Special education teacher Tanya Thibault has moved to Boothbay Region Elementary School after 24 years at Edgecomb Eddy School. She replaced special ed teacher Toby LeConte who taught for 47 years with Boothbay-Boothbay Harbor Community School District’s K-12 students. Thibault and new Boothbay Region High School special ed teacher Paulette Carter now split LeConte’s duties; Thibault has K-8.

When Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS) 98 Special Services Director Christopher Baribeau approached Thibault about the job about two weeks before the start of school, Thibault knew she would have a lot to consider. “Professionally I was looking for a change because I'd been in Edgecomb for so long. I could have probably finished out my career there, but I thought if something opened up in the district that I would like to make a move to do something a little bit different …”

Thibault’s CSD career began at BRES after an unlikely encounter with former Special Services Director Trish Harrison while waiting tables one summer at Ocean Point Inn. Harrison overheard Thibault speaking to another table about her intentions of finding a teaching job and she offered Thibault work as a long-term substitute teacher at BRES if she could not find a job before the beginning of the school year. Thibault had just graduated from the University of Maine at Farmington as an early childhood education major with a minor in social studies.

After working as a sub for a short time, Harrison convinced a skeptical Thibault to move over to EES which needed a special education teacher. “I did not ever think I was going to be a special ed teacher because that is not what I went to school for. My brother is very special needs and I think that when I went to Farmington I wanted to distance myself from that, but my mom always said I was just destined to be a special ed teacher because I was pretty good with my brother. Now, as a teacher, I get him even more seeing him as an adult and knowing the kids I work with now are going to see some of the same challenges in life that I've seen him go through.”

Thibault said the only new thing to her is having all the students all day. At EES, she split her time between one-on-one work and helping in classrooms with students who have special needs. “(I am) a change for the kids, but I think they're doing OK. There's so many changes for the kids this year that maybe they're just going with the flow, too because everything is new. They're wearing masks, washing their hands all the time and they've got a new teacher … The kids are really doing great, they're resilient.”

Thibault said though it doesn’t feel real yet and she has not had any closure with her EES students, parents and teachers, she has jumped into her new job with both feet and while the experience has been stressful, she said the more she thought about it, the more it seemed like a rare opportunity.

“It's hard to take over for somebody who's been there for so long and who was a fixture of this school and who was so loved by all of her families … But they've all been very welcoming … I've got so much I'm thinking about with the new job that it's kind of taken my mind off (the pandemic), too. I don't think everybody has the chance to do that. For me, everything is new, not just all of these COVID things, so I just expect new.”