Published in the Current
A whale has been feeding off Prouts Neck for the past several days. Local residents alerted the Marine Animal Lifeline on May 17, when two humpback whales were spotted.
Since that day, only one has been seen at a time, though MAL President Greg Jakush said they might be taking turns feeding in an area right offshore of the yacht club.
Police said some residents are concerned that it might get stranded in shallow water, and Jakush said others are concerned “just about having a 40-foot whale that close.”
Jakush said he and others are monitoring the situation, but said the whale does not appear to be in trouble in any way. He said he does not know what it might be feeding on, but said birds are also fishing in the area.
“A lot of the locals are calling us every four or five hours,” Jakush said, keeping them posted on where the whale is. To allow the whale to swim without getting tangled in lines, “the lobstermen have pulled their buoys out of the way to help out,” he said.
He said whales feeding in close to shore may be more common than people realize, but they are not always spotted. Last year, Jakush said, there were whales in close to shore at Biddeford Pool.
Thursday, May 23, 2002
Captain Mazzone leaves Scarborough after 20 years
Published in the Current
June 5 will be Captain Angelo Mazzone’s last day at the Scarborough Police Department. He’s done nearly every job at the department in his 20 years of service, from animal control officer to youth aid officer to detective sergeant and now captain.
Mazzone has never had a home in Scarborough, but he feels like he lives here. “Scarborough’s like a second home to me now,” he said.
A native of Portland, he is leaving to spend more time with his children, and will move to Cape Cod to be closer to his parents. “This is a family decision,” he said, making a point to say he has no problem with the department and remains on good terms with everyone there.
Chief Robert Moulton said the department will miss Mazzone.
“He’s been like a right arm to me,” Moulton said. “He’s an excellent police officer. I’m going to miss him a lot.”
Mazzone has seen Scarborough change, and the police department change along with it. When he started, there were only four patrol cars, and, he said, “it wasn’t uncommon to work a day shift alone.” Now there are often four patrol cars on the road on any given afternoon.
“There have been a lot of improvements,” he said, in radios and the station facilities.
He got his start in law enforcement as a young boy, when his father, a doctor in Portland, would get called on now and again to assist police.
When he graduated from high school, he joined the Army and became a military policeman. After three years in the service, he joined the Scarborough police.
Issues have also changed since then. Twenty years ago, the focus was on child abuse. Now more emphasis is placed on domestic violence, Mazzone said.
He spent a lot of time in the detective bureau, which is his first love, and for which his colleagues say he has a gift.
Detective Sgt. David Grover, who will become captain when Mazzone leaves and followed him heading the detectives, said Mazzone is a dedicated and committed investigator. “He goes home when the work is done,” Grover said.
Mazzone said he liked the work as a detective, and enjoyed helping victims of crimes. “I always looked at it as ‘what can I do for the victims,’” he said.
But he is also experienced at standard police work, and at handling hard situations, including the James Levier shooting and the Virginia Jackson murder.
“Every time something really big happens, I’m there,” Mazzone said, shaking his head at his “luck” and saying, “I’ve never missed a hurricane, never missed a blizzard.”
In the future, he said, the department will continue to grow to reflect the needs of the community. Technology, too, will play different roles. “Police work will always change,” he said.
With the area of the town and its growth, there is more pressure on patrol officers, he said. Many calls take more time now, with additional procedures and paperwork that he said help police do a better job – an hour or so for a domestic dispute, for example, rather than 10 or 15 minutes 20 years ago.
“I think we need to grow some more in the patrol area,” he said. He also expects the department will someday be allowed to conduct its own homicide investigations.
State law now prevents most towns from handling murder cases, instead passing them up to the state attorney general’s office.
He recently reaped one reward of his tenure at the department. He saw a marriage announcement saying that a person Mazzone knew as a victim of a crime several years ago had gotten his life back together.
“It kind of makes you feel happy,” he said.
There will be a small ceremony honoring Mazzone June 5, his last day, and a larger ceremony is planned for October, after the summer activity settles down, Moulton said.
June 5 will be Captain Angelo Mazzone’s last day at the Scarborough Police Department. He’s done nearly every job at the department in his 20 years of service, from animal control officer to youth aid officer to detective sergeant and now captain.
