Commissioner’s Update – September 6, 2012

Commissioner's Update - September 6, 2012
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Today is a big day for education in Maine.

Today the Department will formally submit a request for flexibility under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act – and it’s been a long time coming.

Maine’s been working for a year to craft this new accountability and improvement system, which aims to help struggling schools improve and to consider multiple valid measures when evaluating performance.
We’re extremely proud of the waiver request we’re submitting today – and we couldn’t have completed it without the combined efforts of educators, stakeholders and the general public.

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First Lady Ann LePage announces “Maine is ME Student Art Challenge”

The following press release was issued today by First Lady Ann LePage.

AUGUSTA – First Lady Ann LePage is announcing the Maine is ME Student Art Challenge, in partnership with the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy.

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New scholarship fund for National Board-certified teachers

State law, 20-A MRSA Section 13013-A subsection 5 & 6; as Amended by PL 2012 c. 702, established the National Board Certification Scholarship Fund to encourage teachers to apply to and enroll in the certification program offered by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, or its successor organization.

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Service-learning workshops offered at Blaine House Conference

Teachers, school administrators and school-community liaisons working in school districts that have an interest in service-learning or who have experimented with service-learning and want to learn more are encouraged to attend the 2012 Blaine House Conference on Service and Volunteerism Tuesday, October 9 at the University of Maine at Orono.

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Make pledge, observe 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance

The “I Will” service project initiative calls on each citizen to pay tribute to 9/11 victims and first responders by performing a “good deed,” meaning a personal act of service or an act of “neighboring,” on the 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance. “I Will” is organized nationally by My Good Deed, a foundation started by family members of those lost on 9/11.

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Waterville teens “spark” change at Seventeen magazine

Waterville Junior High classmates Julia Bluhm (left) and Izzy Labbe traveled to New York City to protest Seventeen magazine's use of Photoshop to adjust models' appearances.
Waterville Junior High classmates Julia Bluhm (left) and Izzy Labbe traveled to New York City to protest Seventeen magazine’s use of Photoshop to adjust models’ appearances. They returned to NYC for a national SPARK (Sexualization Protest: Action, Resistance, Knowledge) meeting in August.

Call it a hunch.

Julia Bluhm, an eighth grader from Waterville Junior High, had a sneaking suspicion that not all young women were beautiful, thin and fit.

Yet, as Bluhm flipped through the pages of last May’s Seventeen magazine, there they were, in glorious color, one perfect teen after another.

Of course, it wasn’t just May’s issue. And it wasn’t just Seventeen magazine. These smiling stick-figures in minimalist fashions were everywhere, she discovered, seemingly taunting her.

“All fake,” Bluhm concluded.

Riding a mantra of “if you don’t like something, change it,” Bluhm and her Waterville Junior High partner Izzy Labbe set out on a campaign to shake up the good folks who, for starters, publish Seventeen. The magazine’s current circulation is 20 million worldwide.

“When girls read magazines like Seventeen, they shouldn’t have to be subjected to Photoshopped images and subliminal messages about the way they are supposed to look,” Labbe said.

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Literacy initiative launch in Lewiston next week

Education Commissioner Stephen Bowen and Lee Anne Larsen, literacy specialist for the Maine DOE, will be joined by school and community participants for the launch of Literacy for ME, the Maine Department of Education’s birth-to-adult literacy initiative, next week.

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