Submitted by Vicki Duguay, Principal, River View Community School in MSAD 11

River View Community School in South Gardiner, part of MSAD #11, has taken a concerted effort to increase the kindness factor within our school. We believe that the promotion of kindness among our students and school community is vitally important to the atmosphere within our school. Kindness encourages a positive mindset, which, in turn, nurtures our students while they are learning and participating in their educational endeavors and outside interests and activities.

Research has shown that focusing and teaching the skills and attitudes to have a positive mindset can improve school and community atmosphere and strengthen relationships between students, staff, and the community. Armed with that knowledge, River View staff signed up for the Kindness Challenge at http://www.kindnesschallenge.com and purposefully implemented Second Step (www.secondstep.org ) in our classrooms.

Our focus has been on intensifying and encouraging a positive and supportive school community where students and staff are kind, supportive, helpful, and caring toward each other. Teachers and staff teach lessons that give students a better understanding of how kindness can directly affect the atmosphere of the school, the mood of others, and have a positive impact on personal self-esteem. The lessons give the students an opportunity to practice being kind and supportive and also time to reflect on how this impacts their daily lives.

Due to the effectiveness and impact of the lessons, our school community evolved from not only staff recognizing students for being kind, but students recognizing each other as being kind and staff going out of their way to recognize their colleagues for their kindness and support as well.

There is a train of kindness ‘shout-outs’ that line our hallways that staff and students have written recognizing acts of kindness that they experienced themselves or observed happening to others. Students and staff are encouraged daily to continue to recognize acts of kindness and add to the ongoing chain.

Students also participated in spreading the ‘kindness germ’ on National JoyGerm Day on January 8th where students made cards that had statements of encouragement and happiness that were distributed throughout our community.

Students are recognizing the importance of practicing kindness for the act itself, not for the recognition or reward that might be given. Each day one can spot little actions that show our focus on kindness is working. One can spot students are saying thank you, asking how a friend feels, holding doors, picking up papers and items on the floor, and helping fellow classmates within the classroom.

Does Kindness Matter? We at River View Community School say yes! We have proven through our efforts and focused activities that being kind and spreading kindness can and does have a beneficial and uplifting impact at our school. We have seen our discipline referrals decrease by 50% since our purposeful focus on Kindness began. Our motto is, “In a world  where you can be anything, Be Kind.”

Submitted by Reza Namin, Superintendent of Schools for Maine School Administrative District 49

Under leadership of Superintendent Dr. Reza Namin, Maine School Administrative District 49 has implemented a partnership with the Harvard University School of Education. 47 teachers, staff, and specialists in 8 Professional Learning Communities are taking part in the partnership. The goal of professional learning through WIDE World at the Harvard Graduate School of Education is to transform school systems by developing professional communities of teachers and school leaders with interactive online courses and on-site support programs that enable schools to cultivate the critical learning students need for the 21st century world. Programs are based on Teaching for Understanding, a classroom-tested framework developed through research at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. They are taught on-line which enables a truly global learning environment with educators participating throughout the world. Courses are job-embedded so that learners may integrate research-based strategies for learning and teaching into their own workplace. Teams of learners are supported by both a course instructor who is on the faculty of Harvard University as well as coaches from around the world who help them achieve their goals. WIDE World encourages participants to tailor their learning to their own classrooms, schools, programs, and systems while building local capacity for enhancing learning for all.

Courses for Maine School Administrative District 49

Teaching for Understanding 1: Focus on Student Understanding

TfU is an introduction to the Teaching for Understanding framework. In this course, participants learn to clarify educational goals, link student work to experience, design active learning instructional units, develop effective assessment practices, and reflect on their own teaching practice. As we enter a new century of the unknown, there are critical skills that students must have in order to excel. The Teaching for Understanding course is an opportunity to learn teaching strategies that will actively engage students in the critical-thinking and 21st Century problem-solving skills that are now demanded by society.

Teaching for Understanding: Understanding in Practice

This course builds upon concepts and strategies learned in our introductory courses, giving participants a chance to explore the practical challenges of Teaching for Understanding. Using the unit, participants have previously planned, they will look at ways to refine their practice and implement new strategies to keep students engaged and focused. With fellow educators, a coach, and an instructor, TFU will help you combine disciplinary goals and students’ understanding in the classroom, exchange successful approaches and guide you through the process of continual reflection and adjustment.
TFU will also give you practical strategies for incorporating participants’ educational institutions’ educational goals into their unit.

