Chartering Education, #112

Susan Conley:

The idea is let's shake things up and let's look at place based learning, let's look at very individualized learning and let's see what happens when we kind of divorce ourselves from pinning all these expectations on standardized tests. You get all this excitement and you can sense that the kids are sort of they've been liberated from all the downsides of standardized testing. Now if you test well, that's a walk in the park. You're all set. But when you what happens to the kids who are extremely bright and don't test well at all?

[Unidentified voice]:

How do you get real world challenges, authentic kind of assessments, and how do you build units around those things that would challenge students in an interesting way but also add value to the community?

[Unidentified voice]:

Small schools are sustainable over time, but need very, very different economic models, different teaching models in order to make them sustainable.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 112, Chartering Education, airing for the first time on Sunday, November 3, 2013. Today's guests include Susan Connolly, author of Paris Was the Place and contributor to Maine Magazine Glenn Cummings, president and Executive Director of the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences at Goodwill Hinckley and John Denari, Head of School at the Harpswell Coastal Academy. Today's Chartering Education show was inspired by the article written by Susan Conley for the November issue of Maine Magazine. We know that kids learn differently and that no matter how kids learn, education is of paramount importance when it comes to health and wellness. Maine is working to find ways to educate our kids in new ways through programs such as charter schools. We hope you enjoy our thought provoking conversations with Susan Conley, Glenn Cummings and John Denari. Thank you for joining us today. I always enjoy being on the air with people who have spent time with

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

me in earlier episodes of the doctoralisa

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Radio Hour and podcast because it reminds

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

me of the journey that we've been

[Unidentified voice]:

on

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

sometimes somewhat of a rough journey.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It reminds me where we've come from and where we are now.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And the individual who's a across the microphone from me today is Susan Conley. She is one of these such individuals

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

who I believe was in possibly the January of the first year that we were doing this show, not too many episodes in, and at the time was

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

talking about her earlier book, Foremost Good Fortune. Today she has written another book and it is Paris was the place she's going to talk to us about that. And she's also going to talk to us about her charter school article for

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Maine Magazine, a magazine for which she is a writer. Thanks for coming in.

Susan Conley:

It's a treat to be back, Susan.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You've been very busy and you're at a very different place than when we last saw you. Foremost Good Fortune for people who I know are going to go back and listen to the prior interview, but just to give them a little bit of a teaser is really more about your own personal, I don't want to say struggles exactly, but your own personal experience with being in China, dealing with breast cancer, raising two small children. And it's very much a memoir. This book is a novel.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Two very different books for two different

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

places in your life. Talk to me about that process.

Susan Conley:

Well, I've been on a book tour these last few months talking about this territory I'm calling the middle place or the middle ground coming out of memoir. Moving into novel. Memoir is preordained. You know, what happened in the story and then the struggle or the challenge, I think is to find the story hidden inside the story. We all know the outer casing of our lives, but what's sort of the beating heart inside Novel for me was infinite possibility. But if you look at the sort of facts of that novel, Paris was the place. A lot of it does line up with my life. You know, it's set in Paris in 1989. Oh well, I lived in Paris in 1988. The narrator teaches refugee kids. Well, I've done that here in Portland. It's not an autobiographical novel, which was a great relief. I didn't want to write an autobiographical novel, but what I do is I pull. And I think we all do this in many different walks of our lives. We pull from different sort of parts to weave stories.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So you didn't when you were in Paris fall in love with a good looking French lawyer?

Susan Conley:

I wish. I wish. No, but I was in love in Paris, so I knew what it was like to be in love with In Paris. So again, that was real life being woven into fiction. And I do that a lot. I. You know, people have been asking me, how did you recreate Paris in 89? You know, I've been back subsequently, but. But I haven't lived there since then. And you know what? It's all there for me in my memory. I. Hold on. I'm just one of those people. So I did a whole lot of research around. Let's get the street names right, let's make sure we know every metro stop. Let's take the readers to Paris in such a way that they feel they're on the street. But. But, you know, a lot of it was still. The emotional truth of it was still in my mind.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It does make one want to travel. As I was reading it over the weekend, I kept thinking to myself, wow,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've never been to Paris.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've never been to France, you know. And you describe the scene where Willie, the main character, is going with her French lawyer boyfriend, Macon. And that's how you pronounce it, right? Yeah, Macon, named after the city in Georgia, interestingly enough.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

They're going out to the beach and they're sleeping on the beach under the stars.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And I was thinking to myself, why am I not doing that? I need to book a plane ticket. So I think you do a really nice job evoking that sense of place and really enticing people to live this sort of adventure.

