enlarge Doug Jones/Staff Photographer

Macy Brown, a Deering graduate, helps kindergartners at Longfellow Elementary School, where she interned and volunteered.

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MACY BROWN

SCHOOL: Deering High School, Portland; Portland Arts and Technology High School

"I want to be the kind of teacher who's open to what children want to learn."

Macy Brown learned a lot this year from the kindergarten teachers at Longfellow Elementary School in Portland.

That's where Brown was a student intern through the early childhood occupations program at Portland Arts and Technology High School.

Susan Ross and Beverly Lawrence showed Brown that good teaching often takes a subtle approach – such as when Ross asked her students to sit "on the perimeter of the carpet" rather than "in a circle." Or when Lawrence played a game with her students that emphasized math skills.

"They don't even realize that they're learning," Brown said. "I want to be the kind of teacher who's open to what children want to learn."

Irving Williams, her PATHS instructor, said Brown is an insightful, mature young woman who often goes above and beyond, especially in her Longfellow internship.

"I require students to spend 10 hours per week in an early childhood education setting in the community," Williams said. "Macy was doing 22 to 25 hours a week at Longfellow, on top of her classes at Deering and PATHS, and two college-level courses she took through this program." She also has a part-time job cleaning a downtown office building.

Brown, who graduated from Deering High School on June 3, plans to study elementary education at the University of Maine at Farmington in the fall.

She'll be among the first in her family to go to college.

She wants to be a kindergarten teacher. "At that age, they're innocent of all the biases that influence them later on," she said.

Raised by her mother, maternal grandparents and an aunt, Brown learned her nurturing ways from her extended Irish family.

"Whenever anything gets hard, they huddle around you and protect you until it's over," she said.

Brown said her mother, Melinda, has worked nights as a AAA service representative and sacrificed her own interests to give her two daughters a secure home and a compassionate upbringing.

"She raised us to treat everyone equal and to recognize that other people may have a more difficult situation," Brown said.

Although Brown has graduated, she plans to work at Longfellow through the end of the school year.

She has developed close relationships with many of the children.

They nearly knock her down with hugs when she arrives, and pepper her with questions about her life outside the classroom. She has enjoyed watching them grow and learn.

"The one thing I haven't figured out yet," she said, "is how to let them go."

Staff Writer Kelley Bouchard can be contacted at 791-6328 or at:

kbouchard@pressherald.com