JAY — On Thursday, May 30, staff at Spruce Mountain Elementary School shared information with Maine Department of Education Office of Innovation officials about its outdoor education project and the impact it is making for staff and students.

From left Nick Runco, Helene Adams and Elaine Bartley with the Maine Department of Education visit a greenhouse Wednesday, May 29, at Spruce Mountain Elementary School in Jay. Two greenhouses built through state grants and local support are being used for outdoor education. Pam Harnden/Livermore Falls Advertiser

In the fall of 2022 the school was awarded a $100,000 Rethink Respond Educational Ventures [RREV] grant to build a greenhouse with outdoor classroom space and hire a coordinator for outdoor learning opportunities. Teachers Sarah Dyer, Tammy Deering and Jennifer Stone began working on the grant that spring after Dyer learned of the funding through an email sent to an educators list by the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

In December 2022, the fourth grade class was awarded two $1,500 grants from the Maine Environmental Education Association to support the outdoor education program, Principal Pat St. Clair reported during a board of directors meeting. Funds will buy snowshoes, ski pants, anything needed, he noted. An extension was also granted for the $100,000 RREV grant to build the greenhouse/outdoor classroom space, so the school has two years to spend grant funds, he stated. A $1,400 check from the Hannaford Helps program would also support the outdoor education program, he added.

Dyer, Deering, Stone and St. Clair met with Elaine Bartley, RREV project director; Helene Adams, RREV lead coach and Nick Runco, RREV team coordinator to share updates and additions to the greenhouse project. Efforts have been made to integrate with the middle and high schools, Dyer noted.

Dyer gave them thank you cards made by fifth grade students in the Good Vibes club.

“These are awesome,” Bartley exclaimed.

“You are the ones that need the thank you for all the amazing work,” Adams said.

“Part of our goal is to do this celebration of all these different awards,” Bartley stated. “It really is a celebration of what you all put together for ideas and for plans to change the way kids learn or give them different opportunities to make learning more authentic, it sticks with them, it’s memorable, engaging, any of those things. It has been an awesome experience for us to see all these different projects and to see all the different ways schools are using their local contacts to make learning better for their kids, so this is cool.”

Bartley said they couldn’t wait to see some of the things RREV was able to help provide or create, expand, extend at the elementary school. She spoke of talking with 13 Mt. Blue educators about innovation, challenges and so forth. “One of the original RREV pilot writers there mentioned that we a tendency to highlight the final projects,” she said. “Sometimes we fail to tell the story of all the effort, work and coordination that went in. That is part of what we have been capturing, so we can say why is it challenging to keep a greenhouse running in a school when there is turnover and here is what we have been doing.”

Pam Harnden/Livermore Falls Advertiser

Bartley said an education technician at Mt. Blue is now running the greenhouse instead of expecting a full-time teacher to do so. Efforts are being made to connect teachers with sustainability solutions so that the work being done can continue, Bartley explained. “We know how challenging it is to do on top of full-time work,” she noted.

Dyer spoke of an allied arts program involving computers that saw the teacher leave and nobody applying to fill the position. It was transformed into healthy living with Stone trying to identify some of the needs kids have in terms of socio-emotional learning, she noted. “That kind of outweighed the computer needs,” Dyer continued. “On top of being the social worker, she was teaching that class. She got an ed tech, has been doing a lot of lessons incorporating the greenhouse into the healthy living curriculum.”

“Digging in the dirt, starting fresh, watching something grow – maybe even die –it supports trauma healing,” Stone said. “Next year I am hoping to have some small groups out there to do more of that gardening, regrowth and rejuvenation.”

With many of these projects students are seeing their teachers tackle things that are not quick and easy for them either, Bartley said. “They have seen or experienced some of the frustration of their teachers having to deal with school board policy issues that have never been dealt with before,” she noted. “Like how do you give credits for kids who are now doing projects that have never been in existence. They have experienced and witnessed their teachers’ perseverance, sometimes failure – but productive failure – moving forward and just been a part of that conversation. So much of school is behind the scenes. The kids don’t see the struggles from their faculty or even the challenges that the faculty goes through to get a program implemented, so that has been a unique piece too.”

A lot of it is thinking outside the box, how learning materials are presented, Stone said.

“You guys do a great job with nature education,” Bartley stated.

Fifth grade students from left Reese Mason, Walker Michaud, Noah Curtis and Nick Poland use sensors to determine the amount of water plants need Wednesday morning, May 29, at Spruce Mountain Elementary School in Jay. Pam Harnden/Livermore Falls Advertiser

“They love it,” Deering stressed. Last week there was a concert during the time students usually go outside on Friday, this week is an assembly so they went outside yesterday instead, she said. “Nobody was disappointed,” she noted. “A lot of it is curriculum based, but it is so much bigger than that.”

Movement is so needed, outdoor education helps with that, Stone interjected.

A grant from Franklin County Retired Teachers Association helped with a nature trail at the high school, three younger students were taken there, Deering said. One complained, “My legs are Jell-O, we had walked two tenths of a mile,” she noted. “They just are not used to it.”

“What is cool too is watching you all talk about it,” Runco said. “You are excited.”

The health benefits, the fresh air, the sunshine are important, Bartley said.

The goal is to extend outdoor education beyond the fourth grade, Deering stated. “The fifth graders miss it,” she noted.

One goal was to get more traction with staff members who were reluctant to do outdoor learning, Dyer said.

“We did a mini Project Wild