Susan Conley:

Oh, well, thank you. That's exactly what I was trying to do. I have this longing, this need to place characters in far off locations, I guess, including myself, and then see what happens. What is it like to be the outsider looking in? I like to get people out of their comfort zones. I think the minute you get people on the road in transit, you know, I get Willie in a truck with her new lover going to the. To the beach in France, and everything's up for grabs. You know, what are they going to talk about? What are they going to learn? So I can't stop doing that, I don't think.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, it does seem as though in Foremost Good Fortune, you really were the outsider. You were living this life and you describe it in the memoir. And not only were you living the outsider life as somebody who is in China, as an American, but you were also living an outsider life as somebody

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

who had breast cancer, hanging out with

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

people who didn't have breast cancer as a young woman. Now you're back in Portland and you're living kind of an insider life. You're living a life that's really more one you've always lived, but you're still writing about living the outsider life. Why is that so interesting to you?

Susan Conley:

Oh, that's a great question. Maybe I'm terrified of stasis. You know, Maine is my home. It's been my home my whole life. But I've lived away from it so often, maybe almost more than I've lived here. So it's like for many people, I think Maine has that. It's like the compass, but you have to keep orbiting, you have to keep stretching. And I'm lucky because I married a man who has the travel lust as much as I do. And if not more so. He thinks nothing of hopping on planes to go to remote locations that would take two day bus rides and then maybe a camel and a horse. So it's great to put yourself in sort of dynamics where other people are also sort of forcing you to shake up your comfort zone.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Even within the story. Even within the story.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

In Paris was the place Willy travels from Paris. Now Willie's an American, she's in Paris,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

and then she travels to India. So you really do like to keep people moving around and keep pushing them outside of their comfort zones. You know, there's always one more level, one more layer.

Susan Conley:

Yeah. The India section of the novel is an interesting one because it's. For me, it was a lesson in editing. I love travel so much and I also love just locale and flavor. So I could have made the India section much longer. In fact, it was much longer. And then I had to ask, and I'm always asking this of narrative and I ask this of my students. I teach a great deal and I. The question is, how much can the narrative hold? So we go to Paris. We're also in California a lot in my novel. Can we go to India? You know, can the novel hold India? And it turned out it could. But it had to be a very kind of stealth, very focused trip. You know, for a while it was going to be this sprawling kind of adventure. And then I made her have a very clear mission for why she was going. Willie was doing some research on this crazy, obscure Indian poet. And then the surprise in writing is you land on characters you didn't know you'd meet. So she meets the granddaughter of the Indian poet. And this granddaughter is wildly charismatic and sort of curmudgeonly and also wonderful. And I kind of fell in love with her. And I didn't expect to. So then I had to keep India in because I got so attached to

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

the characters and Simultaneously, while Willie is going on this external journey, she's also dealing with things herself internally, and dealing with things interpersonally. She's dealing with one of her students,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Gita, who is being held in asylum in France.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And they're waiting to see whether they

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

can enable her to stay in France

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

or whether she will be sent back to India. So we have Willie struggling with that. We have Willie struggling with her new love. We have Willie struggling with her brother Luke, who falls ill. It's a lot. Is that also part of the question? Can the narrative hold?

Susan Conley:

Yeah. And when the novel presented itself to me, it was all laid out like that. I had an image of a woman on a train in France. She was about 30 years old. She was Willie. And I didn't know her, but I really wanted to know her. And I wanted to capture a woman who had yet to have the big love of her life and who'd yet to have children, who was really still searching and everything was still unfolding for her. And how exciting is that? You know, I think I was nostalgic for that time as well, in my own life. And she very much had a brother who she was so close to. And this is where real life mirrors the fiction again, because I had lost someone very, very dear to me, to AIDS in the early 90s. He was really kind of a part of our family, and I needed to write about him, and I needed to honor him and celebrate him in the book. So, you know, there's a character that's very much based on him. It's not him. I mean, it moves so far away from him, and yet there's something very at the core that is my friend. And that was really wonderfully satisfying to get to do.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It is very interesting for me because

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've now read enough books written by

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

people that I either know well or know somewhat.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

It's very interesting to read novels written by people that I'm acquainted with, because then I'm sitting here thinking, this feels like something that actually happened in this person's life, or this is something that really rings true. And I felt that a lot as I was reading this book. And I absolutely had the sense that much of this was stuff that you had some connection to personally.