Mazzone has never had a home in Scarborough, but he feels like he lives here. “Scarborough’s like a second home to me now,” he said.
A native of Portland, he is leaving to spend more time with his children, and will move to Cape Cod to be closer to his parents. “This is a family decision,” he said, making a point to say he has no problem with the department and remains on good terms with everyone there.
Chief Robert Moulton said the department will miss Mazzone.
“He’s been like a right arm to me,” Moulton said. “He’s an excellent police officer. I’m going to miss him a lot.”
Mazzone has seen Scarborough change, and the police department change along with it. When he started, there were only four patrol cars, and, he said, “it wasn’t uncommon to work a day shift alone.” Now there are often four patrol cars on the road on any given afternoon.
“There have been a lot of improvements,” he said, in radios and the station facilities.
He got his start in law enforcement as a young boy, when his father, a doctor in Portland, would get called on now and again to assist police.
When he graduated from high school, he joined the Army and became a military policeman. After three years in the service, he joined the Scarborough police.
Issues have also changed since then. Twenty years ago, the focus was on child abuse. Now more emphasis is placed on domestic violence, Mazzone said.
He spent a lot of time in the detective bureau, which is his first love, and for which his colleagues say he has a gift.
Detective Sgt. David Grover, who will become captain when Mazzone leaves and followed him heading the detectives, said Mazzone is a dedicated and committed investigator. “He goes home when the work is done,” Grover said.
Mazzone said he liked the work as a detective, and enjoyed helping victims of crimes. “I always looked at it as ‘what can I do for the victims,’” he said.
But he is also experienced at standard police work, and at handling hard situations, including the James Levier shooting and the Virginia Jackson murder.
“Every time something really big happens, I’m there,” Mazzone said, shaking his head at his “luck” and saying, “I’ve never missed a hurricane, never missed a blizzard.”
In the future, he said, the department will continue to grow to reflect the needs of the community. Technology, too, will play different roles. “Police work will always change,” he said.
With the area of the town and its growth, there is more pressure on patrol officers, he said. Many calls take more time now, with additional procedures and paperwork that he said help police do a better job – an hour or so for a domestic dispute, for example, rather than 10 or 15 minutes 20 years ago.
“I think we need to grow some more in the patrol area,” he said. He also expects the department will someday be allowed to conduct its own homicide investigations.
State law now prevents most towns from handling murder cases, instead passing them up to the state attorney general’s office.
He recently reaped one reward of his tenure at the department. He saw a marriage announcement saying that a person Mazzone knew as a victim of a crime several years ago had gotten his life back together.
“It kind of makes you feel happy,” he said.
There will be a small ceremony honoring Mazzone June 5, his last day, and a larger ceremony is planned for October, after the summer activity settles down, Moulton said.
Cape Elizabeth reaches accord on school budget
Published in the Current
Cape Elizabeth School Board members are breathing a little easier now that they have some financial help from the Town Council. The town has agreed to pay $25,000 from this year’s budget to replace the high school’s walk-in freezer, which has been deemed a safety hazard.
That takes pressure off the School Board, which had included that item in next year’s already tight budget. Several councilors had questioned the need for a new freezer.
But in a joint letter to the town and the public, the finance committee chairs of the two bodies laid out a plan by which the freezer will be replaced and
school spending will be capped at 4.5 percent, rather than 4 percent as previously requested by the council.
The total school expenditure for next year under the new plan will be $14,918,677. The tax increase for residents, covering both the school and municipal budgets, will be 94 cents per thousand dollars of assessed property value.
The School Board’s original expenditures were to be $15,038,234, an increase of 5.34 percent. The council asked that amount be taken down to $14,846,677, an increase of 4 percent.
The board counter-proposed expenditures of $14,877,234 – a 4.2 percent increase, by making cuts in maintenance, field trip transportation expenses and the school’s portion of the freshman athletic program at the high school. A further $33,000 in savings was found in reductions of energy and telephone costs, without affecting school programs.
Some of the savings were also found by using $70,000 in surplus as additional revenue that would not impact the town’s tax rate.
