Teresa Bolton

*Photo by Elizabeth Butterfield, NCSUVT*

A Humble Voice and an Ambitious Project

The more “rural voices” we hear, the more these highly regarded professionals wonder why their names rose to the surface. Who, me? Teresa Bolton, Charleston’s librarian and “resource central” (our term, not hers) is one such example of humility.

[They] put my name out there for this interview and I thought gee, why me? I don't think I do anything spectacular. I think what I do is to see what kids need. And I feel like a maker space in STEM education is one way to do that..”

In addition to her being a well-respected, appreciated, and accomplished educator in the Northeast Kingdom, one reason Bolton was recommended was that recently, she was instrumental in her school’s being awarded a $15,000. grant from the Educate Innovate Initiative to restore the outdoor learning spaces in their school, damaged by recent flooding. In doing so, the work launched a much-needed effort to not only restore trails, bridges, and learning areas, but also for students to re-engineer, redesign, and build these elements anew. More recently, with a CLIF literacy “Year of the Book” grant award, she worked with other teachers and NCSU specialists to facilitate students’ creating and implementing a “Robot Parade”, a collaborative event which in addition to literacy, wove technology, engineering, art/design and mathematics into a school and community wide event.

To get kids to a place where they can do really well with transferable skills that they can use when they move on to high school, and in the greater world [is the real work]. I don't do any of these things alone… I think there are probably other people that could better speak to rural education… I think one thing that I tried to do in my last school, and also in this school, is to secure some extra grant funding to bring things into our small schools.

Putting it Together

Teresa Bolton is a gourmet chef of learning, whose workspace is literally and figuratively at the center of the school. She is neither a designated leader, nor grade level instructor, but rather a machine fueling much of the action that takes place throughout the building and grounds. She finds funding, resource specialists, helpers, time, and energy to make happen what the central players in the school need, want, and envision for kids.

Her ingredients are student-directed, proficiency-based, interdisciplinary learning, outdoor education, and much more. She teams with others to create the recipe, and achieve results.

And I started with building a maker space soon after I began here, and it was the same thing in my last school. And these things cost money. We can run some things through the local budget, but really, when you're talking about a robotics kit that is $400. and, it serves between two and four children, we can’t ask for local dollars to fund this.
We need to find outside funding. I feel like that's the duty of a rural librarian. To bring these opportunities to our kids, it shouldn't be that, oh, we're in a small rural school, so this is what we get. No, these kids deserve the same opportunities that kids do [elsewhere or] in the junior high.
In the junior high, they have a woodworking component. I think maybe these kids need more, right? Maybe our kids need more and they get more in a lot of different ways. We have a nature trail out back and the kids have done the physical work on that.
And that's thanks to a VREC mini grant the kiddos wrote last year. We had a lot of damage from the flooding. It wiped out all the bridges and the boardwalks. They were all broken such that we couldn't safely use them. So, the kids wrote the grant and they did the physical work.
I don't know how to build a bridge. I have no idea how to build a bridge. The kids had some great ideas so we're like, okay, we're going to figure this out. Hey, let's start with breaking apart the old bridges and let's take all the nails out. They've learned that we're never going to put any of our projects together with nails again! Man, that took a long time to take apart.
But just being next to kids. Piece by piece, looking for experts when we need them, being on the same level as kids, gee, I don't know how we're going to solve this. Do you know? I have some ideas; you have some ideas. Let's explore it and see what works. I don't find myself to be an expert in anything.

Teresa worked with the kids to identify what was needed, or what they thought they needed. They sought a lot of input and worked with others to Identify the needs. In the end she did build the bridge, hammer many nails, and pull burs out of her hair with the rest of them.

We talked with the folks at Northwoods [Stewardship Center]. They came out and they walked our trail with us. Our Science teacher Louise Beaudry has years and years of experience in outdoor ed. She really helped us make sure we're being really good stewards of the land as we do these projects and help the kids decide where the bridge should actually go to lessen the impact. So, it's nowhere near where it used to be. Lots of people work together to make things work in rural schools.

She runs off for a minute to help a student who seems in need. She helps the student make a choice between two books to check out. She has such a warm, lovely, targeted manner of assisting students. This [helping students or faculty as they arrived with needs] happened at least five times during the hour and a half, and seemed to be a large part of her work.

I had a hunch this wasn't the first project Teresa resourced or found a way for students to do. Over the course of the interview, several such ventures arose, ClIF, VSAC, VREC, and more. More recently, she talked about bringing student voice to a proposal.

They're presenting a low ropes course idea to the board tomorrow night, so, we'll see what happens. That'll be up to the board to decide, due to liability, insurance costs, and such. We'll carry the idea as far as we can take it, because it was the students’ idea. So that's a big piece of what you do.

Teresa’s Stepping Stones to the Library

In her heart she’s a social worker. What was Teresa’s route into education and serving as a librarian? Teresa grew up in the suburban area of Buffalo, NY.

