Wiscasset Elementary School teacher Becky Hallowell holds her 2025 Maine Teacher of the Year award in an outdoor classroom at the school the morning of Thursday, Oct. 10. (Piper Pavelich photo)
In a ceremony that highlighted her dedication and passion to nurturing the next generation, Wiscasset Elementary School teacher Becky Hallowell was named the 2025 Maine Teacher of the Year.
The Wiscasset Elementary School gym was filled with elementary school students and staff, Wiscasset Middle High School students and staff, family, friends, and community members the morning of Thursday, Oct. 10 to celebrate the achievement with Hallowell. Many heard about the honor for the first time at the assembly, including her students.
“It was really hard keeping it a secret from so many people,” Hallowell said. “People just started to guess.”
Hallowell was named Lincoln County Teacher of the Year in May. She is the second teacher from the Wiscasset School District to be named the county’s teacher of the year in the last three years, with elementary school teacher Trae Stover receiving the award in 2022.
In August, Hallowell was announced as one of four finalists for the 2025 Maine Teacher of the Year award, along with Allyson Gilbert, of Sagadahoc County; Katie Strait, of Cumberland County; and Emilie Throckmorton, of Penobscot County.
Hallowell, who has been teaching for nearly 30 years, said she always knew she would be a teacher.
“I wanted to be the biggest cheerleader for kids. I have always been in awe of teachers. They were the people who made me smile and love school. They saw glimmers of my strengths and they encouraged me to chase after my interests,” she said.
Hallowell graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood education, “ready to teach and inspire young students,” she said. She later earned a master’s degree in education leadership from the University of Southern Maine.
Hallowell has taught in Wiscasset for 10 years. She started as a kindergarten teacher and she now teaches fourth grade.
She said one of her “greatest joys” at Wiscasset Elementary School was creating an outdoor classroom – known as Outdoor Wonderful Learning Space, or OWLS – with fourth grade teacher Kaden Pendleton in 2021.
“We created this space so kids could come outside to learn,” she said. “We have created a community here.”
Hallowell is an advocate for place-based outdoor learning, a student-centered approach that immerses students in a nonclassroom environment, using the experience as the foundation for lessons.
“I’ve done my research, and the research is telling us that when kids are outside moving around, their ability to focus – even when they go back inside – improves for at least half an hour after they’ve had that outdoor time,” she said. “It’s something they can touch, it’s where kids tell me they feel safest, and they’re more accessible to learning.”
Before coming to Wiscasset, Hallowell taught at Whitefield Elementary School for 11 years.
In addition to her family, which is full of teachers, Hallowell said one of her biggest inspirations is a teacher she had at Whitefield Elementary School in kindergarten and third grade.
“(She) helped me find my love of music,” she said. “She modeled what it meant to be a teacher who broke the mold … Even as an 8-year-old, I knew I was in the presence of a master teacher. She was who I wanted to be when I grew up.”
While working at Whitefield Elementary School, Hallowell taught in the same classroom her teacher “left her mark” on her about 20 years earlier.
“I thought about her as my second grade students led penny drives schoolwide that would allow us to buy gifts for the giving tree at Christmas time,” she said. “I knew she would giggle as my kindergarten students wrote and performed plays about worms and photosynthesis, and she would appreciate how I worked to make my learning as real and interesting for my students as possible.”
Maine Department of Education Commissioner Pender Makin said the Teacher of the Year award is about recognizing the importance of all teachers, and that “every one of them is a hero.”
Colleagues described Hallowell as “an anchor” at Wiscasset Elementary School, according to Makin.
“You are spunky, talented, inspiring, and innovative,” Makin said to Hallowell. “Another one of your colleagues said that you have lots of tools in your teaching tool belt, and you are a Mary Poppins-bag of tools.”
Joshua Chard, the 2024 Maine Teacher of the Year, said Hallowell’s knowledge and guidance spreads across the community.
“The connections she establishes are far reaching, making their influence enduring and profound,” he said.
Hallowell said she is grateful for her past and current students who “jump onto the ride each school year.”
“I learn more from every class I teach,” she said.
As the 2025 Maine Teacher of the Year, Hallowell said she looks forward to celebrating the dedicated, creative, and passionate teachers across the state.
“Teachers have the most important job of guiding students to become the best versions of themselves. Our children are Maine’s most valuable resources,” she said.
“You are our greatest source of pride and inspiration,” Hallowell said to the students present at the assembly.
Hallowell will represent Maine in the 2025 National Teacher of the Year program. The winner will be announced in spring 2025.
For more information, go to mainetoy.org.