The board feared it might be required to cut an additional $30,000 in spending, or perhaps even $100,000 if spending that surplus money was not approved by the council.
After the two finance chairs reviewed the budgets, they agreed that the board could use $70,000 in surplus money, and that the town would buy the freezer using money from the municipal general fund.
They also found $2,000 that the town had earmarked for the schools to support the computer network, which the School Board had not included as revenue.
After the $33,000 energy and phone savings, the board was left to cut $61,557, of which $58,000 had already been tentatively identified. At the School Board workshop meeting May 21, board Chairman George Entwistle said Superintendent Tom Forcella had been able to find $3,557 in additional cuts from the central office budget by reducing spending on custodial supplies, advertising, equipment, transportation and contracted services.
That left the board to review the $58,000 in cuts. The main issue the board discussed was how to restore some funding to freshman athletics.
The schools expected to pay $8,000 for coaches’ stipends. Briefly on the table were activity participation fees, discussed as a potentially better alternative than cutting programs, and the middle school’s outdoor education program trips to Kieve and Chewonki.
Entwistle also proposed expanding the degree to which parents pay for some of their children’s educational experiences, effectively moving some costs from taxpayers to the users of those services, he said.
“I suspect that we’re going to have to get more creative with that as we move through the next several years,” Entwistle said.
Board member Elaine Moloney pointed out that cutting freshman athletics funding put a greater burden on sports boosters at a time the School Board was trying to decrease the role of booster clubs in town.
In response to proposed reductions in funding for outdoor education, board member Jennifer DeSena defended the Kieve and Chewonki programs as important parts of the curriculum that the schools should fund more, not less.
The schools presently pay $2,500 in tuition costs for each program, with the remainder being picked up by parents of the students who go. They either pay from their own pockets or run fund-raisers to collect the money needed.
The board concluded its discussion by asking high school Principal Jeff Shedd, middle school Principal Nancy Hutton, Forcella and Athletic Administrator Keith Weatherbie to meet to find $8,000 in reductions, of which “the lion’s share” could come from freshman athletics, Entwistle said. The goal would be to restore some funding to that program and “share the pain,” he said.
The board agreed that the Kieve and Chewonki programs are exempted from that review and will not be cut. Entwistle also said he plans to write a letter to the Town Council expressing “something between acknowledgement and gratitude” for the council’s help in what he called “this difficult and challenging time.”
At the end of the meeting, Moloney encouraged members of the board to review the town’s budget. She admitted it was too late to do much this year, but said she would watch town spending carefully.
After looking through the proposed budget, she said, “I was really surprised by a lot of their line items. I can’t believe how much more we’re cutting and bleeding.”
The final amount of the school and municipal budgets will be set by the Town Council after a public hearing at 7:30 p.m., May 28, at the Town Council Chambers in Town Hall.
Cape Elizabeth School Board members are breathing a little easier now that they have some financial help from the Town Council. The town has agreed to pay $25,000 from this year’s budget to replace the high school’s walk-in freezer, which has been deemed a safety hazard.
That takes pressure off the School Board, which had included that item in next year’s already tight budget. Several councilors had questioned the need for a new freezer.
But in a joint letter to the town and the public, the finance committee chairs of the two bodies laid out a plan by which the freezer will be replaced and
school spending will be capped at 4.5 percent, rather than 4 percent as previously requested by the council.
The total school expenditure for next year under the new plan will be $14,918,677. The tax increase for residents, covering both the school and municipal budgets, will be 94 cents per thousand dollars of assessed property value.
The School Board’s original expenditures were to be $15,038,234, an increase of 5.34 percent. The council asked that amount be taken down to $14,846,677, an increase of 4 percent.
The board counter-proposed expenditures of $14,877,234 – a 4.2 percent increase, by making cuts in maintenance, field trip transportation expenses and the school’s portion of the freshman athletic program at the high school. A further $33,000 in savings was found in reductions of energy and telephone costs, without affecting school programs.
Some of the savings were also found by using $70,000 in surplus as additional revenue that would not impact the town’s tax rate.
The board feared it might be required to cut an additional $30,000 in spending, or perhaps even $100,000 if spending that surplus money was not approved by the council.
