Building Things

What drew you to your work, first as an educator and now in community development? How do they relate to each other?

I never intended to be an educator. However, while at Bowdoin, I took an education class with Professor Nancy Jennings. She helped me see education in a more holistic manner and appreciate the role it could play in helping children grow as people as well as learners. In addition, my sophomore summer, I was an Upward Bound counselor at Bowdoin. During a teaching session, two high school students I was working with finally grasped an algebra concept. I felt this rush of energy and emotion similar to what I felt playing football. I remember pausing and almost being in shock realizing that teaching could tap such a deep well of emotion, energy, and empathy.

When I was a senior, Professor Jennings invited several of us who were doing our student teaching to travel with her to Vinalhaven, an island about twelve miles off the coast of Rockland, Maine, which is an hour north of Brunswick. To get to the island, you had to take a one hour-and-fifteen-minute ferry ride, which was-at the time-the longest boat ride I had been on in my life.

I almost immediately fell in love with the island. You could feel this sense of interconnectedness and community. The students we met with had no trouble talking with us-they were direct, sincere, and had a wry sense of humor that made me laugh, that made me feel at home.

On the ferry ride back the next day, the Vinalhaven superintendent, George Joseph, asked me if I could see myself working at the school. I responded, "Maybe for a year or two."

After graduating from Bowdoin, I ended up moving out to Vinalhaven as an Island Institute fellow and teaching middle school American history and a course on college aspirations. I lived on the island for almost ten years, met and married my wife on Vinalhaven, and both our children were born during that time. I went on to become the "school leader" (similar to principal) at the age of twenty-five. Over the summer, with the support and guidance of Superintendent George Joseph, I worked with the school's leadership team to rewrite the handbook and develop a shared leadership model, where teachers worked in teams and teams had representatives who served on the leadership team.

Prior to my time as school leader, Vinalhaven had gone through more than twenty-five principals in thirty years. Working with the leadership team-which included veteran educators with deep roots in the school and community-we were able to transform the culture of the school, better meet the needs of students, and launch a variety of innovative projects. One innovative program that had a deep effect on me was Mark Jackson's boatbuilding program. Under Mark's guidance, high school students rebuilt a thirty-foot steel hull boat and sailed it to Florida and back again. This showed me both the power of hands-on/minds-on learning as well as how much was possible if you had the courage to dream big and the teachers with the skills, dedication, and commitment to inspire students.

Vinalhaven also helped me understand the deep connection and interrelation between community and education. That lesson has stayed with me ever since. I see education as central to community and economic development.

While serving as school leader, I saw the impact law and policy had on our school, community, and economy-especially through regulations on the fishery that threatened to hurt Maine's small fishing villages. I felt like law was the third leg of the conceptual stool I was forming to understand my work; I needed to understand how education, community, and law intersected and shaped one another.

I left Vinalhaven in 2009 to attend the University of Washington School of Law in Seattle. I was fortunate to be awarded a Gates Public Service Law Scholarship, which helped make it possible for me to move across the country with my wife, two-year-old daughter, and six-month-old son. This was a challenging transition-moving our young family from an island of 1,200 year-round residents to a city with a population bigger than the State of Maine!

UW provided me the opportunity to hone my analytical thinking and writing skills while delving into my interests around education, community, and law. I founded the Education Law and Policy Society and, during my final year of law school, organized a conference that brought together academics, leaders, and educators from across the nation and political spectrum to discuss how we could work together to ensure all students thrived.

After law school, my family and I moved back to Maine, and I had the honor of clerking for the Honorable Chief Justice Saufley. I learned so much during the clerkship, working on civil, criminal, and administrative law cases. It was one of the most intellectually challenging and fulfilling jobs I've ever had. At the same time, I was drawn to find a job that would allow me to bring together my passions for education, community development, and law.

One day, I received a call from my former superintendent on Vinalhaven. He said he was working with St. George, a rural fishing community in midcoast Maine. St. George had withdrawn from a larger regional district to create its own single-municipality school district. They were looking for a superintendent. Would I be interested? George said he thought this role would be a good fit. He was right.

When I was hired for the job, I was told in no uncertain terms that my job was to think outside of the box and do whatever it takes for kids. Also-make sure the buses run on time. So that's what we did. St. George School had an amazing group of educators, and the energy in the community around the new district was palpable.

I served as the St. George MSU superintendent for ten years. Over that time, I had to use everything I learned over the years in the areas of education, community development, and law. As a superintendent in a small district, within a single hour you might be planning an initiative to improve reading in elementary school, negotiating a service contract for the school's HVAC system, preparing for an evening meeting with the Select Board to discuss the budget, and talking with a student and parent about a serious behavior issue. One of the perks of being a superintendent in a small district is that you can join the K-2 recess, play some four square, and remember why you're dealing with all of the aforementioned things in the first place!

During my tenure as superintendent, we became increasingly focused on expanding hands-on/minds-on learning for students. There was a nonprofit that operated in St. George from 1936 to 2011 called the Grace Institute that provided generations of St. George students with industrial arts (i.e., shop) and home economics. The town lost the Grace Institute during school district consolidation and now, since we were our own district, people wanted to "bring shop back."

