Welcome to Cobscook Currents for fall 2019. Summer is giving way to autumn here in Trescott as we finish up work on this edition—my first as Executive Director. It is a time of transition for the seasons, for me, and for CCLC.

CCLC’s founders dug for “models of education from around the world and across time that had led to substantive and sustained social change” as they set out to leverage the best that education can be to serve the hearts and minds of people of all ages living in easternmost Maine. 

The folk school movement began in Denmark in the early 19th century, a period of rapidly accelerating social change accompanying the industrial revolution. Danish philosopher Nikolaj Grundtvig propounded folk schools as a way to support democracy through personal and community development.

“Students are teachers and teachers are students” is a phrase heard regularly in the Cobscook Experiential Program. Teachers Michael Giudilli and Kara McCrimmon are not “the sole arbiters of knowledge,” they tell the high school program’s students; rather, the best thing they can bring to the learning community is modeling how to learn.

TREE Director Brittany Ray has been spending a lot of time lately leading professional development sessions about trauma-informed education at schools. This outreach gives her the opportunity to meet and connect with a variety of people and hear their reactions to TREE’s work.

Ashley Cirone, TREE resource coach, is sitting cross-legged amid a circle of third-graders at Pescadero Elementary. The children listen with rapt attention as Ashley relates a Hawaiian fable about a girl named Leola. Leola was born with a light inside her, Ashley tells them, lighting a tea candle in a beautiful bowl in the center of the sand tray in front of her.

On one of the last summer days of the year, as leaves were yellowing and beginning to blush red, Coleen O’Connell came to CCLC to teach a nature printing class, one for the public, and one for the students in our high school program.

I step into my role just as CCLC has accomplished significant milestones in four areas: the original campus plan is now complete and ready to host year-round activity; Cobscook Experiential Programs enters its 10th year of accredited program delivery; TREE now has data demonstrating its far-reaching positive impacts and has developed an exciting Maine/California collaboration; and perhaps most significantly, CCLC’s co-founder and founding executive director, Alan Furth, a visionary educator, is retiring from his 20 years at the helm.

The deep roots and new growth reflected in this edition of Cobscook Currents only happen through the support and generosity of our celebrated circle of donors. Donations of any size support our work.