After the two finance chairs reviewed the budgets, they agreed that the board could use $70,000 in surplus money, and that the town would buy the freezer using money from the municipal general fund.
They also found $2,000 that the town had earmarked for the schools to support the computer network, which the School Board had not included as revenue.
After the $33,000 energy and phone savings, the board was left to cut $61,557, of which $58,000 had already been tentatively identified. At the School Board workshop meeting May 21, board Chairman George Entwistle said Superintendent Tom Forcella had been able to find $3,557 in additional cuts from the central office budget by reducing spending on custodial supplies, advertising, equipment, transportation and contracted services.
That left the board to review the $58,000 in cuts. The main issue the board discussed was how to restore some funding to freshman athletics.
The schools expected to pay $8,000 for coaches’ stipends. Briefly on the table were activity participation fees, discussed as a potentially better alternative than cutting programs, and the middle school’s outdoor education program trips to Kieve and Chewonki.
Entwistle also proposed expanding the degree to which parents pay for some of their children’s educational experiences, effectively moving some costs from taxpayers to the users of those services, he said.
“I suspect that we’re going to have to get more creative with that as we move through the next several years,” Entwistle said.
Board member Elaine Moloney pointed out that cutting freshman athletics funding put a greater burden on sports boosters at a time the School Board was trying to decrease the role of booster clubs in town.
In response to proposed reductions in funding for outdoor education, board member Jennifer DeSena defended the Kieve and Chewonki programs as important parts of the curriculum that the schools should fund more, not less.
The schools presently pay $2,500 in tuition costs for each program, with the remainder being picked up by parents of the students who go. They either pay from their own pockets or run fund-raisers to collect the money needed.
The board concluded its discussion by asking high school Principal Jeff Shedd, middle school Principal Nancy Hutton, Forcella and Athletic Administrator Keith Weatherbie to meet to find $8,000 in reductions, of which “the lion’s share” could come from freshman athletics, Entwistle said. The goal would be to restore some funding to that program and “share the pain,” he said.
The board agreed that the Kieve and Chewonki programs are exempted from that review and will not be cut. Entwistle also said he plans to write a letter to the Town Council expressing “something between acknowledgement and gratitude” for the council’s help in what he called “this difficult and challenging time.”
At the end of the meeting, Moloney encouraged members of the board to review the town’s budget. She admitted it was too late to do much this year, but said she would watch town spending carefully.
After looking through the proposed budget, she said, “I was really surprised by a lot of their line items. I can’t believe how much more we’re cutting and bleeding.”
The final amount of the school and municipal budgets will be set by the Town Council after a public hearing at 7:30 p.m., May 28, at the Town Council Chambers in Town Hall.
Fire Canteen founder looks back 50 years
Published in the Current
In the early 1950s, Eleanor Lorfano, now 85, got tired of driving her own truck to fires and serving her husband and his fellow firefighters coffee and
doughnuts out of the back of the pickup. She wasn’t tired of getting up in the middle of the night. Instead, Lorfano wanted some help and some company.
She got together members of the seven fire company auxiliaries in town and proposed setting up a canteen truck that could take food and drinks to the town’s firefighters if a blaze went on for a while.
The group, all women, found a used truck and quickly raised the $3,000 necessary to buy it. That truck went to its first fire on Ross Road with a card table in the back, Lorfano remembered at a meeting of the Scarborough Fire Department Canteen May 20 at the Dunstan fire station.
Some volunteers built cupboards and installed a stove, water tank and a big countertop into the truck, which saw many fires, including big fires in Saco
and the old dance hall on Gorham Road, Lorfano said.
During the war, Lorfano and several other women had been the fire department while the men were in the military. She was certified to drive fire trucks and even put out fires. After the men returned, she and others
maintained their involvement in the department through the canteen.
She remembered taking coffee to men fighting fires at the town dump, affectionately called “the Scarborough Town Park” in the canteen’s logbook. When rats would sometimes escape from the fire and run over near the canteen truck, Lorfano remembered men and women racing around trying to chase them away.
As learned from the logbook, long thought lost but recently located in a drawer in the canteen truck, the routine then was not much different from today’s canteen.