Susan Conley:

That's great. Yeah, that's just what I wanted. I wanted that emotional tether. I wanted that emotional urgency, if you will. I mean, in some ways, I wanted it to read like a memoir, which was interesting because I had just written a memoir, so I was. You know, you have to be careful with that, you know, novel is not memoir. You know, my dear friend Keith, who died of aids, did not live in Paris. You know, it's again, how we borrow. We borrow, but we all. I think as a writer, I carry these searing, searing, emotional scenes that I know I have to try to render. And that was one of them, particularly that there's a scene near the end of the book that I really needed to render.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So.

Susan Conley:

Yeah. How much can narrative hold? I call it sort of weaving or like pulling threads. How many threads can you pull? And I think I tested the limits.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I enjoyed it. I think it was definitely something that kept me reading and kept me reading. And it wasn't just because I knew I was going to be talking to you. So I think you were very successful at that. Thank you so much. I also know that it caused me to really think about the work that you do as a teacher. I know that you are a co founder of the Telling Room here in Portland, and there's a lot of work being done with the Telling Room and people from other countries who have children, usually from other countries who have stories to tell. And this really was not only in

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

your book, but also kind of was

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

a theme that was picked up in the charter school article that you've written for Maine Magazine.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Talk to me about education and why education has become so important to you.

Susan Conley:

Well, I think it's distilled back to story. It's storytelling for me. And for me, it was having incredible English teachers who were really writing teachers for me. Turn lights on. I have been doing readings in the state and my sixth grade English teacher has showed up, my seventh grade English teacher, and it's so amazing. These people were the ones that handed me, you know, the Bridge to Terabithia, which was a book that, you know, changed my life. And here they are. And here and now I can say I'm, you know, I've written stories because I was inspired by you. So I think, you know, not to sentimentalize it. I really needed to say, hey, this relationship between a teacher and a student can be life changing. It's really important. And so often all we hear that a child was saved, like they were on the edge, and they were saved because one teacher, you know, reached out, did a little bit more. And that's where I put Willie. I put her in a refugee center. She doesn't have any idea what she's really doing in Paris at this center. A friend has talked her into it. How. How much will she help? And to tie it back to sort of the landscape here in Maine. You know, I was asked to go do a little tour of charter schools for Maine magazine, and that was an incredible opportunity to sort of take a peek and say, okay, what are you trying to do here on a teacher level? And I talked to a ton of kids at three of our charter schools and the refrain was all the same. And it's really simple. They want teachers who listen to them. They want to be heard. They would love a little less testing. They'd like to go outside more. It was very poignant and really the most poignant piece of all. And this goes for all of our students across Maine. And I need to say that we're looking closer at charters because they're the newest to the table. But boy, there's amazing teaching going on in all of our public schools and teachers that are so passionate and innovative. But all of these kids talked about this very essential need to fit in, and that really was very moving to me in that sort of how. And John Denari, who's the head of school at the Harpsville Coastal Academy, a brand new charter school that I looked at hard for the piece, he used the word comfortable. Students have to be comfortable before they'll start to actually learn. So you can call it what you want, fitting in, feeling nurtured, feeling comfortable. But I think that's something that the charter schools are looking hard at.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Here on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast, we've long recognized the link between health and wealth. Here to speak more on the topic is Tom Shepard of Shepherd Financial.

[Unidentified voice]:

The interest was always there, but the motivation to become a financial advisor came from the students that I taught about the relevance of math and money. Now, if I had to guess, I spend the majority of my time teaching again, and not necessarily about stocks, bonds, and key economic indicators. Most of my time is spent teaching people how to really develop a healthy relationship with their money. I help them to look at it as a living, changing, dynamic thing that contributes to their health and well being. I have to say, I do get some pretty quizzical looks when I first float the concept of money as a living thing. But take a moment to ponder this idea. Do you have the same relationship with money as 10 years ago? Do you think it will be the same in another 10? See, as you grow and evolve, so does your relationship with money and what it can do for you. Understanding how your concept of money impacts your life and how you can live one that is more connected and fulfilling at all levels will help you realize that it's not always about accumulation, but more about relationship building. Money and education are changing. To learn more like us on Facebook or go to our website www.shepherdfinancialmain.com. i want to help you evolve with your money.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Susan where did you go to school?

Susan Conley:

I went to rural school in Woolwich, Maine. From kindergarten to eighth grade. We were all in a one sort of building school. And then we went to the big city of Bath across the river. That was very exciting. And I went there for two years, and then my parents and I looked around and realized that I was stagnating and that I had this huge appetite, particularly for stories. And then I did go out of the state. I went to boarding school for two years at Andover, which wasn't so far away. And that was it was the perfect time for me. It was a perfect mix. I knew where I'd come from, and then I sort of saw this huge landscape of learning that was out there, and then I kind of never looked back in terms of my appetite for learning.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Did you at any time ever feel

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

this outsider thing that you describe in your novel, in your memoir, and even in this charter school piece that you've

Susan Conley:

written, have I felt like the outsider in my life?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I think, you know, going through your education.

