By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Converging in the Caribou Middle School cafeteria on Saturday morning, 100 community members discussed for hours how to best equip RSU 39 students for an ever-changing world.
Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet
The Vision Cafe on March 10 had over 100 participants, including at center table, counter clockwise from right, Evan Graves, Nic Sleeper, Dane Ouellette, Kevin St. Peter and Nicole Cote.
Participants came from Caribou, Limestone, Stockholm — even all the way from Fort Kent — to participate in a Vision Café, which asked the guiding questions “What would education look like in RSU 39 if we developed a pre K-12 system that is responsive to the current and future needs of our children?”
The first portion of the workshop featured introduced a wealth of relevant information, highlighted changing education paradigms and focusing on current and future educational trends. The remainder of the café focused on formulating a vision for RSU 39, digging deep into the working group members minds to discover how to best provide northern central Aroostook students with the skill sets and education they’ll need to be successful in the coming years.
Judy Enright facilitated the March 10 event; it was one of 30 to 40 visioning processes she’s coordinated over the years, but she’d never seen a greater turnout as that for RSU 39.
“Of the 118 individuals said they would attend [the Vision Café], we have 109 here today,” Enright said during the event. “That’s the best [attendance] I’ve had.”
Enright was equally pleased with the group’s professional diversity, explaining that the normal participant ratio for such events is generally 60 percent community members and 40 percent educators.
The communities showed such a good turnout that the ratio was skewed to 70/30, “Which is even better,” Enright said.
Even a cursory glance at the cafeteria’s crowd was like viewing the “Who’s Who of the Greater Caribou Area,” as the audience was liberally sprinkled with city councilors, medical and financial professionals, selectpeople, RSU students and a score of educators from all facets of learning.
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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet Sue White, center, keeps track of the table’s ideas as fellow group members, from back left, Alana Margeson, Donna Bernier and MacKenzie Belyea look on. |
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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet Angela Pelletier talks over list items with Mark Jones, two of many participants of the March 10 Vision Cafe at the Caribou Middle School. |
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| Aroostook Republican photo/Natalie Bazinet The Caribou Middle School cafeteria was filled with dozens of colorful lists outlining ideas as to where the future of education might lead to for RSU 39. Sharing ideas included, from left, Randy Hopkins, Lois Brewer and Scott Voisine. Shown in far back with the microphone is Vision Cafe facilitator Judy Enright. |
“I thought it was extremely ingenious that they invited current students to attend the event in order to get everyone’s perspective,” said Vision Café participant Danielle Michaud, a collections officer with The County Federal Credit Union and the mother of a 10-year-old Limestone Community School student.
The group of over 100 was divided up into three café’s, each with six tables seating approximately six participants. Groups had 25 minutes to share key ideas, themes and questions before Enright mixed and mingled individuals from the tables; this table shake-up was done five times, yielding well developed concepts and ideas discussed vigorously about the future educational needs of RSU 39’s students.
“By the end of the day, tables could see that the themes bubbling to the top were familiar, from basic foundational skills to making global citizens,” explained RSU 39 Assistant Superintendent Lois Brewer. “Seeing those common themes emerging across that room of 100 people, it’s pretty exciting.”
Various drafts of those themes adorned the cafeteria on March 10, as groups hand-wrote their thoughts on yellow easel paper which were then affixed purposefully to the room’s walls like giant Post-it notes; these lists of ideas remained prominent for participants to view throughout each round of table-swapping.
“Every piece of the event was positive,” Michaud said, adding her approval of the RSU’s proactivity. “I left there thinking ‘wow, at least we’re all moving in the same direction.’”
Brewer also agreed that the event was overwhelmingly positive.
“When you see over 100 people from your communities willing to give up a Saturday to come in and talk about the future of education, it shows a huge commitment to doing the right thing by our students,” she said. “All these people want what’s best for our children.”
With the hundred participants producing roughly four hours worth of insight, it’s now up to the superintendent’s office to compile all that data — a task which Brewer anticipates will be completed in time for the next District Leadership Team meeting on Wednesday, March 28.
“That begins the process of analyzing the data, teasing out particular themes and figuring out where to go next,” Brewer explained.
As the event’s participants now have a large intellectual stake in the implementation of ideas conceptualized through the Vision Café, Brewer expressed that the department is looking to keep the public abreast of information emerging from the educational symposium.