One difference: the truck – the third used by the group – is now maintained by the town rather than the canteen volunteers.
If a fire sounded big over the radio, canteen members would get up and start boiling water to put in Thermos bottles before going to the station to pick up the truck. Women who lived closest to the station, Lorfano said, would have the biggest Thermoses.
One night, Lorfano remembered, she was wakened by a call from a canteen member, in the days before pagers and radios sent out the signal “21” to summon the canteen truck. “She said, ‘You want to go to the fire?’and I said, ‘Yeah, what time’s the fire?’” Lorfano said. The reply came: “‘Right now, if you want to go.’”
Big calls now are rarer, canteen members said, because of better fireproofing in buildings. Smoke detectors and sprinklers are also more commonly used, making fires easier to catch and faster to fight. Shorter fires don’t require coffee and doughnuts the way long-haul battles against blazes do.
The canteen’s last call was at the Grand Avenue fire in Old Orchard Beach earlier this year, though it has served food in other towns at large fires, as well as at funerals for firefighters killed in the line of duty.
Lorfano was also a school bus driver in town for 25 years, starting in 1953. She was paid her “greatest honor” at that job, she said, when she was the only female bus driver; the boys’ basketball team asked her to be their driver, when there were several male drivers they could have chosen.
In that job, she had only one accident, sliding off the Black Point Road bridge with a busload of kids on board. Nobody was hurt, as the bus landed right-side up just next to the river, she said.
In the early 1950s, Eleanor Lorfano, now 85, got tired of driving her own truck to fires and serving her husband and his fellow firefighters coffee and
doughnuts out of the back of the pickup. She wasn’t tired of getting up in the middle of the night. Instead, Lorfano wanted some help and some company.
She got together members of the seven fire company auxiliaries in town and proposed setting up a canteen truck that could take food and drinks to the town’s firefighters if a blaze went on for a while.
The group, all women, found a used truck and quickly raised the $3,000 necessary to buy it. That truck went to its first fire on Ross Road with a card table in the back, Lorfano remembered at a meeting of the Scarborough Fire Department Canteen May 20 at the Dunstan fire station.
Some volunteers built cupboards and installed a stove, water tank and a big countertop into the truck, which saw many fires, including big fires in Saco
and the old dance hall on Gorham Road, Lorfano said.
During the war, Lorfano and several other women had been the fire department while the men were in the military. She was certified to drive fire trucks and even put out fires. After the men returned, she and others
maintained their involvement in the department through the canteen.
She remembered taking coffee to men fighting fires at the town dump, affectionately called “the Scarborough Town Park” in the canteen’s logbook. When rats would sometimes escape from the fire and run over near the canteen truck, Lorfano remembered men and women racing around trying to chase them away.
As learned from the logbook, long thought lost but recently located in a drawer in the canteen truck, the routine then was not much different from today’s canteen.
One difference: the truck – the third used by the group – is now maintained by the town rather than the canteen volunteers.
If a fire sounded big over the radio, canteen members would get up and start boiling water to put in Thermos bottles before going to the station to pick up the truck. Women who lived closest to the station, Lorfano said, would have the biggest Thermoses.
One night, Lorfano remembered, she was wakened by a call from a canteen member, in the days before pagers and radios sent out the signal “21” to summon the canteen truck. “She said, ‘You want to go to the fire?’and I said, ‘Yeah, what time’s the fire?’” Lorfano said. The reply came: “‘Right now, if you want to go.’”
Big calls now are rarer, canteen members said, because of better fireproofing in buildings. Smoke detectors and sprinklers are also more commonly used, making fires easier to catch and faster to fight. Shorter fires don’t require coffee and doughnuts the way long-haul battles against blazes do.
The canteen’s last call was at the Grand Avenue fire in Old Orchard Beach earlier this year, though it has served food in other towns at large fires, as well as at funerals for firefighters killed in the line of duty.
Lorfano was also a school bus driver in town for 25 years, starting in 1953. She was paid her “greatest honor” at that job, she said, when she was the only female bus driver; the boys’ basketball team asked her to be their driver, when there were several male drivers they could have chosen.
