Another school year may be winding down, but that doesn’t mean things are slowing down yet. Members of the Phillips Fire Department recently challenged the Phillips 8th Grade Class of 2016 to a basketball game. The challenge had a dual goal. It was both a fundraiser and a fun-raiser.

The evening event, which also included an auction of baked goods at halftime, raised about $500, which will go into the fund for this class’s trip to Quebec in the spring of 2016.

Dawn Haines, 8th grade class trip advisor, declared, “It was a wonderful event. Everybody had a lot of fun. It was a perfect example of how our community works together to make things happen.”

Sixth and seventh graders took a day trip last week to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. This was the culmination of a special program piloted by the seventh graders as part of their science and social studies classes earlier in the year. The Lunder New Naturalists combines challenge-based learning, place-based education, and the “flat” classroom to motivate youth to get outdoors and learn more about the environment in which they live and battle what has come to be known as “nature deficit disorder in children”.

The term, nature deficit disorder, was coined by Richard Louv in his book titled Last Child in the Woods, which states that “direct exposure to nature as essential for a child’s healthy physical and emotional development”. In the newest edition, Louv updates his readers on the increasing evidence that as youngsters spend more time “plugged in” to their technology and less time being active in the great outdoors, the more prone they become to obesity, attention disorders, and depression.

His challenge to re-introduce youngsters to playing and exploring outside has prompted a “Leave No Child Inside” movement calling kids of all ages back to nature and a greater awareness of the importance of environmental education. Check out http://www.education.com/topic/nature-deficit-disorder/ for more information.

Anyway, in Phillips, as well as in 18 other schools across the state, students and teachers adopted the Lunder New Naturalist premise that “In order to reduce nature deficit disorder in children, they need to be exposed to outdoor learning opportunities. To increase children’s engagement and connections to nature, technology must be included in outdoor learning.”

As a matter of fact, students in Phillips have quite a bit of experience in outdoor learning already, but this program provided some new opportunities. In particular, the creation of a virtual plant collection, which included collecting digital photographs of local flora and identifying the specimens using the skills, tools, and habits of mind of botanists. This composed a large part of the science classwork.

In social studies, students investigated Teddy Roosevelt’s work in the areas of conservation and preservation of our natural resources and his personal connection to Maine (including his acquaintance with Phillips’ born and bred Cornelia “Fly Rod” Crosby), and decoded some of his personal journal entries. You might like to check out the book by Andrew Vietze, Becoming Teddy Roosevelt: How a Maine Guide Inspired America’s 26th President, from which the class read excerpts.

Next, they made a list, much like TR might have done in one of those journals, of all the places in our Phillips, Avon, and Madrid area which provide the chance for kids and adults to get out and enjoy a dose of the great outdoors, a remedy of which Fly Rod herself took advantage when battling consumption in her childhood days.

Working in small groups, students used their lists to complete another aspect of the New Naturalist program. Choosing conservation as their Big Idea and concentrating on the part of the word’s definition as “the wise use of” our natural resources, they next decided on a Challenge Action Project, which would allow them to explore and implement a solution to a local environmental issue. Each group then commence work on a sort of publicity campaign to increase awareness of ways to enjoy the outdoors in this part of the Sandy River Valley. This part of their pilot project is on-going, probably continuing next fall when they return as eighth graders, because of a forced postponement throughout the coldest of the winter months and during the past several weeks of standardized testing.

There’s place-based and challenge-based learning. The flat classroom piece came in through the use of technology “to explore, discover, collect, document, analyze, define, design, apply, evaluate and share. Students and teachers connect(ed) and collaborat(ed) online to review and contribute to one another’s ideas and creative products”. This included students sharing online descriptions of themselves and the local environment with those students across Maine, from the western mountains to the Atlantic shore.

The trip to the Botanical Gardens was a unique chance to explore the outdoors in a totally different environment and experience another way in which people in the Boothbay area are working together “to protect, preserve, and enhance the botanical heritage and natural landscapes of coastal Maine for people of all ages through horticulture, education, and research”.

Last Friday, the 8th graders had a day of leadership training and team-building with teachers from The Kieve Leadership School. Held at the Carrabassett Valley Antigravity Complex, this was a follow-up to a day-long event at the school earlier in the year. Kieve’s outreach programs such as this engage students in activities designed to “encourage responsible decision-making, build and maintain healthy relationships, broaden and raise aspirations, and improve 21st century skills”.

And there’s still more to come! We round out the month with the Franklin County Relay for Life, tomorrow, May 30, from 3 – midnight. MAPS Brigade, the Phillips Student Council Relay Team, is participating for the 9th year. In keeping with this year’s event theme, TV Land, they have taken on Looney Tunes as their team theme.

Coming up June 3, the C.A.R.E./PTO will host its annual SpringFest from 3-5 p.m. at the school. Their theme this year is Jurassic Park. Tickets may be purchased at the door. Raffle tickets are now on sale with a wide variety of prizes. Winners will be drawn at the event. Come one, come all. Lots of fun activities for all ages, featuring the ever-popular “Worm” tunnel.

8th graders will be off on their annual Quebec adventure from June 7-10.

On Wednesday, June 10, Student Council will sponsor a MixItUp/Step Up Day for students in grades 4-7, with the objective of introducing next year’s 5th graders to “upstairs life”. In the morning, 4th graders will meet Mr. Piekart, their homeroom teacher and talk to this year’s 5th graders about what school is like after this major promotion. They will join the middle level students for recess and lunch. After lunch the whole group will participate in a number of teambuilding and getting-to-know-you activities.

The Final Awards Assembly is scheduled for the afternoon of Tuesday, June 16. The next day, Wednesday, June 17 is an early release day for students and a Suicide Prevention Awareness workshop for faculty and staff in the afternoon.

Whew! Only 16 and a half student days left – but who’s counting?