Susan Conley:

Absolutely. I mean, that's what's so poignant about the kids I talk to. Is it? I remember feeling like the biggest outsider in the world when I drove across the Kennebec river to go to the Bath Junior High because I was from Woolwich. And so how would I ever fit in, you know, because the social parameters are so delicate and nuanced, you know, in ninth grade and we forget that, I think, as adults. And I was seeing that so clearly in these conversations I was having with girls in the charter schools. And frankly, a lot of them were trying charter because the Social piece wasn't working in the other schools. So they were taking a risk in my opinion. They were really trying something new and they didn't know how it was going to go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As I'm reading this article on the charter schools, I like the fact that we're looking at different areas of interest for kids. You talked to individuals from the Maine Academy of Natural Science Sciences and that's. I love the fact that we're here in Maine and there's a school that's actually called the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences because there is so much of this out that we live in, but we don't always have a chance to actually observe it.

Susan Conley:

Yeah, I mean, you forget what a rural state we are and how much agriculture sort of is the backbone of our state and was. So what they're doing up in Fairfield at the main academy is saying, here's how you grow a sustainable garden. Here's how you fix a tractor, you know, here's how you build vegetable beds in a year round greenhouse that they just built. So I think the missions of these charter schools that I looked at were very distilled. They're trying to cut a very narrow path and they're very honest about it. At the main academy, not everyone there, as their wonderful principal Emanuel Pariser said, not everyone here wants to grow carrots. So they have to figure that out. And they do. I think they're very, very nimble up there and they're very clear. They are working with disengaged kids, disenchanted kids. How do they win them back? I think one of the most moving lines in the whole piece for me was when Emmanuel Pariser says it's up to us to spark their imagination again and help them grow their confidence. How do we do that? Because he doesn't want to lose any kids.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You also spoke with individuals at the Harpswell Coastal Academy.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

How is their focus different?

Susan Conley:

Entirely different world there down the Harpswell Neck. Very rural, small old elementary school that was sitting vacated in the community said, okay, you want to put a charter school here? We'd love something in this building. The mission of that school is intrinsically tied to Harpswell, the town. And it sounds like a wonderful, wonderful premise. Let's have a school that looks at the watershed and the marine industry that lives in Harpswell. Let's look at the working waterfront. Let's have the students mapping coves for data on seaweed and snails. So again, the goals are really, they're really exciting and you know, I caught them all in day. I Mean, it was like day six, so a lot of things had yet to shake out. And I was, every time I left these schools, I thought, hats off to the teachers because there's a lot of work to be done.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

At the same time, you have in

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

past articles written for Maine Magazine, profiles

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

on people like Dalla Vipkar, who is a Maine based artist. And so this is somebody, this is an individual who's at, one would say the other end of her life. She's in her 90s, I believe. She's very well known internationally, and yet early on her family and she had to make a decision to not kind of swim with the rest of the fishes, but go in a different direction.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And it did give her great success.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So is it interesting for you to be able to say, okay, kids, you know, if we can spark your interest in a way that's different than what you're already getting, we really could be setting you up for some interesting success that we don't even, we can't even define at this point.

Susan Conley:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, the way that people like Emmanuel Pariser up at Means and John Denieri and I spoke with Adam Burke at the Baxter Academy. The idea is let's shake things up and let's look at place based learning, let's look at very individualized learning, and let's see what happens when we kind of divorce ourselves from pinning all these expectations on standardized tests. You know, let's free the children up. I mean, it means they're, they're wonderfully articulate about their skepticism about standardized tests. They're not working for a lot of our kids, and yet a lot of our kids are incredibly capable. So that's the beauty, I think, of what's happening at Means is you get all this excitement and you can sense that the kids are sort of. They've been liberated from all the downsides of standardized testing. Now, if you test well, that's a walk in the park. You're all set. But what happens to the kids who are extremely bright and don't test well at all?

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, I agree with you on the one hand.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And on the other hand,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I've had lots of standardized tests in my life. As a doctor, I'm actually studying for another standardized test. Even now we keep, every year, every 10 years, we have to get board certified again just because we can take tests. Well, I think sometimes we still feel like the education doesn't quite fit us. I think that's the other piece of it is, are there kids also out

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

there who might Test well, but still

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

don't really quite feel like the educational system fits them in some way.

Susan Conley:

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. No, I agree with you completely. And in fact, what I heard was some of the kids who test well, they just surf. They just surf.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I think that's very common, actually.

