Teachers awarded School Matters grants for projects

PORTLAND – Fleet School Matters grants have been awarded to teachers throughout Maine.

The Fleet School Matters program provides financial support to help public school teachers in Maine implement innovative lessons or projects in the classroom and to support the achievement of Learning Results.

Gov. Angus King and Education Commissioner J. Duke Albanese helped to kick off Fleet School Matters last year. In 2000, Fleet awarded more than $50,000 in grants to 106 teachers across the state. In the current school year, Fleet will award an additional $50,000 in grants to Maine school teachers.

Using the Maine Learning Results as the framework for the Fleet School Matters initiative, the program awards grants up to $500 to individual teachers, or $1,500 to teams of teachers. Public school teachers who teach kindergarten through grade 12 are eligible to apply.

The awards go to:

. Old Town High School, $500. Building Community through the Arts is the project teacher Ashley Begin-Smith will teach to her senior class at Old Town High School.

A dance educator will come to Begin-Smith’s classroom to help the students create a dance based on their reading of “Macbeth.” This project will link the English language arts and the visual and performing arts content areas of the Maine’s Learning Results.

. Center Drive School, Orrington, $1,000.

The Elementary Garden is a cooperative classroom unit involving first- and seventh-grade pupils. Teachers Linda Gray and Jessica Harrington will help students with science projects on plants, expanding these lessons to include language arts, technology, art and math.

Seventh-grade pupils will be the mentors for the younger pupils. They will share the common goal of producing an attractive educational display of community teamwork while growing, both academically and socially.

. Nokomis Regional High School, Newport. Teachers Susanne Bane and Kent Higgins will receive $1,000 to work with English students at Nokomis Regional High School in an arts project.

A mask theater educator will work with the mythology class in connection with Joseph Campbell’s “The Masks of Eternity.” This educator will also work with the history of drama class in connection with the study of ancient Greek drama and 15th century commedia dell’arte drama.

. Vickery School, Pittsfield, $1,500. Susan Nile, Helen McAllister and Jim Hammond will implement a program called “Physical Education in Maine’s Winter Wonderland.”

Snowshoeing will expand the elementary physical education curriculum and will be taught to second through fourth grade pupils. The snowshoe adventure will be tailored to benefit all pupils.

The snowshoeing unit will link several content areas from the Maine Learning Results such as science, decision-making, goal setting, physical education, and career preparations. In science, the snowshoes will be sued during an arctic unit to explore plants, weeds and animals that are present in our environment.

The snowshoes will also be used on nature walks during a forest eco-system unit. Snowshoeing will be another opportunity to share with pupils that physical activity during the winter is important and this may become a life-long skill.

. Conners/Emerson Elementary, Bar Harbor. $500. When students in Bar Harbor realized the water quality at local swim beaches wasn’t as good as it looked, student volunteers assisted the Mount Desert Island Water Quality Coalition to monitor water quality.

Science teacher Kimberly Smallidge knows the importance of hands-on science experiences with real-world applications. She will develop a project called “The Swim Beach Monitoring Project” that links the areas of science, math and social studies.

. Milbridge Elementary, $1,000. “Delving into Poetry” is the project that teachers Liz Fickett and Carol Lisee will teach to third- and fifth-graders at Milbridge Elementary.

The project represents a yearlong collaboration between these two classroom teachers. The culminating activity of the study will be a spring parents’ night at which each student will perform a poetic piece from memory, using props and scenery as needed.

. Sedgwick Elementary, $1,000. Teachers Karen Swann and Marta Harrington will implement “Power Up” to engage the minds and energies of the seventh-grade class. This program will give pupils the opportunity to pursue more “real world” learning skills.

There will be career exploration through a job shadow-mentorship program that will take students to stables, small engine shops, photographers, boat builders, veterinarians and other local businesses to observe, interview and report back through a variety of media.

The next deadline for the Fleet School Matters program is March 15. Applications may be obtained by contacting the Maine Coalition for Excellence in Education at 464-3231.