Two Winterport teachers honored with Maine Audubon Society award

Glenice Williams of Hampden and Susan Atwood of Belfast were named Maine Audubon’s Teachers of the Year at a recent Maine Audubon trustee meeting. Jerry Smith of Orrington, president of Maine Audubon’s Penobscot Valley chapter, presented the award to the two teachers at the Fields Pond Nature Center. The teachers’ pupils attended the ceremony. Atwood and Williams have team taught grades 3 and 4 at Winterport’s Smith School for six years.

Atwood and Williams said environmental education has been a unifying theme in their curriculum. They teach about watersheds, aquatic entomology, fish biology and forest ecology. Their pupils learn about bones, tracks, the food chain and tree identification. They study nature in the classroom, in the schoolyard and in the neighborhoods where they live.

Atwood and Williams said they are turning out self-directed, lifelong learners by building on their pupils’ intense interest in the natural world. Their pupils are becoming responsible, involved citizens and creative problem-solvers, they said.

In addition, the two teachers serve as role models by sharing their enthusiasm about continuity and change in nature, the diversity of living things, the interdependence of species and the dependence of all species on the environment.

The two teachers involve their pupils in cooperative learning and bring literature into their science studies with such books as Cherie Mason’s “Everybody’s Somebody’s Lunch.” They collaborated to get an MBNA grant to enable their pupils to participate in programs at Fields Pond Nature Center. They also run a schoolwide ecology club after school.