Promising Futures

I found it really nice to read an article that was specifically about Maine schools and Maine issues for a change. Although I do not know where my educational career is going to lead me in the short run due to the military, I hope to end up in Maine eventually and went to Maine schools myself. I thought that the description of Maine schools as "academically focused but rarely exciting or challenging" was pretty dead on. In the Maine schools I have seen, there are often very good teachers who know their material very well but just don't have the 'teacher training' necessary to differentiate learning for both suffering students and advanced students.

I also thought that the core principles in the article were very progressive and positive. I especially liked the one that emphasized ACTION in response to assessment data. I think that too many Maine schools since NCLB put a lot of emphasis on assessment data and standardized testing without actually creating action plans from administration on down to individual teachers. I feel that too often lofty plans are made to improve schools without encouraging teachers to meet with each other and collaborate together about how to best teach students. I feel that this belief along with the encouragement to teach using differentiated instruction are what made this article so valuable. Although a lot of the information was a lot of the same educational suggestions we have been learning here at UMF for years, it was very cool to read about it in a scholarly article that was specifically aimed towards our state.