Susan Conley:

Right. And they're not. They're equally disengaged, you know, at the telling room. I've always said that we are only as good as our latest teacher. And I just felt that over and over during this charter school piece for Maine magazine, which was, who do we have in the classroom today? You know, how are you interacting with these kids? The kids want to be heard. They want dialogue. Every single kid I talk to used the word one on one. One on one conversation with teacher. You know, want more, Please.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Nowhere in this article did I hear

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

public schools are less than ideal. We don't like public schools. You know, public schools are doing the wrong thing. I never heard that. What I heard was really what the

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

charter school champions have been saying consistently,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

which is, here's another option. And maybe in exploring this other option, we can make education better for everyone. Public schools, kids who are disenchanted with public schools, teachers. So I think it's an interesting line to walk. My mother's a public school teacher, has been for many years, and I know she has thoughts about charter schools. But maybe if we can look at it as okay, this could make it better for all involved. And how can we build on that?

Susan Conley:

Well, it's interesting you say that, because I also did a profile for Alan Leishness from the Gulf of Maine Research Institute for the same education issue for Maine Magazine. And I put it to him, and he said in the piece, I thought rather compellingly, the jury's out, he said, but what's the risk of sitting back and watching and seeing what happens when we do more individualized lines of learning? We don't have anything to lose by seeing if that works, because then we could all benefit from that data because we're not going to take a bet right now and implement it statewide. Let's wait and see. But at the same time, we can't be naive about this. There's a really small piece of education money out there, and that's the controversy. That's what I call the main hot potato in the piece. Right. And we're not done talking about that.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Well, that will be very interesting to

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

see how that all plays out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

maybe we'll have you back again in a few years, as we're a few years more into the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and we can talk about that and probably your next book or so. But we've been really honored to have you in here talking to us today

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

about Paris Was the Place your new novel, and also about the articles that

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

you've written for Maine Magazine. Thanks for coming in.

Susan Conley:

Susan Conley Thanks. It was a great pleasure.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

As a physician and small business owner,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

I rely on Marcie Booth from Booth,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marcy

[Unidentified voice]:

One of the best parts of my job is teaching. Being able to share knowledge with clients that helps them see the bigger picture of their financial operations. It's very rewarding. When that happens and people start to not only understand but practice what they learn, businesses become more efficient and continue to thrive. So if you have a question about your financial operations, raise your hand. We can help you find the answer. I'm Marcie Booth. Let's talk about the changes you need. Boothmain.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Education is a topic that we have addressed often on the Dr. Lisa Radio

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Hour and podcast and the way that

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

we offer education within the state of Maine is something that is of great interest. There are a lot of relationships between health and education and wellness and it's something that we think is important. So today we have with us Glenn Cummings, Dr. Glenn Cummings, who is the President and the Executive Director of the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And we also have John Denari, Head

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

of School at the Harpswell Coastal Academy. Thank you for coming in.

[Unidentified voice]:

Thanks for having us.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Susan Connolly of Maine Magazine wrote an article about your schools and about chartering, well, charter schools here in Maine for Maine Magazine coming up in November and she had some interesting thoughts and some very interesting experiences with the students at your schools. You are offering a very unique way to educate our children. Why did you become first interested in education? I guess I'll ask Glenn first and your Dr. Cummings, because you have a Ph.D. in education.

[Unidentified voice]:

I have a doctorate in education, but it's really in higher education. So. Well, I started my career back when I was 22. I came back to Maine from graduate school and taught social studies at Gorham High School. And I thought I would just do it a couple years, maybe go to law school, late 20s or mid 20s. And it captured my imagination. It drained every piece of energy out of me in a good way, I think. And you know, I think for me it began like this Rubik's Cube of like, how do you, how do you get better? How do you, how do you move things in parts that actually make education better for more kids? And I could see where the programs that we had certainly in those days at Gorm High School were working, but I could also see, see where, boy, if we could just do it differently a little bit, we could bring in that other 30% that's really not engaged. You know, they may be doing their work, but they're not really fully engaged and not reaching their full potential. And so I guess that that challenge kind of hooked me early.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And what about you, John?

[Unidentified voice]:

Actually a kind of different story in high school myself. Large suburban high school was not feeling that it was relevant or very useful. Went to college, left college, worked off and on. It was 10 years before I actually finished my bachelor's degree and then worked some more. Ran a non profit arts collaborative in Kentucky for a while and at 30 went back and got a master of Arts in teaching. So didn't start teaching until I was, you know, had done a whole bunch of jobs, truck driving and pizza making and all kinds of things. Worked at Pat's Pizza in Orono for a very short time. And so I think for me it really comes out of a sense that for many, many, many kids, especially those kids in poverty or rural kids, my mom grew up in rural Maine, that a lot about what schools were doing just weren't working for way too many kids, but have fierce, fierce commitment to the public school system. So not feeling like the solution to that was to sort of create a separate track of schools, but really to try to work in public schools to dramatically reinvent them.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What is it about Maine that is so unique, that has so many students really kind of needing to navigate things in a different way?

