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Ryan Lowell is an English teacher at Ellsworth High School and the 2024 Hancock County Teacher of the Year.
Teachers don’t become teachers for paychecks or recognition or even summer vacations. We teach because every once in a while, there’s magic in it.
I remember the first time I shared a magical moment with one of my students: I got a shy 5-year-old to laugh at my terrible dance moves. Minor, maybe. Silly, sure. Life-affirming? Definitely.
I’d already experienced classroom magic before that day, when I was still a student on the other side of the desk. My own teachers’ best lessons still inspire me, and I try to bottle up their magic and share it with my students.
Student-teaching at the University of Southern Maine helped. By watching teachers teach, I learned many tricks that I still use today. I was also fortunate to begin my teaching career at Windham High School, which held interdisciplinary professional learning groups where we worked with peers to share best practices and solve common problems. I made huge improvements to my practice by watching veteran colleagues at work.
But then the pandemic came. I switched jobs and got used to teaching in a silo, first for safety and then out of muscle memory. My new co-workers shared amazing materials with me, but as my mentor teacher David says: A lesson plan is just a playscript. The performance brings it to life. I’d amassed tons of great scripts from my peers, but I was missing the magic of their performances.
That changed when my department attended a recent professional learning opportunity for educators hosted by the Maine Writing Project at Husson University. At Husson, I found myself on the other side of the desk again. And I loved every minute of it.
The Maine Writing Project’s conference was an empowering reminder that teachers shouldn’t just teach writers; they should be writers. The day’s workshops were rich and experiential. In the morning, Aaron Thibodeau, an adjunct instructor at Husson, led a thoughtful lesson that went beyond the simplistic misconception of artificial intelligence as a cheating tool. Our discussion groups helped me rethink the role of ethical AI use in education, and I’ll soon be attempting to recreate the activity with my early college students.
In the afternoon, RSU 21 instructional strategist Todd McKinley led a lesson on “Greenbelt Writing,” which emphasizes low-stakes, student-centered writing. McKinley’s calm, supportive demeanor encouraged open-ended interpretation of his mentor texts and reflective writing exercises. In a room of strangers, he created a space where students of all ages felt comfortable sharing their writing and themselves. I’ve since used all of his exercises in my classes. The Maine Writing Project reminded me of what it feels like to see a classroom through a student’s eyes, and my students are already better for it.
I’m grateful that my administrators supported our entire department attending an off-campus conference together, but I realize it’s a big ask. Fortunately, we don’t have to leave the building to experience great teaching from a student’s perspective. In many cases, we can just walk down the hall and take a seat.
The roadblocks to observing another teacher’s classroom, though, are familiar ones: time and resources. With subs in short supply, it’s hard to get coverage. Some teachers use planning time for observations, but this limits access for teachers buried in grading and planning. While the sub issue isn’t apt to change, schools can leverage professional development time to showcase the great work that their teachers are already doing, eliminating the silo mentality.
It’s best practice for students to learn by doing, and the Maine Writing Project’s conference was a replicable reminder that best practices hold true for students who happen to be teachers, too. The more accessible opportunities we have to draw inspiration from one another, the richer our teachers and students will be. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Let’s bookmark the problem from my first sentence for another day.
