Series features Searsport teacher Maine Public Broadcasting documentary takes look at schools

A Maine Public Broadcasting documentary designed to show what’s happening on the front lines of the public schools features Searsport District High School English teacher Kathleen Jenkins and David Theoharides, principal of Mattanawcook Junior High School in Lincoln.

The four-part series called “School Zones” is scheduled to run at 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

It documents life inside and outside the classroom for students, educators and their families. Along with the television production, the project features a comprehensive Web site and an original soundtrack performed by Maine students and educators.

The show was designed to provide viewers with an unprecedented view of what is happening in and around Maine schools. Each one-hour episode was filmed at a different school and offers different themes, attitudes and outlooks. MPB says the four episodes depict typical school days for students and educators – and the fact that “school zones” extend much farther that the physical school grounds.

“I think they did a fine job of presenting the full life of teaching, rather than just the classroom,” Jenkins said after viewing a preview. “The spirit of Searsport District High School is captured. The spirit of the community is captured. But it is just a snapshot.”

Jenkins said the MPB crews visited her sophomore English class at Searsport on a number of occasions throughout the 2001-02 school year. They filmed interaction between teachers and students and among the students themselves. The crew also went to Jenkins’ home to spend some time with Jenkins and her husband, Peter Jenkins, a teacher in the Brewer school system, and her three children: Ben, a Peace Corps volunteer in El Salvador; Michaela, a teacher in Seattle; and Sheila, a major in elementary education at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Jenkins said the sophomore English curriculum at Searsport District High is based on a coming of age theme, noting that “all my students are in that murky territory called adolescence.”

Discussions of “Romeo and Juliet,” “The Catcher in the

Rye,” Eli Weisel and selected short stories on coming of age were captured by the cameras. A visit by a group of students from Kenya is also highlighted in the show.

“Overall, I was delighted with how well the students adapted to the cameras,” she said.

The Searsport episode is titled “The Challenging Ones.” MPB described the episode as one in which “student aspirations are tempered by the struggling economy” in Searsport, “where over one-third of its students receive free lunch.”

The network described Jenkins as a teacher who “meets the challenges of helping students value their community, while also exposing them to life beyond their small town. Whether it is by bringing in professional actors to breathe life into Shakespeare or participating in an exchange program with a group of Kenyan teenagers, Jenkins opens her students’ eyes to the diversity and opportunity that awaits them.”

MPB created the show by sending crews into four schools. Featured along with Searsport District High School were Portland High School, Mattanawcook Junior High and Mark Emery School in North Anson.

The crews followed Theoharides; Jarrod LeBlanc, a kindergarten teacher at Mark Emery; and Donna Barnard, science teacher at Portland High School.

The episode about Theoharides is called “They Call Him Mr. T” and shows him working with teachers, faculty and staff.

The Portland episode is called “City-Wise” and follows teacher Barnard as she gives a behind-the-scenes look at the oldest public high school in the country, where 1,100 students use the entire city as their campus.

The kindergarten episode featuring North Anson teacher LeBlanc provides an intimate look at a teacher’s life in a rural school that has only one class in each grade from kindergarten through eighth-grade.

The School Zone Web site contains interviews, photographs of the teachers, students and school life as well as statewide education resource links. For information, visit www.mainepbs.org. The music for School Zones features a compilation of original music composed by student musicians from kindergarten to high school. It also can be heard on the Web site.

School Zones also will be run in two successive segments, at 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 21, and Saturday, Sept. 28.