When I was little, I always told my mom I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher. That was, like, the thing. And then I thought, ooh, that work, I don't know. I don't know if I have it in me. That's a long day, every day. So, as I went through high school, I realized that there is a lot of need in the world. And I was trying to figure out, gee, how can I best serve? I feel like I can be of service. What's the best way to do that? I went and got my bachelor's degree in social work and also did a one-year program for a master's at UB. After that, I thought, maybe I do want to be a teacher. So, I did my master's in education with a concentration in special ed.
We moved out of Buffalo, first to Connecticut, where I worked as a social worker. We had some family in Southern New Hampshire, so I put my resume out there and got several interviews. In the end I got an offer to be a social worker through human services in the Canaan school. (We saw a moose when we came to check out Canaan and we were like, this is the place!) I was a social worker for a long time, 16-17 years, and I always thought when I'm older, I want to be a librarian. Wouldn't that be so amazing.

The opportunity came earlier than expected, 10-15 years earlier when a friend suggested she apply for the librarian opening at Canaan. She applied and, and was offered the position, though she needed to take six courses to get a certificate. With all of her prior education and experience, she was unable to get even a provisional license as a librarian. She appreciates the apprenticeship programs that now exist through VREC.

Appreciation of the Charleston Community and Northeast Kingdom

“This is a really kind place” Teresa notes. She truly loves her school, its location, the students, principal, teachers, resource providers… “A very special place” is how she describes it. She finds joy in her surroundings, which seems to be how she lives her life.

This is my third year in Charleston. Hard to imagine going somewhere else. But this is my place as long as they'll have me. I do fall in love with each school I'm at. I think it's the kids, and it's the teachers, the community. I can be happy where I am. I think that's true. We find joy, or we find problems, right? That's who we are.

While this is only her third year in Charleston, she’s lived and worked in the NEK for more than twenty, and calls it her home now. She shows no signs of boredom with the work or the rural area, and has managed to vary the role she’s played, and to a lesser extent, the location.

Filling in the Cracks

When I started the position at my last school, I tried to find cracks that needed filling. I feel like that's part of what I'm trying to do here, too. The teachers have so many things that they need to do. They have curriculums they have to follow which is wonderful and it's giving kids what they need. But I think they have less wiggle room than they used to, and our kids need both. So, I try to fill in, to help. I came in the field at a time where it was not so much reading books with kids; there is a really large technology piece. That's part of the library standards. It put me in a place where I was slightly uncomfortable, which is good because I think we need to be uncomfortable to grow and to into reach out and also to be role models for kids. Hey, I'm not sure about this either, but we're gonna figure it out. We'll figure it out together. I just want kids to feel good when they're in here, to feel good with every interaction that we have. Because that, to me, is powerful. For kids to be seen and to be heard, no matter what we're doing here at school, in the library, or if I'm on lunch duty.
If a student's working on a project with a teacher, or for a certain class, and they need materials, if they want to use the Makerspace to show their learning, I want to link them with those things that they need and help them explore.

Her face is lit up as she describes all of this.

We need to do some sort of fundraising. We received the CLIF “Year of the Book” Grant this year. And in order to take our whole school on our “Read Your Way to Granby Zoo” trip we needed additional funds. And, so, let's do this “Vermont Cookie Love” fundraiser.
I'm the fundraising lady for that. We have a new music teacher this year, and he was doing his first Veterans Day Assembly. And when you're new coming into a community school, with really strong community support it's important to know what the community expects of you. In the end, it doesn't matter what our wants and needs are. We're here to serve our community, and there are certain expectations that the community might have. So, we worked together. The kids made decorations during a PBIS assembly. I guess it's not always direct work that I'm doing, but just using the spirit and efforts of kids to fill in those holes too. They also made thank you tokens for Veterans and participants.

Teresa, in addition to being a gourmet chef, seems a bit like a lifeguard that might have responsibility for a certain little area, but her eyes are always scanning the entire waterfront just to make sure everything is good.

What's needed. I think that's also the social worker in me. Wanting to make sure that we’re looking at the whole child and not just oh, here's the library. Do you want to… Is it a tech skill or is it a reading skill?
I get so much joy out of kids just figuring stuff out, or working with one another, and just solving something that maybe they think they can't, and then they can. That feeds my soul.

Humility and Outdoor Space Restoration, Redux

Circling back to the beginning, in response to the grant they were awarded, which was very impressive, Teresa was quick not to take the credit.

And I credit a kid for getting that. We borrowed the Glowforge last year that belongs to the district. And there was a girl, she's now in fifth grade. Last year she said Mrs. Bolton, do you think we could ever get one here? And I'm like, oh, I don't know. And she really got into the project that we had done. There was a new student in their class. That can be tricky sometimes if students are together for a long time, and then new students enter. It kind of changes the whole chemistry of the class. We did a project around peace and inclusion. And they did a lot of reading. In writing down key thoughts and words from each of these readings, they came up with their own quote about peace or kindness or inclusion.
Several things were in the way of doing this grant, there were multiple projects going all at once, many of which needed funding. I had just let this application go. One day she came up to me, and said, “So Mrs. Bolton, do you think it's going to work out?” And I said… I don't know, but I'm going to try.

She went into high gear, asked for help, burned the midnight oil, and submitted the grant. The rest is history, or ample evidence at the school. She also extends a great deal of credit to the generous community, described more fully in the audio clip of this interview of Rural Voices.

Evan Jewell

Vermont Rural Education Collaborative