“One of us, one of us,” a smiling Joshua Chard, 2024 Maine Teacher of the Year, chanted in the Wiscasset Elementary School gym Oct. 10, while he looked toward some of the Teacher of the Year program’s other past honorees. He was standing with, and referring to, the just announced 2025 Maine Teacher of the Year, WES fourth grade teacher Becky Hallowell. 

Chard has heard of teachers, including Hallowell, being called magical and more, but until his recent visit to WES while she was a finalist, he had never heard a teacher described as mushroomy.

It turned out, mushrooms are vital to ecosystems, he said he learned. “And Mrs. Hallowell is indeed as far reaching as a mushroom, with invisible … influences on everyone lucky enough to be in her orbit … Her knowledge and guidance spreads, shaping minds, fostering growth and influencing decisions impacting her students, colleagues and the entire Wiscasset community …” That influence is enduring and profound, he said. 

Hallowell, named Lincoln County Teacher of the Year months ago, got the statewide honor in the morning ceremony with a red carpet, confetti, the school chorus and the rest of the school, many children and adults from Wiscasset Middle High School, town and school department officials, Hallowell's family, Maine news media, Maine Education Commissioner Pender Makin and others.

And there was a dance party. Pharrell Williams' "Happy" played as adults and children danced in place and a hugging, smiling and also dancing Hallowell, wearing red like the carpet, made her way all the way around the gym. 

In interviews and speeches, officials and others cited Hallowell's attention to outdoor education. Outdoor and place-based is a vision at the state level and is happening here with Hallowell's work as a great example, Superintendent of Schools Kim Andersson said.

As classes and others assembled for the surprise announcement, Andersson told Wiscasset Newspaper what she said when a visiting panel from the Teacher of the Year program asked for one word that came to mind about Hallowell. "I blurted out, 'love.'"

Makin repeated that word and others from Hallowell's colleagues and students: Colleagues called Hallowell a spunky, talented, inspiring and innvovative Mary Poppins bag of teaching tools, and students said she doesn't like to sit inside all day, and they will never forget the trip to Millinocket to see the eclipse, Makin said.

In her weeks as a finalist, had Hallowell dared to think she might be named Maine Teacher of the Year? In an interview with confetti still on the floor, she said "Well, I felt really good after our semi finals. And I knew that my kids represented me, and that my family, my teaching family and my administrators, I knew that they all had my back, they were all behind me, and I felt good. But I was also in the presence of people under 30 who had already taken kids to Belize, and a person who'd just received her doctorate in education and another one who was working with the Smithsonian Foundation. So I was in really, really good company. I was hopeful, but I knew that I was just one of four fabulous people."

How was she feeling after getting the honor? "I'm ecstatic! I'm ecstatic, I'm so proud of my school, I thought they did a beautiful job getting ready for this," she added, looking around the gym.

In a post-ceremony reception downstairs in the cafeteria, Wiscasset Newspaper asked Jason Judd, executive director of Educate Maine — a nonprofit that partners with Maine DOE on the program — what made Hallowell be the one.   He said the process was “very competitive,” but it was clear to many members of the visiting team how integral to the school she is, and how innovative she is “in terms of having her students spend time outdoors and really making the most of experiential, placed-based learning.   “I think she does such a great job making sure her students get to experience all that Wiscasset has to offer, and really open their eyes to a variety of different, interesting careers even at a really young age.”   Over the next year, Hallowell will represent Maine in the national Teacher of the Year program, getting and giving professional development at that level, and in Maine with her fellow county teachers of the year, Judd said.    “She’s got contagious energy. She loves education, she loves her students and she’s a vocal supporter of public schools across the state,” Judd said. “And I think she’ll be great as our state Teacher of the Year for 2025.”

Maine Department of Education alerted the media earlier in the week about Thursday’s surprise ceremony in an email that, as always, did not say who won, but said the time and at which school in the state the announcement would be made. The information was, as always for the award, “embargoed,” or not to be published until the award was announced.

At the Oct. 8 school committee meeting, officials spoke of a top secret, special announcement to come. 

Hallowell was announced May 9 as the county winner; next, a semi finalist; and then, one of the final four.

Hallowell’s county-level honor that took her to the top one in Maine follows fellow WES teacher Trae Stover’s service as Lincoln County Teacher of the Year two years earlier.

Hallowell started her career in Dresden teaching first grade, taught four years there teaching that and kindergarten, then a year teaching kindergarten at Williams Cone School in Topsham before moving onto her “hometown school,” Whitefield Elementary School, where she taught K-2 and acted as assistant principal, she has told Wiscasset Newspaper.

She moved onto Wiscasset Primary School in 2011 and taught fourth grade for a year before moving back to kindergarten until 2017; took a kindergarten teaching job at Cushing Community School, “but needed to be closer to support my family. I missed the students and staff at Wiscasset Elementary School and was delighted to be hired back as a fourth grade teacher in 2018,” Hallowell shared after earning the county teacher honor last spring. In those comments, she called Wiscasset rich in historical and natural resources and said her favorite teaching days are “when the students engage with their natural environment and local history.”

Thursday in remarks to the crowd, she said children are Maine's most valuable resource, and she could not imagine a school that loves its students more than WES. She said seeing all the grownups and kids greeting one another and then at day's end waving good bye, "it assures me that I am in the perfect place. 

"When we say we take care of each other at WES, we are declaring our core values," Hallowell said.