus on their charge: Facilities/Safety; Food Service; Resources; Transportation; Communications; Core Instruction/SEL/Technology; and, Athletics. Every subcommittee has staff, parent/community, and administrator representation and reported out at the Steering Committee. “MSAD 11 is as prepared as it can be because of the trust our community has of our educators and the commitment our principals and directors have toward the health and well-being of their staff and students. The leadership’s willingness to listen to concerns and their drive to come to creative, thoughtful solutions in a collaborative manner is paramount to this process.” stated the Director of Curriculum.

“Beginning in the spring, Supt Hopkins has kept staff informed at every step as we went through ‘remote learning’ and the end of the 2019-2020 school year.  When it became obvious that we would not be returning as normal in the fall, a Return to School Committee was put together.  This committee included 20 teachers and additional staff members from a group of employees,” said Dean Hall, President of the MSAD 11 Teachers’ Association, GRMS Social Studies Teacher.  “All staff had a chance to serve and those who did serve had a real voice in developing the plan we will be using to start the school year.”

The Steering Committee, the decision making body which recommends to the Administrative Team or School Board next steps, met weekly and livestreamed each meeting and posted the recording on their YouTube page and Return to School Planning website.

The district has also held virtual district-wide staff meetings to respond to staff questions and concerns as they arose. In addition, the superintendent met weekly with every president of each Association to co-design a COVID staff handbook.

“We would like to thank MSAD 11 for their continued commitment to the safety of their students, staff, and surrounding community,” said Chad Greenleaf, President of the Educational Technicians & Administrative Assistants Association. “I applaud the district leaders for their willingness to extend an offer of teamwork. Through the collaborative process that involved representatives from every area of expertise within the school district and community, we were able to assemble a comprehensive yet flexible plan.”

To further engage with community stakeholders, MSAD 11 administrators collaborated with their regional representative from Maine Roads to Quality and hosted a virtual meeting with MSAD 11/RSU 11 daycare providers to help them navigate the district’s online resources and information and to collaborate towards solutions that will support families as they return to school in a hybrid/blended/cohort-based learning model. They plan to continue meeting virtually as the school year progresses to keep open lines of communication and revisit issues that arise.

Virtual parent meetings have also been on-going as the school year starts, with each building principal and the directors of special services to walk parents through the start of the school year, share the district’s newly designed district-wide student handbook, and explain the schedule in greater detail.

“The MSAD 11 community should know their voices were heard. They can be proud of the result we were able to attain through this process,” added Greenleaf. “We remain committed to our student’s education and well-being regardless of the challenges ahead.”

This story was written collaboratively between distinct staff at MSAD 11/RSU 11 and Maine Department of Education staff as part of the Maine Schools Sharing Success Campaign. To submit a story or an idea please email it to Rachel Paling at rachel.paling@maine.gov.

Joe Mason of Asa Adams Elementary School in Orono has been awarded as the Maine School Custodian of the Year and will be the recipient of the A. Burleigh Oxton Award for Excellence.

Joe credits the “Read ME Agriculture” program as a factor that lead him to reach out to the community more for volunteers and also working with staff to coordinate readings, he says, “This is one of the many things that really made my role as a custodian expand to also become involved in doing something other than just cleaning for the kids, but actually getting to ‘teach’, if you will.”

Joe started as a custodian at Asa Adams Elementary School in Orono in September of 2014. He became Greenhouse Coordinator 3 1/2 years ago and it was at that time he learned about the MAITC “Read ME Agriculture” program. Not long after that he had the school lined up for the ‘Applesauce Day’ reading, and has continued with the program since then.

In addition to the annual readings, he also works with some kids who help water the plants in the school’s greenhouse. He’s worked with small groups of students in the past couple of years to do things like build bee boxes for Mason bees, start marigold seeds, and grow edible pea shoots.

Outside of work Joe is also an avid home gardener, and loves to pickle things: cucumbers, zucchini, fiddleheads, carrots, asparagus, and green beans. He is also a passionate disc golf player (and a state winner three times!), and has helped get the sport incorporated into the PE program at his school.

Congratulations to Joe on this well deserved award!

This story is courtesy of Maine Agriculture in the Classroom (MAITC). Learn more about MAITC by visiting their website at https://www.agclassroom.org/ME/. 

