Report on Maine Career Exploration Program Features Extended Learning Opportunities Student Stories

Since its launch in the fall of 2022, the Maine Career Exploration Program (MCEP) has connected more than 6,000 participants with paid work experiences. With funding from the Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan, this program offers opportunities for Maine’s youth, ages 16-24.

To learn more about the MCEP and Extended Learning Opportunities (ELO) in Maine, check out the Maine Career Exploration Program Final Evaluation Report.

These are a couple of student highlights from the report.

Ryan | From feeling uncertain and worried to confident and clear

Oceanside High School, Knox County – Work Experience Placement: Blake Vets

When the principal offered Ryan, then a rising senior at Oceanside High School, the choice of a fourth-period study hall or an internship class, Ryan picked the class.

“I asked him about it,” Ryan recalled, “And he told me a little bit about it, and I was like, ‘I want to do this. This sounds really cool.’ I was worried, because it was my senior year, and I had no idea what I was going to do.”

Now, he knows.

The class led Ryan to Blake Vets in Northport, where he found that his natural affinity for animals was a key asset.

“I have a big connection to animals,” he explained. “I always have. I love all types of animals. I just feel like a strength that I brought is my compassion and care when it comes to pets and people, as well. People are very happy seeing their pets warm up to me.”

Ryan’s love of pets also created challenges. It made him care — a lot — about doing things right during his internship at the practice. That created pressure when things went wrong.

“A skill that I learned was how to manage high-stress scenarios,” Ryan said when explaining why one picture he took showed a dog upside down on a table. The dog in the photo had woken up before surgery began and had to be anesthetized again. “There are so many things that can go wrong during the preparation for surgery.”

Ryan recalled when he witnessed a pet reacting with fear during a necessary procedure.

“I had to remind myself that this is helping the animal, even if they’re scared and they’re angry. Reminding myself, and the people that were around me, helped me get through this.”

The professionals at the practice encouraged him, as he learned about the realities of healing pets.

“Having a doctor who has been a veterinarian for years and years tell you that she sees that you can also become one — it meant a lot to me,” he said.

Ryan has been accepted into the University of Maine at Augusta veterinary technician program. The vets he interned with assured him that, if he applies for a job after he graduates, they’ll give him preferential consideration. He has also lined up work for the summer at an animal shelter.

“With the internship and with Molly [my ELO Coordinator] and with all the connections that I’ve made, it has just further cemented the fact that I want to be this, even after seeing the good and the bad,” Ryan said.

His confidence blossomed, too. When asked to identify the most important lesson he took from his ELO placement, Ryan replied, “How to speak for myself.”

He explained that before this experience, “I was just kind of like, ‘I’m fine. I’m doing good. I’m okay with everything,’ even if I wasn’t entirely sure I was. I’m a lot more independent, and I say what I want and how I feel a lot more now.”

Ryan added: “There are so many things that I also want to talk about on top of this – like how I’ve truly opened up and become a more social person during this period of this year. At the beginning of the year, I was very reserved. I didn’t say much about me; I didn’t talk that much. I’ve really started to open up and show who I am as a person, and those are a couple things that I’ve just learned throughout the year.”

The internship and the class, he said, helped him find his way.

“When it comes to normal classes, it’s like, you learn something, you remember it, you do a test on it. It’s just a linear path,” Ryan said. “When it comes to ELO, it’s like, some days … if you’re not feeling it, you don’t have to do something, and if you want and you’re willing to, you can grow so much in the span of just a little bit.”

Ryan also explained: “You have to put in energy to get as much out of this as you want to. This ELO and everything, it’s a lot more oriented toward you, and the path of growth is dependent on what you decide it to be.”

Natalie | A river of connection, communication, and growth

Yarmouth High School, Cumberland County – Work Experience Placements: Wabanaki First Nations, Royal River Conservation Trust

“The reason you start your ELO does not define your ELO,” noted Natalie. “I started this for fun to learn a language because I was bored with the Romance languages in school. Then it turned into something so much more.”

Natalie’s first ELO placement led to a river of experiences that connected the Yarmouth High School student with her heritage, transformed her into a passionate communicator, and introduced her to a bevy of community organizations that welcomed her into their work.

“I’m more naturally quiet, so it’s kind of weird to be, like, this leader, this big public figure that apparently people like to consider me now,” she said.

