Dresden Elementary School third grade teacher Erica Atkinson has a sign in the classroom telling people to wear the pants that fit them.

We don’t all learn the same or show our learning the same way, Atkinson said. The Mexico, Maine native wants her students to be comfortable being themselves, and to know they all can achieve.

That’s how the school operates, she said: working hard to meet the needs of every kid and look at every kid as an individual. “It’s a family here.

“I want every student to feel respected and honored, to celebrate their uniqueness, to not live inside boundaries that others set for them.”

In addition to the pants analogy, she said she also tells the students, “We’re not in the stress business, we’re in the learning business.

“And business is good,” she added, sitting in the upstairs classroom May 19. It’s not her classroom, she said. “It’s our classroom,” a community where everyone, including her, is learning with, and from, one another.

When the school’s then-librarian nominated her for Educate Maine’s Lincoln County teacher of the year, Atkinson received word in an email. She thought it was spam. But it wasn't. “It was shock. Surreal,” she said about her reaction. Then she wasn't sure she should pursue the county title, due to the time and effort the attempt would take.

“If it takes away from these guys, if I can't give them everything I have, I didn't want to do it. But as I reflected on it I realized it was a really good experience because of the reflection you do on yourself (and) your craft, and I always tell (them) go for it, so what message would I be sending if I didn't?”

She submitted essays and reference letters and then went through an interview.

The next day, she got a message at work from her husband. A woman had called for her but didn't say why.

“I said, 'Was her name Dolly?' He said, 'Yes.' And I knew. I knew because they said, 'You'll get a call from Dolly.'

“So I called and she told me, and I said, 'Oh, this is awesome!’ And the students were all jumping up and down.”

Awesome is how Isabella Alley, 9, described her teacher’s win, and her teacher. “She’s always there for us, and encouraging us. And she makes everything into something fun, so it isn’t like work.”

“She’ll turn it into a game. She’s playful,” Kaylyn Johnston, 8, said.

They got to do a science lesson that was like Family Feud, Alley said.

In Atkinson’s own grade school and high school years, there were signs that teaching was for her; but she didn’t recognize them until college.

At Mexico’s Meroby Elementary School, she would ask her teachers if they needed help correcting papers or with other work. “That was so fun for me,” she said. Then at Mountain Valley High School, she tutored other students and enjoyed making lessons for them.

Atkinson recalled crying recently after the death of her elementary school music teacher Clyde Beane. “He was a big influence on me. He had a way to make every student feel like the most important person in the room.”

A percussionist, Atkinson studied music at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, and then at the University of Maine at Orono, where she realized she could really only play percussion. “It wasn’t working out.” But she knew she loved working with children, and that whenever she was home on break, she visited her old schools and her teachers there.

“I thought, if I have this kind of a connection with my teachers, I would like to make that kind of a connection with somebody.”

Now she can’t imagine doing something else. “Without a doubt, this was my calling.”

The saddest day of the year for her is always the last day of school, because she knows she’s going to miss the kids, she said.

Her “me” time is reading National Geographic or mowing the lawn at home in Dresden. Husband Joshua Atkinson is a Dresden native and 1994 Wiscasset High School graduate. “I can do the Wiscasset cheer,” Erica Atkinson said.

The couple’s volunteer work, delivering meals on Thanksgiving and taking their goldendoodle, Jax, to assisted living centers and a women’s shelter where he serves as a therapy dog, adds to the high opinion Atkinson’s students have of her.

“It tells me she doesn’t only care about some people. Her heart is big enough to care about everybody,” Violet Clark, 9, said. “It’s a really good example for us.”

Educate Maine’s website at www.educatemaine.org describes it as a business-led education advocacy organization. With the county winners named, the group continues its months-long process of picking a state winner. Atkinson has been working on a required video about her teaching.

The group’s website lists tentative plans to announce up to eight semi-finalists the week of June 6, then up to three finalists on Aug. 22 and the 2017 state winner in October.

Atkinson said if it’s her she would be excited, and for the same reason she was over the county title: It reflects on her students, her colleagues and the whole school community. It wasn’t her win, she said. “It’s a team win.”