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Sanford Community Adult Education
21 Bradeen Street • Suite 201 • Springvale, ME 04083adulted@sanford.org • (207) 490-5145 • Fax: (207) 490-2478
News & Events
GED Orientation & Pretesting Scheduled at SCAE!
The GED diploma is earned by passing a five (5) part test that includes: Reading, Writing, Math, Social Studies and Science.
You need to be 18 or older to take the tests or must prove you have been out of school for more than one year if you are 17. If you have a documented job offer dependant on receiving your GED, or a college or the military will accept you if you pass the GED, you may also take the GED at 17. GED preparation classes can start at age 17.
The GED process starts with a required three day orientation that includes GED pre-testing, and the CASAS test. Your pre-test and CASAS scores tell us if you are ready to take the official tests. If your pre-test scores are not high enough, we offer classes to help you raise your scores. The classes are free, but books may cost $25-$35. We pre-test four times a year. Please call (207.490.5145) to register. You must attend all three days of pre-testing. Childcare is only available during morning testing.
You may official test if your pre-test scores show you are ready. Official testing follows pre-testing. You MUST bring an official picture i.d. to test.
Our Next Orientation & Pretesting Session is:
August 16, 18, 23 from 9-Noon or 6-9 pm
Call 207.490.5145 to register!
Posted by Sue Colley on July 15th 2010 | Read more in: News
Director Kathi Medcalf Receives MAEA's Highest Honor!
Every year the Maine Adult Education Association holds its annual conference for adult education professionals, administrators, teachers, guidance counselors and support staff. This year’s conference was held June 22-24 at Colby College in Waterville with more than 175 professionals from around the state presenting and attending workshops and celebrating individual and program successes.
The culminating event of the three-day conference was MAEA’s annual Awards Banquet. MAEA presents six different awards annually, including its highest honor, the Gerald LeVasseur Award. This prestigious honor, is awarded to a citizen of Maine “who has performed unusual and outstanding work in the field of Adult and Community Education. The individual’s contribution must be worthy of high recognition in accordance with the following:
A. The importance of the achievements to Adult and Community Education and to the public interest must be so outstanding that the individual deserves greater public recognition than that which can be accorded by the annual MAEA outstanding service awards.
B. An achievement which has current impact in improving the delivery of Adult and Community Education or serving the community interest and exemplifying one or more of the following:
1. Displaying imagination in developing creative solutions to problems in Adult and Community Education
2. Displaying courage and perseverance against great odds and difficulties to ensure the existence of Adult and Community Education at a level to enhance the lives of the residents of the State of Maine
3. Demonstrating high ability in accomplishing extraordinary educational achievement in providing outstanding leadership in planning, organizing, or directing a major program of unusual importance and complexity, or in performing an extraordinary act of credit to Adult and Community Education and the adult residents of the State of Maine
4. Rendering long and distinguished Adult and Community Education service.”
MAEA’s own Director, Cathy Newell, submitted the following as part of her nomination of SCAE’s Director, Kathi Medcalf.
“Kathi Medcalf is a thoroughly deserving recipient of the LeVasseur Award. She is an exemplary director of a local program. She pursues continuous excellence by monitoring her program, using data, staff and student progress, and building a strong organization. Her staff nominated her for MAEA Director of the Year honors in 2006, which she received. Kathi has build a wonderful program rising to every challenge, building daycare centers, moving the office, adopting ITV, reworking job descriptions, and above all rewarding staff performance. She has built a terrific program.
Kathi has been a leader for adult education in Maine. Arriving in 2002 from Seattle, Kathi got her start in Sanford as ABE Coordinator in 2002, after a career teaching Chemistry. She holds 2 Masters degrees, one in Chemistry from Villanova, and one in Adult Education from USM. She was named director in Sanford in 2003. She was president of MAEA in 2007-2008 .
Kathi’s remarkable and revolutionary accomplishments for Maine Adult Education included providing incredible leadership for the revision of the ABE/AEFLA formula in 2004 – she really can do math! But clearly her greatest accomplishment was the leadership and daily monitoring she provides for the Maine Adult Education Web Portal, launched in January 2009 after a year of planning. The portal speaks for itself. 75 programs offering course listings, news from programs, quality and consistent web sites, on-line registration and payment. The data says it all from Jan 1 2009- March 26 2010, the portal took in $364,500 in revenue and 7,480 course registrations for programs, with the average online order: $48.72. There have been 305,000 visits and 1.7 million page views. Traffic has consistently risen over each active period. January-March 2010 traffic has DOUBLED over Jan-March 2009 traffic. On average, traffic has risen more than 140% each active period.
