State and district leaders from Maine shared the state’s innovative approach to First 10 at a recent Campaign for Grade-Level Reading webinar, First 10 School-Community Partnerships in Action. This webinar was the second in a three-part series of webinars focused on First 10. We learned how state leaders crafted their approach to First 10 and how the First 10 Partnership in Sanford, ME is implementing an exciting set of strategies to meet the needs of their community.
David Jacobson, Ph.D., director of EDC’s First 10 initiative, provided an overview of the First 10 Framework, which is used to bridge silos in a community by fostering collaboration to improve teaching and learning, coordination among comprehensive services, and partnerships with families.
Lee Anne Larsen, from the Maine Department of Education explained that based on Maine’s key goal that young learners are healthy, engaged, and successful learners, Maine was able to leverage a preschool development grant (B-5) to help ensure that they carefully connected comprehensive services for a “whole child, whole family approach.” Sue Gallant, also from the Maine Department of Education, spoke about ways communities throughout the state are using the First 10 Framework to strengthen partnerships, resulting in joint professional learning and creative opportunities for community organizations to support the goals of school districts.
Attendees then heard from Sanford School District staff, Steve Bussiere, Susan Inman, Ph.D., and Shana Palmer. They shared district and school-level perspectives, giving specific examples of how partnerships have been strengthened, relationships with parents have and continue to be enhanced, and creative programming is supporting children’s learning both in and out of school. Palmer talked about ways they support and connect with families through their Play & Learn series and bus stop pop-up events.
Bussiere highlighted the importance of “being tenacious….Collaboration with community providers is challenging sometimes with schedules and turnover, but you’ve got to keep at it. If we had stopped every time we hit a roadblock or something didn’t work out, we wouldn’t be where we are now.”
Interested in hearing more? Access the webinar recording and slide deck.
Below are links to some of the resources highlighted during this webinar.
First 10 in Maine