Our Appeal
Dear Friends of the Center for Teaching and Learning,
Fall this year was sunny in every way: the return of an extraordinary faculty, a full house of seventy-eight great kids, and new swingsets on the playground. In September, a camera crew from Heinemann camped out here for two weeks and filmed Ted DeMille (grades 1-2), Glenn Powers (grades 5-6), and me (grades 7-8) starting a year of writing workshop with our students. A pilot-camera security system has been installed, so we can keep tabs on folks who enter CTL; the building is looking especially good after a full-circuit re-staining; and an article in Maine's Coastal Journal this summer celebrated our seventeen winners of national student writing competitions during the 2006-07 school year.
I come to you this year with a full heart—this is such a great place to teach and learn—but also some anxiety about the future of CTL. I'm beginning to envision the next phase of my life and trying to plan for the next phase of the life of the school.
Since I started teaching, in 1973, my professional experience has been more rewarding than words can say. But my husband retired two years ago, and I anticipate joining him before too long. The faculty, curricula, policies, and philosophy of CTL are so well established that the school doesn't require the presence of its founder. What I am concerned about is CTL's financial survival.
Because of the success of my books, we've been able to attract numbers of teachers to our intern program and to the seminars CTL conducts in cities around the U.S. as fundraisers for the school. Last year, 20% of CTL's income—$125,000—was derived from these two efforts. If the school doesn't develop alternative sources of income, I fear my departure may lead to a funding gap that will make it difficult for CTL to remain a demonstration school that serves children from low- and moderate-income families. Tuitions at CTL only cover about 60% of annual operating costs; more typically, at independent schools, that figure is 90-95%.
One step Glenn, Ted, and I have taken, to begin to plug the gap, is to donate all the royalties from the sale of the Heinemann DVDs to CTL; with any luck, these may generate about $10,000 per year for the school. Helene Coffin, our kindergarten teacher, and Ted each have books in the works that will bring new professional interest in the work of the school. Jill Cotta, teacher of grades 3-4, and Glenn represent the next generation of smart, passionate teachers with stories to tell and books to write. Until then, we are looking to you, our friends, to help us build CTL's endowment so that it can generate sufficient income to help keep the school alive, thriving, and true to its mission.
As always, the gift you make this year will also supplement tuitions and provide tuition assistance to needy students, and, we hope, keep our ever-shaky budget in the black. We are asking folks to go above and beyond other gifts in other years—to help us raise $75,000 in 2007 so we can make a significant addition to CTL's endowment.
We count on our families, fans, and friends to remember CTL in their charitable giving each year. Please, this year may we count on you?
Sincerely yours,
Nancie Atwell, President
Board of Directors
Our Mission
The Center for Teaching and Learning is a K-8 demonstration school dedicated to the development and dissemination of authentic, rigorous, joyful methods for teaching across the curriculum. We seek to teach and influence a cross-section of children of mid-coastal Maine and, through our intern program, seminars, speeches, and publications, classroom teachers throughout the U.S.
Our Accomplishments
- Since 1990, almost 450 teachers from thirty states, India, England, Canada, and South America have spent a week in CTL classrooms, observing our methods and taking them home to transform their students' lives.
- More than 12,000 teachers have attended CTL teacher-led seminars in 37 cities across the U.S. This spring we'll conduct seminars in Chicago and Portsmouth.
- Nancie's books about CTL-style teaching and learning are among the national bestsellers in the field of education: In the Middle; Lessons That Change Writers; Naming the World: A Year of Poems and Lessons, which includes poems by CTL student poets; and her latest, The Reading Zone: How to Help Kids Become Skilled, Passionate, Habitual, Critical Readers, published by Scholastic.
- Miki Murray's book about our 7-8 math curriculum, Teaching Mathematics Vocabulary in Context, continues to take the field of middle school math by storm, and her new book, The Differentiated Math Classroom, is the talk of the field.
- Ted DeMille's Children and Fiction, his book about the stories our primary students tell and write, will be published by Heinemann in July.
- Scholastic will publish Every Child a Reader, Helene Coffin's book about teaching reading through poetry, in 2008.
- CTL's curriculum, publications, and faculty have been honored at the state and national levels for excellence and innovation: the IRA Excellence in Reading Award, the NCTE Edwin Hoey Award, the David H. Russell Award, the MLA Mina Shaughnessy Prize, and the Maine Education Award.
- CTL stands as an example to the teaching profession, living proof that excellent schools are the result of caring teachers who create intense, loving cultures of achievement and inspire children's best efforts.
- Almost 100 CTL graduates have excelled in a wide variety of public and private high school and college settings: we are so proud of our amazing alums.
Our Challenges
- CTL awarded almost $45,000 in tuition assistance in 2007-08. To maintain our community and a student body of regular kids, we need to keep tuition affordable and offer dependable assistance to every family that needs it.
- Our building is showing its age. It requires extensive —often unanticipated— maintenance.
- Nancie's eventual retirement will lead to a significant loss of operating income.
- Our endowment fund has to grow to increase the modest income CTL derives from investments.
Our Invitation
- Help us develop, implement, and demonstrate the best, most effective methods for teaching K-8 students across the disciplines.
- Help us continue to serve ordinary Maine families and children who, without tuition aid, would not be able to attend CTL.
- Help us keep faculty salaries and benefits on a par with those of local public school teachers.
- Help us replace worn flooring and furniture, paint the school, and purchase the literature and resources that make our program strong and our students smart, productive, and happy.
- Help us build an endowment that ensures the school's survival no matter what.
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