Recently selected by the Portland Press Herald as one of the top ten graduates to watch in the state of Maine, Natalie has been accepted at Dartmouth College.

“I know, realistically, I probably wouldn’t have gotten in without all of the stuff I’ve done, but also … It shifted my life goals,” she said of the ELO program.

“I’m a Maliseet Native American from Tobique First Nation, but I’ve lived here my whole life,” Natalie explained. “I started my ELO as a thing investigating my language and my culture with Imelda Perley, who is my mentor. … She’s an amazing person. She basically started the whole language conservation program at the University of New Brunswick [and is] just a really inspiring person.”

Perley, a Maliseet elder, met with Natalie every week.

“Having that personal connection to so many people on the reservation up in New Brunswick and having the opportunity to meet with Perley every single week is something I wouldn’t have gotten to do if I was a different person,” Natalie said. “My grandmother grew up on the reservation, but none of the rest of my family really did. Since she went to residential school, she didn’t want her oldest children to have to go to it as well, so she moved to New York. So, it’s not something that my part of the family has been really connected to in a while.”

Impressed with Natalie’s work, her ELO Coordinator talked about her during a meeting of an equity task force that included some members from YCARE, the Yarmouth Community Alliance for Racial Equity. Some of its members attended Natalie’s ELO presentation and invited her and her parents to join them. The meetings were held at the headquarters of the Royal River Conservation Trust, which eventually offered Natalie a paid internship, her second ELO.

While her first ELO connected Natalie with her Native American heritage and extended members of her own family, her second taught her how to share that indigenous knowledge and history back out, leading hikes along the Royal River with new mentors the trust introduced her to — experts in ethnobotany — and working with kids and nature.

“Luckily, it’s a situation where everyone is interested in learning,” Natalie said of the hikes she and her mentors led. “It’s not like they’re forced to be there. So, it was a very welcoming community, but it was still talking in front of people that I didn’t know, or at least, didn’t know very well. [It was] pretty much unlike anything I’ve ever done before. It was definitely a learning curve.”

Natalie already was working on one Royal River project through YCARE. That group’s effort to formally give a Penobscot name to what is locally called First Falls brought Natalie’s linguistic knowledge into play and taught her some hard lessons about bureaucracy. Although the waterfall didn’t have a legal name, applying one required buy-in from the U.S. Geological Survey, the Penobscot Nation, and the town, and the project raised historical language issues that led Natalie to seek guidance from Perley.

“The fact that simple things can be such a pain anyway — even if they don’t necessarily need to be, they find a way to be,” Natalie said with a smile. “I guess messing with bureaucracy is something I’ve had to do. That’s more of a challenge than a skill at this point. [I’m] still working on that.”

Through her work with the Royal River Conservation Trust, Natalie learned of the Royal River Alliance and got involved with its dam removal effort. She spoke about their progress at the alliance’s World Fish Migration Day at Royal River Park in May. Other activities have included being on a panel for Youth and Climate Action and participating in monthly Wabanaki youth group meetings in Freeport.

Natalie said that her Native American heritage was the most important thing she brought to the ELO program. It provided unique opportunities for growth and connection that, in turn, fostered a desire to share what she was learning.

“Having that inspiration and that history I guess makes me much more passionate about the project and the kind of stuff that I’m doing. … I think it gives me more interest in doing it than a lot of other people — more reason to, more motivation.”

Her heritage also influenced how she learned.

“I’d say I used a couple of random Google searches and a couple of books that were my grandmother’s or that people have recommended to me, but for the most part it has just been talking with people,” Natalie explained. “We have a very strong oral tradition in general, so those are kind of the biggest ways in which I’ve actually learned anything.”

When asked whether her ELO experiences have affected her future path, Natalie said, “I think this is probably the most influential thing I’ve ever done. … I would say it’s hard for me to picture what my life would be like right now if I hadn’t done it because it has been so integral to what I’ve been doing. It has changed both what I’ve been able to do in the future and what I want to do in the future because linguistics and Native American stuff is so much more important than I expected it to be. … It’s something that I really want to make a part of my future no matter what I end up doing.”

To learn more about the Maine Career Exploration Program, please reach out to Karen Morin at karen.morin@maine.gov. For more information about Extended Learning Opportunities, please reach out to Lana Sawyer at lana.sawyer@maine.gov.