Now Kathi is leading the preparatory work for another revision of AEFLA moving toward performance-based funding, and in addition work on subsidy accountability. She is truly a leader in the tradition of Gerry Levasseur and the previous recipients of the award and is going to occupy a good bit of space in the next history of adult education in Maine.”
Kathi was surprised to discover her supportive husband, Scott, in the audience at the banquet. SCAE staff worked crazily to surprise her!
The community of Sanford has so much to be proud of, with this amazing woman who gives so much time to improving education for families and adults in our midst!
Posted by Sue Colley on June 28th 2010 | Read more in: Events
SCAE's Margie Genereux Selected as MAEA's Outstanding Teacher of the Year
Every year the Maine Adult Education Association holds its annual conference for adult education professionals, administrators, teachers, guidance counselors and support staff. This year’s conference was held June 22-24 at Colby College in Waterville with more than 175 professionals from around the state presenting and attending workshops and celebrating individual and program successes.
The culminating event of the three-day conference was MAEA’s annual Awards Banquet. MAEA presents six different awards annually, including Outstanding Teacher. Sanford Community Adult Education’s own Margie Genereux was selected as the Oustanding Adult Education Teacher of the Year. Criteria for the award include: communication and collaboration, continuing development of adult learning, individualizing instruction for adult learners, managing resources, continuing monitoring and assessment of learning and general support of the local program. Genereux was nominated by SCAE’s Director, Kathi Medcalf, who submitted the following text as part of her nomination:
“Every adult education program has their “go-to” person, the one who can be depended on to pinch-hit for another teacher or support person, the one who can pull those amazingly successful creative ideas from thin air at a moment’s notice, the one who can see the ideal solution to a problem that others couldn’t imagine. Margie Genereux epitomizes the go-to criteria.
For nearly fifteen years, Margie has been reinventing herself for SCAE, teaching academic computer classes for diploma candidates, fine-tuning subject matter and assisting with implementation of computer-instruction standards. Margie has pioneered SCAE into a long history of successful enrichment computer classes as well, adjusting curriculum to meet course offerings of varying lengths, depending on what the market is wanting in any given semester.
Margie’s giftedness with web design is known to many adult education programs. She has created many appealing websites for several programs, and continues with tweaking to Sanford’s, bringing out our individuality even with the new portal! Her commitment to eye-catching graphics, clean lines, concise information and three-clicks to registration drove the SCAE website to be a highly utilized and very effective tool for our program. SCAE was one of the first programs utilizing PayPal – thanks to who? Margie, of course.
Margie has spent literally countless hours assisting programs all over the state of Maine with implementing the use of the MAEA Portal. She always graciously takes the time, to walk each individual, step-by-step through the steps necessary to get up to speed. MAEA Director, Cathy Newell says “Margie is a whiz with technology and is adept at translating her enthusiasm into work with adult learners. Her creativity in using Google and other on-line tools has made it possible for teachers and learners to access sophisticated tools that can be expensive to obtain. Her willingness to share her skills at the Summer Academy, the Conference and at smaller seminars is much appreciated as is her generosity in working on the Web Portal.”
Margie loves adult education and works to bring the best out of SCAE and other programs. She has a passion that is contagious and her students and adult ed colleagues across the state always ask for ‘more Margie’ after any class or workshop she presents. Margie deserves this recognition because she is the epitome of the adult educator and contributor to the state.”
Margie was surprised with a visit from her family at the Awards Banquet. Shown at left are (back to front): Briget, Steven, Brittany and Jillian; Margie, Adam and Margie's incredibly patient & supportive husband, Tom!
Sanford has so much to be proud of, with educators like Margie who give so much of their time to improving education for families and adults in the Sanford Community!
Posted by Sue Colley on June 28th 2010 | Read more in: News
Sanford Community Adult Education sees an Enrollment Boom in Adult Ed Classes
By Ellen W. Todd, Sanford News Writer
Thursday, October 1, 2009
SANFORD — Fall enrollment in Sanford's Community Adult Education program is up 85 percent from last year's fall enrollment — and that's in just the academic courses like employment skills, high school and General Educational Development (GED) diploma classes and college transition classes.
Last fall, 137 students registered for SCAE's academic courses, this year 258 students have registered.