An Impact on Maine School Administrative District 49

As Maine School Administrative District 49 reaffirms its identity as a learning community, the philosophy of Teaching for Understanding is most appropriate. We acknowledge and build upon our current strengths as a school district, including our curriculum standards, faculty professional learning communities, and attention to individual student needs. It is important to focus now on understanding and the realization that 21st-century learners must not only have knowledge and skills, but also strategies to think deeply about their learning, themselves, and the world. As our school department moves forward, all of our learners – both children and adults- will be challenged in new ways through our curriculum, instruction, and professional development.

Submitted by Kristen Levesque, Principal at Maranacook Community Middle School

Healthy Decisions Day is an annual event at Maranacook Community Middle School, that is organized by the school counselor, Gwen Mohlar, with support from other staff.  It started as a way to help educate students about making healthy decisions (especially about drugs, alcohol, and peer pressure) when growing up. This year the event was held on February 1st.

Students have opportunity to see a keynote speaker, go into grade level programs then pick 3 sessions under the themes below. It was a very informational day.

• Effects of Substances on the Brain/ Body: Presenter focused on how the brain and body are affected by many or different types of substances.
• Refusal Skills: Presenters focused on how students’ futures can be effected and the decision making skills students can use/ learn to remain substance free.
• Healthy Coping Skills: Presentations focused on healthy alternatives to substance misuse. These techniques can be used by many and is a great way to introduce different, healthy stress relief techniques to students.

Below are photos from the day:

Students

Students

Teacher- Jorgeanne Barley leading a session

keynote speaker, Jon Barker

Submitted by Natasha L. Brewer, District Library-Media Specialist/GT Teacher at Central Aroostook Jr./Sr. High School in MSAD #42

On Friday, February 1, 2019, MSAD #42 celebrated World Read Aloud Day. Guests were invited to read to PK through 12th grade students. Volunteers included: Superintendent, Elaine Boulier; School Board Member and local business owner, Josh Tweedie; Bus Driver, John York; Guidance Director, Sadie Shaw; School Board Chair/Aroostook County Sheriff, Shawn Gillen; Elementary Principal, Dawn Matthews; School Board Member/State Police Lieutenant, Brian Harris; Choral Director, Andy Cottle; District Librarian, Natasha Brewer; and High School Principal, Dr. Kay York.

Students were able to hear classic tales, like Blueberries for Sal, and a few new tales, like Scaredy Squirrel!

Author Keely Hutton joined our 8th grade students in a 20-minute Skype session where she explained her writing process and read an excerpt from her first novel Soldier Boy. The day was a lot of fun, and gave both readers and students a chance to enjoy the excitement that reading aloud can bring to both the listener and reader.

Submitted by Ainslee Riley, Principal of Thomaston Grammar School

Thomaston Grammar School, located in the Mid-Coast town of Thomaston, is a great place to be. Our K-5 school has approximately one hundred and eighty-five students, with two classes at each grade level.  In addition to having a daily focus on mathematics, literacy, science, social studies, and health instruction, students also have weekly art, music, technology, SEL (social emotion learning), and physical education classes.  Our focus centers around our district goals of proficiency based learning and social emotional learning, which go hand in hand. Teachers have worked together to create appropriate grade level performance indicators that align with our state standards.  The school has also adopted Restorative Practices and Second Step to help us work toward meeting our goals in the area of social emotional learning.

We have a wonderful parent group that works to provide opportunities for our families to come together to have fun in the school community. They sponsor and run big events like our annual Fall Fest and Cookies with Santa weekend events, movie nights, family dances, Trunk-or Treat for Halloween, and more.  They have also brought in organizations like Mad Science of Maine for school wide learning opportunities.  In addition to these events that our parent group provides for our school community, we: have two concerts a year, host a Family Fun Night, hold a Talent Show, celebrate Read Across America week with a week filled with theme days, collect food for our local food pantry and hold a Passing of the Food event, and more.

