Biography

Emanuel has spent his entire career working in Maine on behalf of students at risk.  As Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Community School in Camden he lived with, taught and counseled young people at a turning point in their lives for 36 years.  He has also played a central role in the development and growth of Maine’s Alternative Education Association and the Maine Department of Education’s Office of Dropout, Truant and Alternative Education. In 2010 Emanuel received his PhD in education and psychology from the University of Maine, Orono.  His doctoral thesis was about the importance of student-teacher relationship in student retention and learning with students at-risk. In 2010 Emanuel was one of the founders of the Maine Academy of Natural Sciences at Good Will Hinckley.  After it’s first year he helped to write the successful application to become Maine’s first Charter High School. He is currently consulting with Threshold, the School’s newest program which reaches out to pregnant, parenting and socially anxious students who have dropped out of school or who are habitually truant.