The Community School

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Dottie Foote, Ph.D. came to the school as Executive Director in the Fall of 2008. She holds a PhD in Education and Psychology and a MS in Human Development from The University of Maine and is thrilled to be following in the footsteps of the school’s founders – advancing the work of alternative education. After spending years in the banking industry, non-profit leadership, and teaching for UMaine, Dottie worked on issues of social justice, specifically with issues surrounding HIV/AIDS in rural Maine. Her work with adolescents over 10 years prior to coming to the Community School was in the development of a cutting-edge social justice program for teens aged 14-19 called the Diversity Coalition (DC). The goal of DC is to stimulate these young men and women to develop a heightened awareness of real-world socio-cultural issues, reflect on their own social positions within these issues (class, race, ethnicity, gender, etc,) and further are encouraged to fully engage themselves in the community at large through concrete and public social activism. Dottie teaches Psychology of Adolescence for The University of Maine and is a Board member of The Restorative Justice Project. Dot also is on Maine’s Shared Youth Vision Council and acts as an adviser to the Commissioner of Education as a member of the Committee on Truancy, Dropout and Alternative Education. And although the gardens need tending and the piano continues to gather dust – she loves to run and ski and keep an eye to the next new adventure for the CSchool. She lives in Rockport with her husband Charlie and her own adolescent personal trainers, Andrea 21, Morgan 18, and William 15 and a splendid Maine Coon Cat named Puck. Martha Kempe is the Community School’s Passages Program Director. Martha holds a an undergraduate fine arts degree from University of Oregon and a masters in Expressive Therapies and Counseling from the University of Louisville. She recently completed her Certificate of Advanced Study in Educational Leadership from the University of Maine, Orono. Before joining The Community School in 2004, Martha was Director of Residential Services for Kent County Rhode Island, Design Program Specialist for the National Endowment for the Arts in Washington DC, Apprenticeship Coordinator for the Swain School of Design, Director of Grants and Contracts at UMass Dartmouth and a Title 1 Ed Tech for Camden/Rockport Elementary School. Martha loves family, good books, laughter and seeing new places. Andrea Itkin has been a teacher/counselor in the Passages program since 2003. She loves the privilege of working one-on-one with young parents, learning everything about them and their children, encouraging them to nurture their own curiosity, and watching them grow as students, as parents, and as citizens. Before landing at the Community School, Andrea wore a variety of hats: in the late ’70’s she started a community day care center in rural Iowa; she worked in a natural food market in Maryland; and after moving to Maine she worked in restaurants, in newspaper production, as a residential counselor in a home for mentally challenged adults, and in several capacities in a domestic violence agency.

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