[Unidentified voice]:

Well, I'm not sure Maine is that unique. I think when you look nationally, the statistics are even more startling. And quite frankly, dismal when it comes to high school graduations. And so when you look at how many kids are voting with their feet in terms of leaving especially large urban high schools, it's significant. In some places in Chicago and Philadelphia, you're Talking about about 50 or 60% between their freshman and their senior year never actually complete. So Maine's graduation rate is much higher. It's gone from about 80% up to about 82.5%. So we're seeing a little bit of progress in the last couple of years as we spend more time focusing on. Legislators have gotten, I think, over the last 10 years, much more focused about how to monitor, I think, the success of avoiding dropouts. So when you really look at how we're engaged nationally, it's of great concern. But in Maine specifically, we definitely have large segments of rural poverty, and that seems to be correlated to dropout. And then we have increasing just poverty in general, even in areas that you might not expect it. So those things are definitely contributing. Then there's just the. It may not be related to poverty. It may be simply that the way in which we go about high school, for example, we're a high school. There's a lot of, you know, I guess you'd sort of sit and get, you know, so you have to sit there for five and a half hours and, you know, sort of digest information to kind of put it back out there. The models that I think John and I are trying to play with is how do you get real world challenges, authentic kind of assessments, and how do you build units around those things that. That would challenge students in an interesting way, but also add value to the community. So we're trying to think about new ways to get students to feel differently about what they're doing and why they're doing it.

[Unidentified voice]:

I would just add one thing. It's not that makes Maine unique, but it is a particular challenge to do sustainable school reform in rural areas where the economics of a state with 1.2, 1.3 million people and the geography that we have are very, very different. So when you have a New York or. I've done some work in New York and Boston, in urban areas where you really can create innovation within a large system, for instance, the small schools movement in New York has really produced some documentable, excellent results for kids. But the economics of Maine don't lend themselves to easily reinventing what is increasingly become a larger school system towards small schools. So if relationships are what works for kids and relationships flourish in smaller schools, my career has been, you know, a lot of projects that are trying to demonstrate that small schools are sustainable over time, but need very, very different economic models, different teaching models in order to make them sustainable.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Each of you has looked at education sort of from an eagle's view. I know that. Glenn, you've been involved in politics. You were the speaker of the House. You worked for the Obama administration. John, you're a member of the Kappa class of the Institute for Civic Leadership. So to each of you, it's much bigger than just what do we do within a school. It's how do we make inroads or connections? How do we understand education from a community perspective? Talk to me a little bit about that.

[Unidentified voice]:

There's definitely. I mean, I remember being in the Legislative Education Committee early in my career, and the sort of. The crossfire of politics is very complicated in Maine, particularly around high property value communities versus low property value communities and how much state aid and. And I represented Portland, which is neither one of those really. And so we were certainly often challenged politically to get our voice heard. From my perspective, first of all, everybody believes deeply. Usually if you talk to people at a party or something about education, their eyes sort of glaze over. But if you get them to talk about their education and their experience and their commitment, people have very passionate views about it. And so the community, certainly from a personal perspective, people are often very clear about what they like and what they don't necessarily like about education, have very definitive views, which certainly in our world of charter schools, you know, it's always interesting to hear what people have to say. We have tended to have kind of a nice blessing in terms of how people look at our school, the Maine Academy for Natural Sciences, because we try to go after kids who are really struggling, not necessarily academically, but they may be struggling in a variety of ways with school socially and emotionally and feeling like they need a new experience and they want to engage in the curriculum in a different way. And so I think we tend to sort of stay out of some of that politics, which is. Which has not been the case for all the charter schools in Maine have often run aground a little bit. Bit with that. But our perspective is, let's focus on what's really good for the kids. And if we can prove that there's a challenge that the kids can't get met at that local public school or even other private school, then there's a place for us to give it a try.

