NEWPORT — “Aspirations has become a buzzword already,” Betsy Sweet of the University of Maine Aspirations Project told SAD 48 teachers Monday morning.

The teachers were at Nokomis Regional High School this week for a two-day staff development program, “The Issue of Aspirations.”

Sweet stressed to the teachers and administrators that aspirations have taken some abuse lately. She said the old image of aspirations — a college bound, white, middle class student representing the “haves” vs. a lower class student bound for a life of working in the woods, “a have not” — is not what the aspirations project is all about.

“I believe that every single person has high aspirations,” she said. “Nobody wants to have a (bad) life.”

She said that the sad facts, however, reveal that of the teachers’ students, 52 percent will face divorce, 35 percent will live below the poverty line, and one out of every four will face sexual abuse in their lifetimes.

“I don’t care if you are a woodcutter, a teacher, a mom or an executive,” she said, “if you are someone who faces each day with enthusiasm, with excitement, as if each day matters, and you have a strong sense of yourself, you have high aspirations.

“Family, school, the teacher, peers and the community all affect your students,” she told the teachers. “The average 13-year-old spends less than 1 percent of his time engaged in meaningful conversation with adults.”

Sweet outlined six conditions for a positive concept of self-esteem, urging the teachers to see what their classrooms and attitudes provided them.

The six steps were:

Productivity: Work that is meaningful to self and others. How does what the child learns today affect their future? “Children need to know how they will use algebra when they grow up,” she said.

Belonging: Children need to be a valued member of a group, whether it is a club, troop, or team.

Mentoring: Having someone as a personal advocate, either a parent, grandparent, teacher or another person important to the child “take 20 seconds each day to let that child know they are important” and valued.

Empowerment: Providing children with options and choices and teaching them to accept responsibility for their actions.

Risk taking: Allowing them to take sound risks, based on wisdom and experience, to learn their potential.

Self-esteem: Promoting a feeling within the child that they matter. “If the child doesn’t feel good about himself, he will never see why he must learn,” said Sweet.

Working on self-esteem is especially difficult, she said, because “we are taught not to celebrate ourselves.” She had the teachers list three things that they liked and respected about themselves and suggested they add seven more.

The process was difficult for some, they discovered.

“Education is at a crossroads at this point,” Sweet said. “We have a chance to take our children into the 21st century or to take a chance at becoming a decreasing world power. Regardless of how education changes, regardless of what our goals are, self-esteem is the base.”