In that job, she had only one accident, sliding off the Black Point Road bridge with a busload of kids on board. Nobody was hurt, as the bus landed right-side up just next to the river, she said.
Thursday, May 16, 2002
Cape Elizabeth teachers travel to learn
Published in the Current
Several Cape Elizabeth teachers, and one principal, will be taking short overseas trips over the summer or early next school year, to learn more about other cultures and educational systems. They expect it will benefit their students as well as their teaching.
High school world history and government teacher, Heather Sanborn, will depart first, leaving for China in early July for a 20-day trip through eight of that country’s major cities, including Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
The trip is run by the Five College Center for East Asian Studies, in Northampton, Mass., and Sanborn and 19 other New England teachers will have much of their way paid by the Freeman Foundation. The rest of her costs will be paid by the high school and other funds, including possibly the high school parents association, she said.
The trip is the culmination of several workshops Sanborn has attended, learning about Asian culture and politics. “I’ve actually done some stuff, but now I actually get to go and experience it,” she said.
In addition to her trip, which will include sightseeing, visits to schools, lectures and discussions on a wide range of issues, Sanborn will get books and other curricular material to enhance her students’classroom learning.
Sanborn said the trip also will benefit her by broadening her own personal experience. She spent eight weeks in the former East Germany shortly after reunification, and uses that first-hand knowledge to help her students.
“Non-European travel is something that’s really important for me to bring to the classroom,” Sanborn said, pointing out that much of world history covers non-European regions, cultures and religions.
She plans to expand her own and her students’ appreciation of Chinese art and literature. “I hope to also bring back a better understanding of Chinese language and writing styles,” Sanborn said.
But, she emphasized, the true value of her trip remains unknown. “The key is what you actually experience,” Sanborn said.
Middle school Spanish teacher, Lydia Schildt, is taking a longer journey. She will attend the Spanish School at the Middlebury Language Schools in Vermont for six weeks this summer, and will spend the next academic year living and studying in Madrid, Spain.
Her experience with the language and cultures she teaches has so far been in Spanish-speaking South America, rather than Spain itself. So she now teaches Mexican songs, or Guatemalan rhymes, to her students.
She plans to return with a new library of cultural material to share with the middle school students.
She plans to live with a family for a part of her time in Spain, to learn more about the culture, and also is uncertain of the specifics of what she will learn. “When I get back, I’ll tell you,” Schildt said.
Middle School French teacher, Suzanne Janelle, and Pond Cove School Principal Tom Eismeier will be traveling to Japan on separate trips—Janelle in October and Eismeier in November—through the Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program.
Each trip will involve about 200 people, who will be broken up into groups of 20 to visit schools around the country, meet with government officials and learn about local schools.
Japan has a centrally administered national education system, Eismeier said, which is very different from the American system of local control.
After a week in Tokyo, they will head to different areas of the country and spend a couple of days with a family and visit schools, meeting with administrators and teachers.
“You get to know that school and that district for a while,” Eismeier said. The groups will then return to Tokyo and report back to the rest of the participants on what they saw and learned.
Eismeier will look at Japanese examples of studying teaching methods. Pond Cove teachers have been using an adapted version of Japanese techniques, including intensive review, teaching observation and revision. Eismeier wants to see firsthand how Japanese teachers undertake the process.
Some differences between U.S. and Japanese schools Eismeier will explore include the longer school year (nearly 300 days in Japan and 175 in Maine), larger classes (35-40 Japanese students, compared to around 20 in Cape), and the high social status of teachers in Japan, as compared with status in America.
He also will gather questions from students, parents and teachers in Cape Elizabeth, and try to get as many of them answered as he can during the trip.
Janelle will explore foreign language education. “I’m very interested in languages and how we teach languages,” she said. She plans to observe language classes and compare assessment and teaching methods with her own practices.
Japanese students begin learning foreign languages earlier than U.S. students typically do, Janelle said. But Janelle will start late, and will take a Japanese class at USM this summer to help her prepare for the trip.
“It’s really good for me as a language teacher to place myself in a student role,” she said.
When she comes back, she expects to help put together a middle school event focusing on Japan, as well as conferring with teaching colleagues about what she saw.