[Unidentified voice]:

I think I would add that we've evolved to a system of public schooling where There are certain ways in which the community or the parent community is involved in schools in many ways in which they're not. And often they're not involved deeply in what I would call the actual work of students in schools. And our notion of community based or place based education really has those students out studying the clam flats which are under threat in Harpswell, and preparing informed reports to testify before town committees and to interact with the shellfish warden and those kinds of things. And you know, our kids will be going out on a lobster boat this weekend. Casco Bay does a lot of those things too. But the idea that the work of the school is not just bringing parents in for boosters or for bake sales, but for letting the kids and the community members know that their work is shared work. And that if they're very separate, it's going to be very difficult for that gulf between what the students feel is relevant and what the community expects to ever be bridged. But once you put those people together, often very, very different people in terms of how they define their adult lives, but you put them in a learning situation with students, and some of those gaps diminish quite quickly. For the benefit of both the adult and the K.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.

[Unidentified voice]:

I was in Quasiq this past weekend. It's up by the Canadian border and looking up at the vast sky. It's so dark up there and you can actually see the Milky Way from spanning the entire night sky, which is quite incredible. One of the things I do in the landscape is put in large flat stones, seating height roughly 1820 inches above grade. And they're perfect for gazing up at the night sky. You lie on your back, maybe there's a fire pit next to you, and you're looking up and gazing at the night sky, the vastness, the incredible amount of space and stars. The night landscaping is particularly mysterious. And I think that that's one of the things that I love about a night landscape, is the fact that it's obscure in ways, and it becomes visible and then obscure, and it plays with shadows and light. And there's a whole art to putting that together. And I love working with it. The clients love it as well. I'm Ted Carter, and if you'd like to contact me, I can be reached@tedcarterdesign.com

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

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[Unidentified voice]:

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Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Harpswell Coastal Academy is doing its own form of fundraising and I know that you're going into even a workshop today as we're talking, trying to understand how best to work on the development of your financial support. I guess that is an interesting thing for teachers and administrators to have to think about it in a really different way.

[Unidentified voice]:

We have. So Glenn talked about it too. So in a traditional public school, you're not going out, you're buying buses, but you're not starting a bus fleet from scratch and you have a building. Well, we have a building that was a school that was built, eventually expanded to serve maybe 110, 120 elementary school kids. We're designed to be a school of 240 to 280 students, which is, I think, the smallest we can be and make the sustainable small school economics work over time, which means we're gonna need a building. And we. So on the one hand, we're keeping a vital community building that was probably going to be underused or possibly not used at all. We're keeping that in the community. We're able to sort of reuse that building, but we are gonna need from scratch significant facilities over time. And that kind of it does again motivate that community to say, so what do we need to do? The other thing that I think is worth noting is that Harpswell, which has the at least at one point had the widest economic disparity in income in the state of Maine. The difference between the Poorest people in Harpswell and the wealthiest people was the largest on average. But it's a community that is, you know, our school is 14 miles down a peninsula. And those kids have been, if you're in middle or high school, have been driving up the peninsula through Brunswick to Mount Ararat High School for years. And as that education asset leaves the community, it becomes very difficult to draw families who can see themselves living in that community over time, if that's the bargain they have to make. To do so is we're going to put our kids on a bus for an hour in each direction. We're able to eventually bring 2.4, 2.5, maybe $3 million of economic activity to a very small town. And that's something that has been leaving if you go up to Washington county or you go up to other parts of Maine. When Lubeck lost its school, they fought. You know, that story somewhat, Glenn, is they fought and fought and fought to keep that school because the economics of keeping that school were bigger than just the dollar per student economics of the actual educational endeavor. That's another thing I think is really important that these investing in schools in many communities in Maine, if you look at not just the efficiency, Tom Shepard, who's been on the show, talks about that, not just efficiency, but productivity. If you invest in productivity, sometimes you want to make some calculations that aren't just about short term efficiency.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

Each of you also has links to Casco Bay High School, which we've featured on the show before. We had Derek Pierce, who's the principal of Casco Bay High School. And I believe that they're 10 years in now from doing the type of expeditionary learning that they've been promoting. John, you have teaching experience there, I believe.

[Unidentified voice]:

No, I worked for expeditionary learning.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You worked for expeditionary learning. And Glenn, you have at least a

[Unidentified voice]:

child that I have two actually, a senior and a junior. So my son and my wife teaches English there.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

So why, I mean, you are already interested in expeditionary learning. You already, each of you had a slightly different but still important link to this process. Why was this something that was so necessary to each of you as individuals?

