The Rumford Meteor » Nope Not Homeschooled

Lewiston Seniors Teach Elementary Students To Play Cribbage. Next Week, They’ll Teach Them How To Make Suggestive Remarks When Maria Bartiromo Appears On The TV

Aubuchon Connery — Mon, 10 Jun 2013 11:26:44 +0000

LEWISTON — Thanks to Lewiston senior citizens, McMahon Elementary students in Christine Savignano’s classroom know how to play cribbage. From March through May, Lewiston Senior Citizen cribbage league players volunteered to go to school and teach the game. Savignano, who plays cribbage but says she’s nowhere as good as the seniors, invited seniors to teach the students after learning the group had a cribbage league. Playing cribbage helps reinforce computation fluency, Savignano said. “They had to strategize, know what cards to discard, use reasoning skills, anticipate their opponent’s move.” Lewiston Senior Citizen President Roger Labbe, a retired teacher at the Lewiston Middle School, recruited other seniors to teach. Fridays became cribbage day at McMahon. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)

Stockton Springs Homeowners Get Their Planting Beds Dug For Free

Aubuchon Connery — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 10:46:17 +0000

STOCKTON SPRINGS, Maine — The well-kept green lawn around Paul Bock and Sharon Catus’s Cape Jellison home was transformed this week into a bustling archaeological dig staffed by middle-schoolers. The 40 or so Searsport District Middle School students excavating square test pits Tuesday morning, carefully cleaning and cataloging the artifacts, took the exercise seriously. It was significant work because the site is rich with relics. In the 18th century, American Indians camped there, leaving behind trade beads and stone tools. A farmhouse built here in the 1840s burned down soon after construction and another home was moved to the site. “It’s fun. It’s interesting, too,” said Lauren Burkard, a 13-year-old from Stockton Springs energetically sifting through plastic buckets of brown dirt and rocks, searching for pieces of centuries-old glass, pottery, nails, bricks and beads. (read more at Bangor Daily News)

Oxford Hills Middle School Students Participate In Fascinating Experiment To See Just How Little They Can Learn While Doing Nothing

Aubuchon Connery — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:11:23 +0000

PARIS — What happens to a marshmallow when you send it to the outer limits of Earth’s atmosphere? How about a jelly-bean or Silly Putty? That was the question Oxford Hills Middle School seventh graders posed in April, when they were given the opportunity to send science experiments, contained within Ping-Pong balls, 100,000 feet above the Earth’s surface as part of the “PongSat” project, sponsored by private spaceflight firm JP Aerospace. Last Wednesday, students got their experiments back and opened them up to find out how they had been affected by the intense cold and heavy pressure found in the upper atmosphere. The company mostly uses weather balloons to launch “high racks,” custom-built cages, containing the experiments to the very edge of outer space. The 110 OHMS PongSats were among 2,400 experiments in the April launch, including the ten thousandth Ping-Pong ball to take the trip. The weather balloons, carry the high racks far into the Earth’s atmosphere before popping, allowing the experiments to careen back down to the planet in a free-fall. According to the JP Aerospace website, PongSat experiments have ranged from plant seeds to sophisticated, upper atmosphere labs with sensors and a data logger. (read more at Advertiser Democrat)

Teachers Still Bristling Over Governor’s Bizarre Demand That Students Be Taught To Read And Write By The Junior Year Of High School

Aubuchon Connery — Wed, 22 May 2013 13:02:32 +0000

AUGUSTA — Teachers and administrators took issue on Tuesday with the weight given to student assessments in proposed regulations for teacher and principal evaluations. Most people testifying before a legislative panel said the minimum 25 percent that the Department of Education says student growth measures must count toward educator effectiveness ratings is too high. Several teachers and Maine Education Association representatives said student growth measures should count no more than 10 percent, while the Maine School Boards Association and Maine School Superintendents Association recommended a floor of 15 percent, with the ceiling to be determined locally. Much remains to be determined in both the state framework for educator evaluations and the systems that local districts must develop in compliance with the framework to implement in 2015-16. The rules do not specify which students’ growth and which subjects a teacher will be evaluated on, leading the MEA to express concerns that teachers could be held accountable for student assessments in areas where they have little influence. The department’s proposal says a working group would have to be set up to resolve those issues, and the department also must determine protocols for training evaluators. (read more at Kennebec Journal)

Westbrook School Committee Member Helps Put The “Special” Back In Special Education

Aubuchon Connery — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:23:01 +0000

WESTBROOK – Westbrook officials expressed shock Wednesday that a School Committee member has been indicted on charges of hindering the apprehension of a former Westbrook Middle School employee charged with sexual abuse of a minor, a Westbrook student. According to the Cumberland County grand jury indictment list for May, Suzanne Joyce, 51, a longtime public figure in Westbrook, was charged with hindering apprehension or prosecution after a three-month investigation by the Cumberland County District Attorney’s Office that started in January. The employee, Dereck Gilman, 24, a former Westbrook Middle School special education educational technician who resigned April 1, has been charged with unlawful sexual touching and sexual abuse of a minor following a seven-month investigation from May 2012 to January 2013. (read more at American Journal)

