Author: Catherine Gordon

As a teacher in the Bangor School District, I have decorated my classroom for various holidays, including Christmas, for the last 30 years. For many of the first years I taught, I decorated with a real Christmas tree complete with reindeer, stars and an angel topper for my students. But in recent years, due to the political climate, I have instead decorated with a pink Hello Kitty themed tree that I found at a local hardware store as a way to be more “inclusive” with my decorations. To me, the pink tree was more of a fun decoration that all…

Should we allow our teachers to be trained and armed like some schools in Texas are now doing? This was a conversation several teachers were having in the teacher’s room recently with comments both strongly for and strongly against. This is definitely a hot topic and all I could think was how times have changed. Guns used to be allowed on school grounds. I remember as a high school student, kids driving their trucks to school with their rifles and shotguns in the rear gun rack because they were going hunting after school. There were rifle teams and gun ranges in schools…

I graduated from the University of Maine with a degree in mathematics not knowing what my next move would be. My mother was a middle school teacher and encouraged me to teach while I figured out what I wanted to do with my life. Now here I am… thirty years into that two-year job. And wow – have things changed in our educational system during those years. I stayed in this job for so long because I love teaching children – seeing their faces light up when they learn something that is particularly hard for them, is priceless. But to…