Cbhs Press

The New Teacher Center made a video in spring 2023 about CBHS as part of their project called The Elephant in the (Class)room, their “point of view on equitable and student-centered education.

The pandemic showed us that education was broken. It also showed us how to fix it.

If a measure of a society is how well it takes care of its young, the past nine months are a damning indictment of our nation.

Parents and teachers have been working overtime under impossible circumstances., and states have prioritized keeping gyms and restaurants open over keeping schools open. A result is that about 48 percent of all students are still in full-time virtual instruction (another 18 percent are in hybrid), according to Burbio, a company that tracks school calendars. These rates are higher among poor students and students of color. This is shameful — private schools holding classes under tents on spacious campuses while poor students are sitting outside McDonalds to get internet access.

We’re very excited to celebrate the three Grand Prize winners of this year’s Make It Real challenge. This year’s contest was directed at educators in New England interested in teaching their students how to make a difference through design.

Each of the three Grand Prize winners will receive makerspace tools based on their grade level: Elementary, Middle, and High School. The prize packages include an Ultimaker 3 3D Printer, Dremel DigiLab Laser Cutter (for high school,) and ten Chromebooks (for the elementary and middle schools.) In total, Autodesk is giving away over $30,000 in prizes to the three winners.

"We like to go on literal adventures in Crew... but we all know that we are experiencing something singular in our lifetime and we need our Crew to help navigate this." --Derek Pierce, Principal 

See how Casco Bay High School, an EL Education school in Portland, Maine, re-envisions their traditions during the physical distancing forced by Covid19, to sustain and build community.

Watch a 9th grade Crew at Casco Bay High School, an EL Education school in Portland, Maine, navigate the first weeks of the Covid19 pandemic, using the structure and culture of Crew to support one another.

Casco Bay High School is celebrating its 15th anniversary next month with a special film festival that will bring together the work of current and former students.

The Casco Bay High School Film Festival, a culmination of 15 years of student film making, is set to take place from 6-8:30 p.m.  Feb. 7  at Hannaford Hall at the University of Southern Maine.

“We were thinking of how to mark the (anniversary) and probably more than any other high school, our students have been involved in significant video production work and thought this was an interesting way to mark student excellence,” said Derek Pierce, principal of the expeditionary learning high school.

President Trump staked his position on America’s public schools in his inaugural address, when he referred to them as part of “American carnage.” His education secretary, Betsy DeVos, once called them “a dead end,” perpetuating a myth that American public education is failing everywhere.

There are, to be sure, public schools that are failing kids, sometimes horribly so. But there are others that are finding innovative and humane ways of educating students and trying to close the achievement and opportunity gaps that harm students from historically disadvantaged groups. And telling their stories is as important as calling out failure.

So against this backdrop, below is a profile of Casco Bay High School in Portland, Maine, the first of seven I will publish about the newest honorees of an annual project called “Schools of Opportunity.” The project, which started in 2014 as a pilot in two states and went national in 2015-16, recognizes publicly funded high schools that work to create learning environments to reach every student and close existing gaps.