Kaler Elementary Students Say They Totally Finded, Like, A Zillion Pollutions And That’s Better Than Stoopid Number-Knowing And Reading And Stuff

Aubuchon Connery — Fri, 17 May 2013 09:10:51 +0000

SOUTH PORTLAND — James O. Kaler Elementary School Principal Diane Lang had not expected the school’s “Kalerbration” last week to coincide with the release of Maine Department of Education letter grades for public schools. But as a rejoinder to the state-assessed F the school received based on reading and math test scores and measurements of student progress, the May 2 event showed parents and visitors the results of the project-based learning introduced last year. “We are on the right path,” Lang said. “The score does not represent our school and where we are.” Throughout the school’s two floors on South Kelsey Street, kindergartners through fifth-graders explained creations and projects real and imaginary based in lessons in art, literature, science, math and technology. In third-grade teacher Cory DiDonato’s room, Davis Herrick and his father, Peter Herrick, reviewed the human digestive tract on a life-size paper cutout covered with a vibrantly colored colon, stomach and esophagus. “We have dinner conversations about the colon, and that is fine,” Peter Herrick said. “(The F grade) is preposterous, based on math and reading tests taken once a year. It is blatantly not reflective of this particular school.” Lang said an initial drop in the school’s New England Common Assessment Program scores was expected as the school embraced project-based learning, but the results will show a better school and engaged, energized students. Fifth-graders Aiden Emery and James Thebarge said their studies of ecosystems led to a cleanup around the city’s Greenbelt path. “While we were walking, we noticed there was a lot of pollution,” Thebarge said. (read more at The Forecaster)

Homeschoolers In The Bangor Area Missing Out On Free Backrubs

Aubuchon Connery — Tue, 14 May 2013 13:20:56 +0000

BANGOR — A former substitute teacher pleaded guilty Monday at the Penobscot Judicial Center to misdemeanor charges in connection with inappropriate behavior with four students at schools in Bangor and Old Town. Gene Staffiere, 68, of Bangor pleaded guilty to four counts of Class D assault and one count of Class E disorderly conduct. By pleading guilty, Staffiere admitted that on Sept. 24 while he was substituting at Fairmount School in Bangor he rubbed a male student’s back and did the same to three male students on Dec. 12 at the Old Town Middle School. Police investigations were launched after the students told parents and teachers they felt Staffiere had behaved inappropriately with them. Staffiere, who retired to Bangor after a teaching career in upstate New York, was summoned [sic] but not arrested on the charges, according to court documents. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)

Group Raising Money To Light New Hampshire/Maine Bridge, Buy Another E

Aubuchon Connery — Mon, 13 May 2013 13:17:58 +0000

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — A committee raising money to light up a new bridge connecting New Hampshire and Maine has reached its initial goal of $150,000. More than 95 individuals and 28 area businesses and organizations combined have pledged or donated the amount toward the goal of $200,000 for the Memorial Bridge. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)

Western Maine Educators Worry That Publicizing Failing Grades For Area Schools Might Demoralize Local Students, If They Ever Find Someone To Read It To Them

Aubuchon Connery — Sun, 12 May 2013 12:16:13 +0000

SAD 44 officials Monday said the “F” grade given to Telstar High School by the state last week was foreshadowed by last year’s low standardized test score results. The Maine Department of Education last Wednesday released “report cards” on all Maine public schools. The Andover Elementary School also received an “F,” while the other three SAD 44 schools – Telstar Middle, Crescent Park Elementary and Woodstock Elementary – received a “C.” Standardized test results in reading and math, including the New England Common Assessment Program (NECAP) in the lower grades and the SAT in high school, were used in grading. A series of points were awarded for various combinations of testing results, with 400 the maximum total points possible for K-8 and 500 the maximum for high schools. K-8 and high schools shared one common measure, but differed on two others. For all schools, proficiency (achievement) levels for the most recent testing were included. For K-8 schools, “growth” – the collective improvement of individual students from the previous year – was also included. Growth was also included separately for students who had scored in the bottom 25 percent for the previous year. (read more at the Bethel Citizen)

Advertising Campaign Attempts To Curb Underage Drinking By Reminding High-Schoolers That Only Cool Kids Drink On Prom Night, Not Losers Like Them

Aubuchon Connery — Fri, 10 May 2013 13:28:30 +0000

RUMFORD — The River Valley Healthy Communities Coalition will be teaming up with local florists and tuxedo rental shops for the third time in a campaign that attempts to highlight the recent, statewide decline in underage drinking. The campaign’s theme is “Wow, Times Have Changed,” according to RVHCC project coordinator Sandy Witas. “We robbed it from the underage drinking prevention group, 21 Reasons from Portland,” Witas explained. “Their company put the whole thing together, and they’re really good about sharing their materials with other groups.” In a RVHCC news release, Witas explained that the campaign highlights a report from the Maine Office of Substance Abuse, which stated that most of today’s youth do not drink. The release also pointed out that in a 2009 statewide parental phone survey conducted by 21 Reasons, it was found that more parents are taking concrete steps to keep their children from drinking than in previous years. (read more at Lewiston Sun Journal)