We partner with a variety of organizations that enable our students to have further educational enrichment during and outside the school day. We have partnered with Leaps of Imagination, allowing for art enrichment during the school day for all students in second and fourth grade.  We work with the Strand Theatre, which offers a variety of learning opportunities where we travel to the theatre or they bring in artists to do workshops inside our school.  Our older students have the opportunity to participate in after school art enrichment, after school programming through Youthlinks, and a Big Trek/Little Trek mentoring program.  Through funding from the Georges River Education Foundation, our second grade students and teachers, along with our PE teacher, have been working with an area gym, Hybrid Fitness, to complete an integrated unit on fitness and nutrition.  Our students in third grade have the opportunity to learn to ice skate at the MidCoast Recreation Center, and our students in fourth grade have the opportunity to learn to ski at the Camden Snow Bowl.  Fifth grade students are able to enrich their learning through our school’s fifth grade TGS Common Ground Garden and Outdoor Classroom.  Students in various grades have the opportunity to visit Herring Gut Learning Center, the Botanical Gardens, the Owl’s Head Lighthouse, Tanglewood, Old Fort Western and more, depending on the year, as part of integrated units they are studying.  This year the Georges River Education Foundation also helped to fund a birding unit for our fifth grade students that has involved bringing in a variety of experts to talk and work with our students.

We recognize students at monthly theme-based assemblies. Our assemblies focus on a variety of attributes including, but not limited to, respect, compassion, and perseverance.  There is also a monthly Principal’s Award given to a student who exemplifies all these attributes on a daily basis. Students who are recognized have a special lunch with Principal Riley. Students who receive TGS tickets are recognized at this assembly as well. These are students who go above and beyond our school rules: Be Safe, Be Kind, and Try Your Best. Students who get tickets are also announced daily and earn prizes for receiving multiple tickets. Students are very excited to receive these tickets.

Teachers at Thomaston Grammar School work hard to make learning meaningful and fun for all of the students in our community.

Submitted by Sarah Chadwick Rogers, Associate Director of After School Programming, Youthlinks at Broadreach Family & Community Services in RSU 13

At Broadreach’s 21st Century Learning Center, providing afterschool programming for the towns of RSU#13, we are proud to announce that students from grades K-12 participated in their town’s local “Pies on Parade!” event. This annual event raises funds to help hungry Midcoast Maine families through the local Area Outreach Food Pantry.

Pies that the youth baked were enjoyed at our YMCA’s Community Building, which also featured a pie obstacle course, art projects and pie games – designed by students in the afterschool program.

Written by Brenda Gardner, Gifted & Talented Teacher and and Dr. Sharon Greaney, Reading Educator. Submitted by Jon Doty, Director of Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment
 at Regional School Unit #34
.

Reading Recovery is designed to help struggling first graders catch up to their peers in 12 to 20 weeks. Specially trained reading teachers work with students in a one on one setting to meet each child’s individual needs. In RSU #34, about three quarters of these students reach the average of the class by the end of first grade. But we often wonder what happens to these students as they move on. Here is one student’s story.

Emma Hargreaves is currently a senior at Old Town High School and will attend Bowdoin College next year. She remembers being a social butterfly in first grade, always babbling and asking questions but her reading was holding her back. Her mom was worried she wouldn’t be able to catch up. Her parents were happy when she was offered a spot in Reading Recovery. Emma says she doesn’t remember specifics about her lessons, but she does remember how much she adored her one-on-ones with Mrs. St. Louis. Emma says, “I think she taught me how to value progress and how to persevere when a process isn’t linear. Catching up with my peers often felt like two steps forward and one step back. Years later, I know that process is true for almost anything worthwhile, and I am forever thankful to the women who taught me that lesson.”

After a half year of Reading Recovery lessons, Emma says her success went off much like a rocket. She developed a love of reading and advanced to the top reading groups. Emma was identified as gifted and talented. At Old Town High School, Emma has taken all honors and AP classes and is on track to finish with a GPA at or near the top of her class. As president of the National Honor Society, she created a tutoring program to help her peers. Emma is a student leader who has served as a student school board representative as well as student representative to the Chapter 104 advisory committee. She traveled to Washington DC last summer as a representative for Dirigo Girl’s State. She has been published in the Portland Press Herald and Emma says, “Authoring and publishing the work was one of the most scary and rewarding things I have ever done. It was challenging and emotional and I used the same perseverant spirit Mrs. St. Louis and I cultivated way back in first grade to do so.”

