LEWISTON — Third-graders Angelina Thomas-Billings and Marilyn Labonte were touched by how Olympia Snowe lost both parents as a young girl, lost her first husband and went on to become a U.S. senator who “rules.”
Television star Patrick Dempsey helps local cancer patients through Central Maine Medical Center’s Dempsey Center, said Camryn LeBlanc and Joshua Soucy, ages 8 and 9.
Peggy Rotundo serves the community by being a “senator” and helping area schools. “She is very nice,” said Kadin Michaud, 9.
Those observations were made after a Martel Elementary School class spent months researching, writing and interviewing leaders who help their community.
Darlene Letourneau’s third-graders competed in “CyberFair 2010,” which challenges students to publish on a website original research on how citizens improve their communities.
The class began the project in October and finished in February. Last month they found out they earned a top award. “There were two million participants from 115 countries and 45,000 schools, and we won second place,” Letourneau said.
The win isn’t too surprising, considering Letourneau’s students always do well. Each year, her third-graders participate in a global cyber-class project. “Since 1999 I have never come in less than honorable mention,” she said.
The project blends well with the third-grade curriculum, which includes lessons on Lewiston, Letourneau said. Her class came up with a list of people to write about, including Peter Geiger, state Sen. Margaret Craven, Regis Beaulieu, Shawn Gorman, U.S. Sen. Susan Collins, Dr. Bernard Lown and their school’s namesake, Dr. Louis Martel.
In some cases students did face-to-face interviews or interviews through e-mail. In historic profiles in which the subjects had died, students researched what had been written about them.
Thomas Grace, 10, and Bart Kimball, 9, wrote about Benjamin Bates, who invested in the Bates Mill and Bates College in the 1850s. “He’s the guy who helped build the mill,” Kimball said. “He was important to Lewiston because it gave people jobs.”
The boys wrote that Bates died in 1878, “but everything he did before he died still continues to help today,” Grace said. “I’d say he was one of the most important men I knew, even though he’s dead.”
Two students wanted to interview Buckfield native and “Grey’s Anatomy” star Patrick Dempsey. “But since he was in California we couldn’t have him,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc and Soucy met with his sister, Mary Dempsey, and toured the Patrick Dempsey Center for Cancer Hope and Healing. “We learned that his mom was diagnosed with cancer. She ended up having it three times,” LeBlanc said.
Michael Umayam and Dominic Ouellette, both 9, interviewed and wrote about former Lewiston and Auburn Mayor John Jenkins. Jenkins helps the community by being mayor, the boys said. “He’s kind, and funny, too,” Ouellette said.
The project teaches students more than about their community, Letourneau said. “They really learned to write.”
View the Martel students winning website here: http://www.lewiston.k12.me.us/~dletourneau/remember/Welcome.html
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