Educate Maine is partnering with the Maine Department of Education and other stakeholders to establish the Teach Maine Center. The Center will provide leadership and continuity to implement sustained strategies to grow, strengthen and diversify Maine’s educator workforce. The Center will serve as a innovative hub, catalyst and convener for teacher led innovation across the state.
Join us to learn more about the Teach Maine Center and share your thoughts and ideas on how to support current and future educators in the State of Maine.
In this session, presenters will share the outcomes of UNE's first annual Future Teachers of Maine Summer Institute, a teacher pipeline opportunity targeting juniors in high school from typically marginalized communities who show interest in becoming teachers. Rising seniors will come to campus for a week this summer with the following goals: break down barriers to the college and financial aid application process; hear from teacher preparation programs around the state; participate in college classes with the UNE faculty; and interact with practicing teachers to learn what it's like to be a teacher. UNE students will serve as mentors to the rising seniors throughout the week to experience the university campus and to support them as they move through the application process their senior year.
Learning Ecosystems Northeast (LENE) is a network of educator peer communities where teachers, librarians, informal educators, and community members are working together to increase the entry points to STEM learning for youth in local regions across Maine. These peer communities strengthen and diversify the educator workforce by increasing communication and partnerships among in and out-of-school educators, revealing the rich array of caring adults intersecting with, and strengthening, youth learning pathways. In so doing, LENE not only serves to highlight the affordances of different learning contexts available to youth and the multitude of places youth can connect with STEM, but also builds local relationships that reduce isolation and increase retention for classroom teachers. After an introductory overview, LENE team members and educators will lead roundtables focused on how the network is working in their areas, including Wabanaki, rural, and immigrant/refugee communities across the state.
The Gateway to Opportunity program partners with teams of youth workers and adult employers across Maine to create and sustain supportive workplace cultures for diverse youth. In this session, we will explore existing systemic and organizational barriers to hiring and supporting youth workers, identify strategies for building social and emotional learning into the workplace, and discuss opportunities for meaningful contribution from both youth employees and adult partners. The session will guide participants through an interactive reflection and brainstorm on their own workplace practices and how to continue to create work spaces where youth can enter and thrive.
This interactive session will involve participants learning strategies to help students harness their ability to use their voice. The session will explore how to help students in a variety of settings to become independent self-advocates for their current and future needs. Participants will analyze their current settings (school, workplace, community) to determine how to harness the potential in existing structures and identify pathways that can be added for additional support and growth.
The University of Maine at Presque Isle (UMPI) has recently partnered with the two largest local high schools to facilitate the implementation of extended learning opportunities (ELOs) as a continuum in career preparedness for students. UMPI is able to compensate students financially, while the high schools are able to award course credit for ELOs. The ELO team is connecting with the surrounding community to build a network to enhance social capital for not only the students, but also for small businesses and non-profit organizations; this outreach supports our initiatives with increasing experiential learning and internships. In this presentation, we will highlight the process of ELO implementation at our sites; discuss the collaboration between UMPI, Caribou and Presque Isle high schools; explore the partnerships created with local businesses; and offer examples of student success stories as well as challenges and opportunities of establishing ELO programming. Our ultimate goal is constructing an ELO program where our students expect and anticipate real world connections as a part of the curriculum with a thorough and transparent process for career readiness being the norm rather than the exception.
*Schedule and sessions subject to change