Emma concludes that “the potential in everybody exists and the hardship is in its release, not in the question of its presence. Reading Recovery was the beginning of unlocking mine. What I’ve accomplished is much less important than how it has set me up to accomplish more things. Reading Recovery is valuable in its continued and immeasurable effects on its students. Reading Recovery is the beginning of stories of kids like me, and without teachers like Mrs. St Louis, the chapters of those stories would be completely different. You helped me find my voice, and while I can never repay you, I promise to write my life with the lesson you’ve taught me and the confidence you helped unlock.”

Submitted by Mike Felton, Superintendent of St. George Municipal School Unit

St. George School has been chosen as the School of the Year by the Maine Environmental Education Association (MEEA)! In the award letter to the school, the MEEA wrote, “Your demonstrated commitment to creating authentic learning opportunities for your students and engaging them in their environment as well as your clear dedication to reaching into the community to create real world learning opportunities make St. George School a clear choice for this award.”

The school congratulates and thanks their educators, students, families, community members, local organizations, and Town officials and committees for all they do to make the school-community what it is. In a statement to the community, the school said, “Together, we are stretching people’s imaginations as to what’s possible in public education and redefining the depth and potential of the relationship between school, community, and environment.”

Submitted by Michael J. McQuarrie, Headmaster of Erskine Academy 

Beginning in September, Erskine Academy committed to a challenging mission, once again, to collect food and funds to support the Good Shepherd Food Bank of Maine (GSFB) by participating in WGME13/Fox23’s School Spirit Challenge Tournament of Champions. The School Spirit Challenge (SSC) is a friendly competition between schools to show school pride and spirit, all while helping the community.

The program is designed to promote the school community and good stewardship with students of high schools in central and southern Maine through an eight-week food drive to benefit the Good Shepherd Food Bank and local food pantries.

This was the second time Erskine participated in the School Spirit Challenge, the first being two years ago, an event which was won handily over the other participating schools thanks to the efforts of many students, parents, alumni, businesses, and friends. In 2016, Erskine was the School Spirit Champion for having raised nearly 85,000 pounds of food, an amount exceeding the total raised by the second and third finishers combined.

Always up for a challenge and a worthy cause, the campaign was kicked off during the school’s homecoming in September. In attendance were WGME 13 anchor Jeff Peterson and representatives from the GSFB and the sponsors of this year’s SSC. The morning kicked off with students arriving at 5:30 a.m. for a tailgate breakfast served in exchange for their food donations.

The campaign continued until November 2 and was a more significant success than the Academy ever imagined. The Erskine community pulled together to collect food and monetary donations and to support the many activities of the Challenge.  Events included “Fill the Bus” with returnables,  the Fly Like an Eagle 5K Run/Walk, Trivia Night,  Trunk or Treat,  Open Mic Night, and a dodgeball tournament. Off-campus activities included an EA Parents Food Drive Challenge.  An online appeal went out on social media, and many generous donors gave through the Good Shepherd Food Bank’s virtual food drive.

Though initiated by Erskine’s students and faculty, the school led what was a broader community campaign supported substantially by many area businesses and organizations. Student council representatives will soon visit key contributors as part of their “Gratitude Tour.”

Erskine Academy won the competition by far exceeding its goal of 100,000 pounds. Erskine raised a record-breaking 196,969.25 pounds of food for The Good Shepherd Food Bank, which is over twice the amount that any of the 60-plus competing schools has raised in the five years and ten seasons of this competition.

About this accomplishment, Headmaster McQuarrie says, “The School Spirit Challenge was for a great cause, and through it, our community engaged in collective problem-solving and activism as we made a significant difference in the fight against hunger in Maine.  We demonstrated, and others witnessed, the dynamism of EA’s values—stewardship, leadership, and relationships—at work.  The work ethic, inspiration, and idealism of our young people, in particular, are humbling and heartening.”