“The most exciting part of this program is that we’ll actually go to the schools and be in the classroom,” Janelle said.
Several Cape Elizabeth teachers, and one principal, will be taking short overseas trips over the summer or early next school year, to learn more about other cultures and educational systems. They expect it will benefit their students as well as their teaching.
High school world history and government teacher, Heather Sanborn, will depart first, leaving for China in early July for a 20-day trip through eight of that country’s major cities, including Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai.
The trip is run by the Five College Center for East Asian Studies, in Northampton, Mass., and Sanborn and 19 other New England teachers will have much of their way paid by the Freeman Foundation. The rest of her costs will be paid by the high school and other funds, including possibly the high school parents association, she said.
The trip is the culmination of several workshops Sanborn has attended, learning about Asian culture and politics. “I’ve actually done some stuff, but now I actually get to go and experience it,” she said.
In addition to her trip, which will include sightseeing, visits to schools, lectures and discussions on a wide range of issues, Sanborn will get books and other curricular material to enhance her students’classroom learning.
Sanborn said the trip also will benefit her by broadening her own personal experience. She spent eight weeks in the former East Germany shortly after reunification, and uses that first-hand knowledge to help her students.
“Non-European travel is something that’s really important for me to bring to the classroom,” Sanborn said, pointing out that much of world history covers non-European regions, cultures and religions.
She plans to expand her own and her students’ appreciation of Chinese art and literature. “I hope to also bring back a better understanding of Chinese language and writing styles,” Sanborn said.
But, she emphasized, the true value of her trip remains unknown. “The key is what you actually experience,” Sanborn said.
Middle school Spanish teacher, Lydia Schildt, is taking a longer journey. She will attend the Spanish School at the Middlebury Language Schools in Vermont for six weeks this summer, and will spend the next academic year living and studying in Madrid, Spain.
Her experience with the language and cultures she teaches has so far been in Spanish-speaking South America, rather than Spain itself. So she now teaches Mexican songs, or Guatemalan rhymes, to her students.
She plans to return with a new library of cultural material to share with the middle school students.
She plans to live with a family for a part of her time in Spain, to learn more about the culture, and also is uncertain of the specifics of what she will learn. “When I get back, I’ll tell you,” Schildt said.
Middle School French teacher, Suzanne Janelle, and Pond Cove School Principal Tom Eismeier will be traveling to Japan on separate trips—Janelle in October and Eismeier in November—through the Fulbright Memorial Fund Teacher Program.
Each trip will involve about 200 people, who will be broken up into groups of 20 to visit schools around the country, meet with government officials and learn about local schools.
Japan has a centrally administered national education system, Eismeier said, which is very different from the American system of local control.
After a week in Tokyo, they will head to different areas of the country and spend a couple of days with a family and visit schools, meeting with administrators and teachers.
“You get to know that school and that district for a while,” Eismeier said. The groups will then return to Tokyo and report back to the rest of the participants on what they saw and learned.
Eismeier will look at Japanese examples of studying teaching methods. Pond Cove teachers have been using an adapted version of Japanese techniques, including intensive review, teaching observation and revision. Eismeier wants to see firsthand how Japanese teachers undertake the process.
Some differences between U.S. and Japanese schools Eismeier will explore include the longer school year (nearly 300 days in Japan and 175 in Maine), larger classes (35-40 Japanese students, compared to around 20 in Cape), and the high social status of teachers in Japan, as compared with status in America.
He also will gather questions from students, parents and teachers in Cape Elizabeth, and try to get as many of them answered as he can during the trip.
Janelle will explore foreign language education. “I’m very interested in languages and how we teach languages,” she said. She plans to observe language classes and compare assessment and teaching methods with her own practices.
Japanese students begin learning foreign languages earlier than U.S. students typically do, Janelle said. But Janelle will start late, and will take a Japanese class at USM this summer to help her prepare for the trip.
“It’s really good for me as a language teacher to place myself in a student role,” she said.
When she comes back, she expects to help put together a middle school event focusing on Japan, as well as conferring with teaching colleagues about what she saw.
“The most exciting part of this program is that we’ll actually go to the schools and be in the classroom,” Janelle said.
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