With the support of local community members, we started with a Makerspace Initiative in 2016, when we purchased a laser cutter, a few 3D printers, and robotics equipment. Under the leadership of our incredible technology/makerspace director, Paul Meinersmann, working with educators across grade levels, the initiative grew each year. Second graders drew lobsters that were cut out on the laser cutter. As part of a science unit on evolution, fourth graders designed and 3D printed animals with unique adaptations. One middle school student, after working closely with Mr. Meinersmann, started his own business using a laser cutter his family bought him to make and sell cribbage boards.

At the same time, I was working closely with Bobby Deetjen, the director of MidCoast School of Technology, our regional technical center in Rockland. Bobby and I saw the power of career and technical education (CTE) to reengage students in learning and prepare them for high-paying jobs after graduation. Many of these jobs were located right in our region, so this would allow our students to live and work in their community, thereby strengthening our local rural communities and economies.

Finally, St. George-along with districts across the state-was seeing a dramatic increase in the number of young children entering school with severe social-emotional, behavioral, and mental health needs. This trend existed before the pandemic but accelerated in the post-pandemic years. The old model of education-which often involved seat-bound, text-heavy, and conceptual rather than applied learning-no longer worked for many students. How students learned had changed. We realized we had to change too.

All of this coalesced around 2021 in a vision for developing the nation's first PreK-12 CTE program. We wanted to build a program where every child would have access to hands-on/minds-on technical learning connected to career and community. This wasn't about adding a shop class to the schedule. It was about transforming how we teach by integrating CTE into every grade level and subject.

Over the next four years, our school-community raised over $4.6 million to construct and equip the GRACE Innovation Center, which has shop spaces for boatbuilding, woodworking, and metalwork; a makerspace with 3D printers, laser cutters, robotics, and sewing machines; and flexible classroom space. We were selected as national 2023 Yass Prize Finalists; the Yass Prize recognizes innovative projects that are "Sustainable, Transformative, Outstanding, and Permissionless (STOP)."

We were named a Top 10 Finalist in the annual ASU+GSV Summit's 2026 Education Innovation Showcase in San Diego. Organizations from across the globe can apply to be part of the ASU+GSV Education Innovation Showcase. St. George MSU was selected as one of the top K-12 education leaders in "advancing innovation in their community," developing creative new ways for the "delivery of education and workforce skills," and "fostering meaningful change at the systems level.

We have five-year-olds who are cutting boards with handsaws as they build snowpeople. First graders, as part of a unit on community, went to the town manager to get a "building permit" to construct benches for the town. The students designed the benches and, with the help of local contractors, assembled them with power drills. Elementary students use the drill press and bandsaw in the shop while sixth graders teach third graders how to 3D print. Students as young as eleven are learning to weld and visiting Steel-Pro, an advanced manufacturing facility right in Rockland. Employees from Steel-Pro are working with our students and teachers; with their help, we hope to introduce sixth graders to Fusion, a computer-aided design software used in industry for 3D design. Seventh graders, working with a mechanical engineer from a local company, built underwater ROVs.

We have over forty business sponsors, including Seemann Composites in Mississippi that does work with the U.S. Navy, Knox Machine in Maine that works with SpaceX, and local tradespeople right in St. George. Many of the businesses and tradespeople are working directly with our students and teachers.

We believe this is the future of education. Where every child has access to hands-on/minds-on technical learning connected to career and community. Where teachers work alongside engineers and entrepreneurs to transform education and workforce development. And where students forge their own career path, so that their avocation becomes their vocation.

This is the vision of a small town that had the courage to dream big. It's rooted in who we are as a working-class community, in the generations of fishermen and farmers, boatbuilders and mechanics, carpenters and cooks, and artists and engineers, who used their hands and minds to not only make a living, but to build a good life for themselves and their families.

In St. George, we don't move fast and break things. We dream big and we build things.

The GRACE Innovation Center opened in August 2025. The prior month, in July, I transitioned out of the superintendent role to become the executive director of the new center (working for the school) as well as the executive director of the St. George Community Development Corporation (StGCDC). The StGCDC had been a key community partner with the school over the years. They worked in a variety of strategic areas across St. George, including education.

The mission of the StGCDC is to foster a thriving and livable community for all St. George residents. We work across age groups and sectors to create an integrated continuum of care and resilience that serves residents of all ages. With almost a hundred volunteers and countless partner organizations, we catalyze innovation, build resilience, and support wellbeing at the local level. We focus on four impact areas: community empowerment, education and economic development, housing, and health and well-being.

Our work ranges from running a food pantry that serves about forty to fifty households each week to a volunteer-run community wood bank that helps keep people warm through the winter. We also have a heating assistance program that helps with heating oil costs and a hardship assistance fund that provides small grants to assist people with rent or mortgage payments and stay in their homes, fix vehicles so they can get to work and stay employed, and pay electrical bills to keep the lights on. The StGCDC purchased thirty acres of land in St. George to develop workforce housing and ensure the viability of our year-round community by providing homes and apartments priced for working families earning moderate incomes and targeting community members making their livings on the water, working in our school, serving as EMTs or firefighters, or running small businesses and for our children and alumni who want to live and work in St. George. Working in partnership with the GRACE Innovation Center, the StGCDC also provides adult education and workforce training programs, along with telehealth services.

For me, I get to work at the center of education, community, and law. I've learned that to have a sustainable, meaningful impact, you need to work across sectors and age groups to foster connection, caring, and innovation rooted in people, place, and community.