"It's a huge increase for us," SCAE Director Kathi Medcalf told Sanford School Committee members at their Sept. 14 meeting. Despite the increase in demand, Medcalf said SCAE administrators were able to enroll everyone in the programs they wanted.
In addition to its own programs, SCAE provides services for the University College system and there has been a 20 percent increase in enrollment in those courses — from 75 last year to 90 this year.
Medcalf said the economy is the primary reason for the increase in students. The closing of several area businesses in the last year means an increase in the number of people who are unemployed. In order to receive unemployment compensation, they must be actively looking for work or enroll in a retraining program. With so few jobs available, Medcalf said, there is a lot of interest in SCAE's employment skills and GED classes.
Most jobs require a high school diploma or GED, Medcalf said, but that was not always the case. Workers who did not complete high school and worked in manufacturing for 20 or 30 years, for example, are finding themselves in new circumstances.
"People are coming in and saying, 'I've done this for 20 years. I never thought I'd have to be looking for a job again,'" Medcalf said.
This fall, former R.R. Donnelley employees have been coming into the SCAE office. The company announced in March that it would close its Wells plant in June. Employees received severance packages, but those are running out and former Donnelley employees who have not found jobs are eligible for unemployment benefits.
Medcalf said that in addition to the economic situation, Maine Department of Health and Human Services rules have changed increasing the number of hours a parent must work or attend school in order to receive benefits through the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. A majority of SCAE students are receiving some kind of services — unemployment or TANF — Medcalf said.
For some, getting their high school diploma or GED is the first priority and math is most often the area where they are a bit rusty. "We're offering more math classes this fall we ever have before," Medcalf said.
SCAE also provides counseling to help displaced workers figure out the kind of job they'd like to do, and help them get the education and skills they need.
Along with the increase in enrollment in its own programs, SCAE is the biggest University College ITV site in the state, Medcalf said. There are 51 ITV courses offered at the Sanford center and the SCAE staff is responsible for proctoring exams for ITV courses as well as for students taking online courses. They also collect papers and troubleshoot problems for students taking ITV classes.
SCAE receives a $2,000 stipend for holding ITV classes and $122.69 per course offered plus $30.67 for each enrollment, which helps offset the expenses, Medcalf said. This year's increase in enrollment has meant a big increase the work for SCAE staff, she said.
Posted by Margie Genereux on October 23rd 2009 | Read more in: News
SCAE's Employment Program Trains Students for the Workplace
courtesy photo Sanford resident Lisa Bernier says Sanford Community Adult Education taught her the skills she needs for the new job she loves. EDITOR'S NOTE. The following feature is the latest installment in a series of occasional entries about individuals who have improved their lives by attending Sanford Community Adult Education at the Anderson Learning Center in Springvale.
By Gail Lemley Burnett
Sanford News Guest Writer
Thursday, March 19, 2009
SPRINGVALE — Anyone would have forgiven Sandy Hilton if she'd felt sorry for herself four years ago. The Vishay Sprague plant in Sanford was shutting the last of its departments, putting her out of work for the first time in 23 years. She was middle-aged, her children were grown, and she had no high school diploma.
But Hilton, a Sanford native, didn't waste any time on self-pity. She sat down and considered her options.
"I figured I would go either toward the medical profession or the law," she says.
Neither was likely to be sent overseas, as Vishay Sprague's manufacturing jobs had been.
The first step was finishing her high school education. Hilton had always enjoyed school and had dropped out decades earlier, only because her mother couldn't afford to drive her to Sanford High from the outskirts of town. (No bus was available back then.) She took the tests for the GED (General Education Development) diploma at Sanford Community Adult Education (SCAE) and passed all subject areas easily.
"I surprised myself," she recalls.
Next, Hilton enrolled in the Employment Skills Certificate Program (ESCP) at SCAE, which gives high school graduates a chance to earn a number of job-related certificates. Initially, she was thinking of working in a doctor's office. That meant brushing up on basic skills such as English and math and exploring areas that were entirely new, like accounting and computers.
"I felt a little awkward at first," she says, because she was so unfamiliar with the computer. "But nobody else seemed to notice, and it didn't bother me after awhile."
Hilton eventually earned three certificates in the Employment Skills Certificate Program — her Clerical Certificate, Administrative Assistant Certificate, and Medical Secretary Certificate. Although she earned her certificates from SCAE, she needed to supplement her SCAE classes with courses offered at another school because of scheduling problems. Shortly afterward, she was hired by the billing department at Goodall Health Partners and has worked there for the last two and a half years.