[Unidentified voice]:

Well, I'll start by saying that so I came out of an organization called the Coalition of Essential Schools, which was founded by this guy, Ted Sizer, came out of the original Annenberg Institute for School reform, which was a 25 now, maybe even 30 years ago, attempt to sort of reinvent American schools. Expeditionary Learning is a large national nonprofit that has roles in over 200 schools, schools around the country. So they are While there's sort of a small E, small L expeditionary learning, it is also very much a model of working with schools over time. So they hired me to work for them to help get this school started and to work with other schools around Maine. And I think what. So what I would say is the approaches that I'm very versed in that come through a couple movements are small schools, personalized schools, project based learning and expeditionary learning is one of the many places that that can land. What they have is an extraordinarily strong and well defined set of models so that when they can go into to work with a school, they can really say this is what we're going to do. The it is pretty well defined. I think King Middle School school is an extraordinary example in Portland that's been a 15 year journey. But what they're able to do with a 600, you know, Casco Bay, as proud as I am of that, I helped get that running. And it is a wonderful story. But starting from scratch is easier to build those kinds of results than starting with a school in the middle. And that's one of the reasons why I do startups is because I think you can get where you're going. You're more likely to get where you're going. Taking an existing public school in, transforming it around these kinds of notions, which is what's happened at King Middle School over time. That really is an extraordinary story and a very rare one. You know, Glenn, having worked in the administration, knows that the turnaround process, which for instance the Gates administration, the Gates foundation, invested a bunch of money in turning around schools turns out to be extraordinarily difficult. The very few successes are exceptions to a very, very long. So that's. I'm committed to those things because I think they work for kids. I think that they, if you look at a challenge, a group of students whose needs are not being met, the kinds of educational practices that cause relationships to be necessary as opposed to be optional, which is what small school schools can do. That's the way to go.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

What I like about the fact that I'm able to sit with both of you right now is that you each are representing charter schools, but you're each representing a very unique school. A school that is linked to the community in which it's actually located. The Harpswell Coastal Academy has a slightly different way of approaching education based on where it is. The main academy of natural sciences has its own unique approach. How are some of the attributes of the community? How are they working their way into your Curricula.

[Unidentified voice]:

I mean, from our point of view, obviously, agriculture is a key component of what we do. We have 2,300 acres that we're surrounded by. We have a community college that just came to our campus. And I'm going to move the main campus of kvcc, Kenny Bay Valley Community College to us. And they have the first. They're beginning the first ag tech program in the state. So we have a natural sequence in which our students can evolve to. But we've had a long history. Reverend Hinckley, who started in the 1880s with the farm, believed that the farm had its own redemptive values and that you could learn about nature, about human nature, about biology, about botany and horticulture, and of course, agriculture and about livestock. So that, that. That in itself was rich in learning and meaning for kids, but also in terms of learning how to be disciplined, take care of things, to be a steward of nature. And all of those things seem to fit in with a recent generation of interest in the Skowhegan Food Hub, which is looking at local, organic, sustainable food systems and trying to find ways in which they can get that market up and going. So we feel like we stepped into the middle of the. Something that seems to be certainly a regional trend, if not a national trend, to look at our food systems and think about how do we feed ourselves? What is it that we actually are putting in our mouths? And that trend seems to be something that we could build on from an academic point of view.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

People who are interested in learning more about the main Academy of Natural Sciences,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

which is located at the Goodwill Hinckley campus and also the Harpswell Coastal Academy,

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

they can read Susan Conley's article on charter schools in Maine Magazine. How else can they find out about your schools?

[Unidentified voice]:

They can certainly go on our website if they go under Maine Academy for Natural Sciences. We have a website there. Also encourage them if they're looking at visiting the school, to call Lisa. Sandy, that's 238 4238-4000. And just set up a time to come visit for us.

[Unidentified voice]:

That would be. Carrie Branson is our assistant head of school and Director of Operations. 833-3229. And we really do want people to come and see us. And matter of fact, if you not only want to learn about the school, but have something you'd want to share with our students, call us up and we can give you an audience pretty easily. Our school is set up to facilitate having people come in or having our kids get out.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

And John, do you also have a website for the Harpswell Coastal Academy?

[Unidentified voice]:

Yes, and it is the very long harpswellcoastalacademy.org

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

well, it's been a privilege to

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

sit with the two of you today. We've been speaking with Dr. Glenn Cummings, the President and Executive Director of the Main Academy of Natural Sciences, and also

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

with John Denari, the Head of School

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

at the Harpswell Coastal Academy. The fact that I was so fortunate to have you both in the same room at the same time and have the same conversation is wonderful. And thank you so much for taking the time to be here today.

[Unidentified voice]:

Thank you.

[Unidentified voice]:

Thanks Lisa.

Dr. Lisa Belisle:

You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast show number 112, chartering education. Our guests have included Susan Connolly, John Denari and Glenn Cummings. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit drlisabelisle.com, the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on itunes. For a preview of each week's show, sign up for our E. Newsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and Pinterest and read my take on health and well being on the Bountiful blog. We'd love to hear from you, so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows. Also let our sponsors know that you have heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Chartering Education show. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.