News & Views

Business and education leaders from across the state will convene at the Educate Maine 6th annual Education Symposium on Friday, December 9, 2016 from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the Holiday Inn By The Bay in Portland.

Around this time of year 15 years ago, one of my former students lost his mother. Around this time of year one year ago, another of my former students delivered the most inspirational salutatory address I have ever witnessed. These two young men, Mike Moore and Joey Newell, are both successful college students now.

It’s OK to worry about kids and how best to teach kids. But it’s not a new worry. “The children now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders and love chatter in place of exercise.” That is a summary of complaints directed at young people in ancient Greece more than 2,000 years ago.

As I was meeting with our school principal recently, a small, blond-haired boy arrived in her doorway with his teacher. With a huge smile on his face, Jeffrey shared the news that he had read at home every night for the last 50 days. We quickly gave him high fives to celebrate his progress and engagement as a reader.

I recently visited Texas Instruments in South Portland with a group of teachers. Our purpose was to gain an understanding of the skills employers seek when hiring today’s high school and college graduates. Touring the semiconductor plant, we learned that engineers work in teams to create improved templates for technology and to solve efficiency problems.

Imagine that you are a fourth grade teacher working in an economically deprived school in the foothills of western Maine. You teach in a small town where the factory and farming jobs that used to be the economic engine of your community no longer exist. In this once thriving community, many parents now struggle to find jobs that pay a living wage. Many parents struggle to buy school supplies and clothes for their children.

When you think about segments of society that strongly support investing in early childhood development, the business community may not immediately come to mind. But it should.

Humble. It’s a word I have heard used over and over to describe an accomplished teacher. I have listened as parents, students, colleagues and administrators share information about skilled and compassionate educators that teach in their communities, but they often end by saying, “And of course they won’t tell you any of this, because they are extremely humble.”

Last year at this time I was honored and celebrated with 15 other County Teachers of the Year, including 2015 Maine Teacher of the Year Jennifer Dorman. It was humbling, strange and a little bit embarrassing. It’s not often that the spotlight is on the teacher instead of the student.

The report by Educate Maine found that although 87% of Maine high school students graduated in 2014, only 48% of Maine students graduated college on time, which is 11 percentage points lower than the New England average. That gap increased by 5 percentage points from 2007 to 2013.