She says that the Employment Skills Certificate Program gave her training that was both academic and thoroughly practical. She learned about writing business letters and resumes and got valuable pointers on how to present herself during a job interview. She learned the specialized language of medical billing; she still has a notebook from SCAE instructor Shirley Ross on her desk at work.
She advises anyone facing unemployment today to consider taking advantage of local training opportunities like the ESCP program.
"Don't be afraid to try it. It's the greatest thing. It makes you feel so good about yourself," she says.
That's the same advice Lisa Bernier gives to people these days.
"It doesn't matter how old you are, you can go back to school now. Things are different," she says.
Bernier, also of Sanford, worked a series of jobs before she was laid off from U.S. Optical Disc two years ago. She had graduated from Biddeford High School in the mid-1980s and then worked for Rich's department store, Vishay Sprague, and the U.S. Census Bureau. She ran her own housecleaning business for awhile, but found that transportation to job sites was too expensive. She was offered some retraining money after the U.S. Optical layoff and decided to take it.
"I did self-employment and I did the factory, and I did very little office work, but that's what I really enjoyed — and that's where I really needed brushing up," she says.
Bernier studied reading, writing, accounting, computers and other skills to earn a General Career Skills Certificate as well as a Clerical Certificate at SCAE. This led directly to her job as an administrative assistant for the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) nutrition program at York County Community Action Corp. in Sanford. She loves helping young mothers nourish their children and themselves.
She says that her time at SCAE gave her more than employment skills; it brought her new confidence in reading and writing in any context. It had been 20 years since she'd studied things like apostrophes and paragraphs, which she knew she'd need in an office job.
"Even my sentences are a lot better than they were before," she says.
Like many returning students, Bernier had a few moments of hesitation when she registered for her first SCAE classes.
"At first, I was thinking I'm 40 years old, could I do it? Well, I could," she says.
She has a new perspective on the all-too-familiar story of layoffs and business downturns now. She says she's encouraged her sister, whose job at RR Donnelley in Wells will soon disappear, to consider the ESCP program.
"This could actually help you," she tells her sister. "Try to brush up your skills and go for something you really want now. It's worth it. Why not?"
The Employment Skills Certificate Program at SCAE offers a General Career Skills Certificate, a Clerical Certificate and three advanced certificates, Administrative Assistant Certificate, Accounting Clerk Certificate, and Medical Secretary Certificate. It is possible to be working on more than one certificate concurrently.
SCAE is located in the Anderson Learning Center at 21 Bradeen Street in Springvale. For more information or a registration appointment, call coordinator Lisa Blanchette at 490-5145.
Posted by Margie Genereux on March 19th 2009 | Read more in: News
SCAE part of new statewide website: Medcalf leads effort to put Maine's adult education programs under one Internet umbrella
Click the link below to read the story at www.fosters.com:
http://fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090226/GJNEWS03/702259727/-1/SANNEWS
Click here to read it in pdf format.
Posted by Margie Genereux on February 27th 2009 | Read more in: News
Welcome to our new website!
We have recently launched our new website! The new site brings with it many new and exciting features designed to make locating and registering for courses much easier.
Some of these new and exciting features include:
- Search for courses: You can now search for courses from our program as well as from other adult education programs across the state. You can also browse our courses by category if you prefer.
- Register online: You no longer need to come into our office or mail us your registration for some courses. When you see the "Add to Cart" button on any course, that means you can register and pay for the course online in a few easy steps. Of course, you can also call, walk-in, or mail in your registration if you prefer.
- Latest news and events: Read our latest news, updates, happenings and events inside our News & Events section. You can also subscribe to our News & Events using RSS.
- Frequently Asked Questions: Find answers to important questions about our program, schedules, registering, and the adult education system by searching or browsing our frequently asked questions section.
Our website is a part of the new Maine Adult Education Portal, sponsored and managed by the Maine Adult Education Association. When you visit the new MAEA website online at http://www.maineadulted.org, you can search for courses and programs statewide to find the perfect class closest to where you work or live.
These are just a few of the many exciting additions to our site, and many more are slated to appear over the next year. Please continue to check back with us, and please share your feedback by contacting us. Thank you, and we hope you enjoy your new adult education website.
Posted by Kathi Medcalf on November 9th 2008 | Read more in: News