A driving force behind all learning opportunities in Alison Babb-Brott’s second grade classroom is the power and importance of student voice. When students feel confident and empowered, their initiative, engagement, and quality of work all begin to increase. And as these habits of scholarship all start to increase, so do Ms. Babb expectations. It is this symbiotic relationship that underlies all of the work they do in second grade.

With so much lost to remote learning, Ms. Babb wanted to create an authentic, motivating project for her students that would lend itself not only to their voices, but also to their desire and ability to create.

She designed this project to give her students a space to reflect on the transition to remote learning and an opportunity to channel feelings of grief and powerlessness into a collaborative art project.

The students spent the final weeks of remote learning thinking, writing, sharing, revising, and drafting, and drawing to create letter pages that commemorate their remote schooling experiences.

The effort they put forth to create such a high quality product, especially given the many challenges to remote creation, is a credit to who they are as scholars.

Student Voices: An Alphabet Book of Remote Learning

“I hope my students will share this book with friends and family near and far, and that copies will eventually make their way onto bookshelves and coffee tables at home; reminding them of what they are capable of, no matter the circumstances,” said Babb-Brott.

This story was submitted by Alison Babb-Brott, a Second Grade Teacher at St. George School in St. George as part of the Maine Schools Sharing Success Campaign. In addition to being a second grade teacher, Babb-Brott is also the 2020 Knox County Teacher of the Year and was recently named a 2021 Teacher of the Year State finalist.

To submit a good news story or idea to the DOE, email Rachel Paling at rachel.paling@maine.gov.

Our MSAD 54 family has had great success in feeding our students during the COVID-19 pandemic. With the help of our transportation department, administration, ed techs and of course or school nutrition team we were able to serve close to 500k meals and traveled 48k miles between the months of March-June.

We received many words of appreciation, cards, photos of the children, and signs around the towns thanking us for all that we have done. It has been a great and humbling experience for all of us that have been involved over the last couple of months.

This story was submitted by Jana Wacome, Director – School Nutrition, RSU 54/MSAD 54 as part of the Maine Schools Sharing Success Campaign. To submit a story or an idea, email it to Rachel Paling at rachel.paling@maine.gov.

Every year when students enrolled in Todd Papianou’s Lifetime Pursuits physical education class at Mountain Valley High School when they return from April vacation, they are given the opportunity to choose their next unit. The Lifetime Pursuits course is an outdoor skills based class, and in the spring, students are able to choose between kayaking, canoeing, and biking. This year, things looked a little bit different.

About 15 years ago, in a combined effort between RSU 10 and the Dirigo District (RSU 56), Todd Papianou, a physical educator at MVHS, applied for and was awarded a federal physical education program grant, specifically, the Carol M. White Physical Education Grant. With the award from the grant, he and a group of physical educators were able to purchase 110 bicycles to be shared between 4 schools.

Papianou collaborated with the Bike Coalition in conjunction with the DOT to pilot bike education curriculum in Maine. With the Coronavirus impacting schooling and forcing a switch to distance learning, Todd jumped at the opportunity to adjust his bike curriculum and continue to make it accessible during this period of remote learning. His adjusted unit has a focus on bike awareness and commuter safety. To make this work, he has implemented a new plan that uses content, videos, and teaching tools produced by the League of American Bicyclists.

Papianou knew that he wanted to get the bikes out to students, but was not able to at first. The school was being deep cleaned and he couldn’t get in. After a conversation with his principal, Matt Gilbert, they decided that it was time to “roll out” the bikes. After gaining permission from the principal, Todd rushed home, got his trailer, and headed back to the school so that he could load up the bikes. He brought all 25 bikes home and stored them in his barn which became a makeshift bike shop. He then tuned each bike before sending them out to his students.

Over the course of two days, Todd Papianou and Matt Gilbert drove around delivering bikes to students by placing them at the end of each student’s driveway. Todd said that the bike roll out was exciting and that he was happy to see both students and parents (from a distance) while dropping off the bikes. He has received a lot of positive feedback from parents who were grateful that their children now had an additional option to get outside and to get active.

Todd has taken advantage of new technology to assist in the bike roll out and distance learning. He set students up with an app called Strava, which tracks ride analytics including distance and time. This data was shared between himself and his students so that he could see the progress they were making. In relation to using this new technology, Todd said “Being ready for the past decade with a comprehensive ‘Commuter Bike/Trail Bike Unit’ online already makes me feel proud that I had the foresight to prep and commit myself to Senator King’s vision to transition our learning/teaching delivery to include technology.”

