Marshwood Education Foundation Announces Spring 2012 Grants

Two teachers at Marshwood High School were surprised by the foundation’s “grant patrol” in front of a cafeteria filled with students, and learned their projects are to receive grant funds totaling $10,000.

“Thank you to Principal Paul Melhorn and Assistant Principal Kelly Glynn for helping us to pull off the surprise and award these grants to two very deserving teachers. We were so pleased to have an audience of kids there to cheer them on,” said foundation Vice President Seth Herbold. “I hope we can inspire students to come up with their own ideas for new projects to be funded by MEF grants.”

A grant of $2,900 was awarded to science teacher Sara Cathey and the Marshwood High School Science Club. The club will use its grant to buy supplies for a variety of projects, including the study of alternative energies such as wind power and biofuels, chemistry pursuits, robotics, rockets, aquaculture and many other areas of science. The money will also help students participate in the Windstorm Challenge at the University of Maine in Orono.

The overall goal for the Science Club is to provide a place for students who enjoy science to meet outside of normal class time and to pursue topics that interest and excite them.

English teacher and department head Jeff Rosinski was awarded $7,100 for a digital annotation project to benefit Advanced Placement literature and composition classes. The grant will provide for the purchase of 40 Kindles, Kindle cases and supplemental texts to be used to closely measure students’ engagement in serious literature. The overall project goals are to increase student engagement with literature and foster critical thinking. The project will also strive to measure how much or how well students read using e-readers.