Winter Harbor teacher is honored by Maine Audubon

WINTER HARBOR — They are only in the second grade but pupils at the Winter Harbor Grammar School have taken that first step toward being stewards of their environment.

Their leader and mentor is second-grade teacher Dianne Eckhardt, who last month was named Maine Audubon Society Teacher of the Year.

Several years ago, Eckhardt and a colleague at Winter Harbor Grammar School participated in Maine Audubon’s School Science and Natural History Leadership Project. Out of that grew one of the most elaborate kindergarten through sixth grade environmental programs in Maine. Eckhardt’s classroom is a microcosm of pictures, posters, projects and items from nature, including plant cuttings.

In its announcement, the Maine Audubon Society noted that Eckhardt was selected for the award because of her work in the development of environmental awareness in both her school and the community. “This included developing a K-3 science-improvement plan based on the natural resources of the Maine coast, providing environmental education training to K-3 teachers and adult volunteers, involving grades three to six in the national parks environmental education program at Acadia (National Park), and involving K-3 students in school composting and recycling projects.”

Pupils at the school have become amateur sleuths as they try to determine why things change in nature. Eckhardt said that during one field trip, pupils came upon a dead porcupine and investigated what may have caused the animal’s death. Although they did not find any easy answers, it did raise their intellectual curiosity.

A teacher in the Winter Harbor school system for the last 22 years, Eckhardt is a bundle of energy as she talks about the projects her pupils have undertaken. The teacher and her pupils have taken advantage of Acadia National Park’s Schoodic Point, which is in their own back yard, and used it as a living laboratory.

A recent discussion about composting led to a discussion about bleached paper. That motivated two of her pupils — Caroline Fickett and Jill Bryant — to write to local paper companies to ask them to stop bleaching paper. The pupils also decided to initiate the use of paper towels made from recycled paper in their classroom, and they asked Principal Dennis Perry and the school’s janitor to switch to unbleached products.

A milk carton collection led the pupils to realize how many milk cartons were used in the course of a school day. They created milk carton people — a man and a woman — and that led them to develop their own statistical data: A day’s collection led to one milk carton person per day, and five milk carton people were created per week.

The carton project also motivated them to think about not using cartons for milk. The choices included the possibility of the school purchasing bulk milk instead of cartons with the pupils using their own mugs, or perhaps bringing their own milk in thermos bottles.

Many of the lessons the youngsters learn could someday enhance their roles as conscientious consumers.

“Hopefully, they are going to love it (the environment) and have an appreciation and knowledge of it,” the teacher said.