To wrap up the school year, Todd planned an in-person assessment day for his students to show of their new skills, demonstrate bike control, and return the bikes. On this day, Todd focused on discussing what worked and what didn’t work in regards to remote instruction with his students. Todd said that both personally and professionally, the biggest takeaways from distance learning were that “nothing replaces instantaneous feedback, discussion, and banter…[and that] teachable moments arise and present themselves.” In a time where many of us have been stuck at home, Todd provided an option to get outside and be active for his students, his determination and innovation made the bike roll out highly successful.

This article was written by Maine DOE Intern Aidan Sachs in collaboration with Todd Papianou, a physical educator at MVHS as part of the Maine Schools Sharing Success Campaign. To submit a story or an idea email it to Rachel Paling at rachel.paling@maine.gov.

Morse High School, Bath, ME: Amidst the uncertainty and chaos that ensued following the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic, rising juniors at Morse High School, Isabel Strelneck and Isaac Ensel, came up with an inspiring idea to bring friends back together and bring joy to their community. Together, they rallied over 40 of their classmates to work together to produce a music video to show their community what their lives as high schoolers have looked like since the onset of social distancing. You can watch the video here.

One day, Isaac Ensel called Isabel Strelneck and asked her to listen to the song “Carry On” by Fun. As she listened, he described how a music video would be a perfect way to capture their daily lives, and the vision for the project became clear. Isaac and Isabel filmed some portions of the video together, from a distance, and reached out to friends to get clips from their days. In the video, you can see everything from practicing lacrosse to an online English class. Isabel and Isaac were able to create and provide a platform for their friends to share and validate their own experiences during this time of uncertainty.

Isabel says that they were inspired by wanting to bring joy to people and to talk to friends who they had not seen recently. The two filmmakers said “we created this video to bring light to the pandemic while demonstrating what students have been doing” Isabel and Isaac wanted to document this rare time, and making a music video was something they had always wanted to do. The combination of these ideas has made an amazing impact on their community.

When asked how well the video captured how she and her friends are handling this time of social distancing, Isabel said “I think it’s harder to describe how I’m feeling and spending time during quarantine, but the video shows a good representation of the ways [my friends and I] are trying to get through it…If anything, it was also a reminder to me that there’s a positive side to all this time-so many new things to try and practice.”

Teachers, classmates, and community members alike have left comments on the video sharing their love and support. Leah Heyman, a science teacher at Bath Middle School, and former teacher of many students in the video wrote “I love this, miss you! An amazing way to work together, [and] stay connected.” Many others chimed in with praise, love, and pride. “This is SO SWEET! Got me a little teary-eyed. So great to see all those fantastic Morse students!” commented another viewer.

When asked what the message behind the video was, Isabel said that “the message behind the video is that [Coronavirus] is impacting every single person differently, but there’s ways to make the best of it and ‘carry on’…it’s also a reminder that we can all stay connected even when we can’t be together at school.” With well over 5,000 views on YouTube, Isabel and Isaac have been able to spread this message to their community and beyond. Isabel and Isaac hope that their video can make people’s day, bring them joy, and hopefully inspire them. After reading through the comments on the YouTube page, as well as having conversations with community members, Isabel said that she and Isaac “really weren’t expecting people to have emotional reactions to the video but rather for it to be something enjoyable, but it touched a lot of people and we think that’s really cool.”

In talking with Isabel, who is also a member of the Commissioner’s Student Cabinet, she reflected further on the impact her video has made on the community. When asked further about responses from teachers and fellow students looked like she responded with:

At first, Isaac and I thought it would be a fun, lighthearted video that would only reach our closest friends. Once we posted it, students thought of it as fun and entertaining, as we originally thought it would be, but teachers and adults treated it more sentimentally. We’ve received many thank-yous and grateful notes on how the video had impacted people’s lives and made a difference in their day. It may have been how much time we spent working on the video or something else, but we overlooked the possibility that it could really be so meaningful-a lot of people have reached out to us, even saying they’ve cried from it! -Isabel Strelneck

Watch the “How We Carry On” music video created by Morse High School juniors Isabel Strelneck and Isaac Ensel here!

This article was written by Maine DOE Intern Aidan Sachs in collaboration with rising juniors at Morse High School, Isabel Strelneck and Isaac Ensel as part of the Maine Schools Sharing Success Campaign. To submit a story or an idea email it to Rachel Paling at rachel.paling@maine.gov.