Mike Denniston from Middle School of the Kennebunks and other teachers from across Maine are connecting their students to the Vital Signs community.
The future will be bright if our students become responsible, contributing members of our society, with an understanding that our ecosystems are complex and fragile.
Mike Denniston, 7th grade Science, Middle School of the Kennebunks
Mike and his seventh grade students have been doing their own long-term ecological research investigation into the health of local rivers. They have macroinvertebrate bioassessment data dating back to 1999 from Branch Brook, Kennebunk River, and Mousam River that tell quite an interesting an important story. Mike has adopted Vital Signs as a way to make this investigation and the science he teaches more real, meaningful, and connected.
"I have been teaching for 36 years and Vital Signs has proven to be one of the best programs I have been involved with."
Teachers like Mike are at the heart of the Vital Signs community. They are our window into classrooms and local communities statewide. Their tireless work to educate and motivate Maine’s next generation of active, participatory citizens does not go unnoticed here.
Teachers participate and contribute to Vital Signs in a number of ways, including:
2. Creating authentic, inquiry-based learning environments that promote the development of 21st century skills.
3. Adapting and modifying Vital Signs content in creative ways to make it relevant to local habitats, student interests, and local issues.
4. Guiding, facilitating, and motivating day-to-day student learning, data collection, community participation, and creative project development.
5. Contributing their own best practices to discussion forums to be soaked up by colleagues statewide.
6. Sharing original lesson plans and modified curriculum resources in the Open Resource Exchange for colleagues to use and adapt in their classrooms.
7. Collecting their own data as citizen scientists, and keeping an annual watch on the native and invasive species in their area.
Currently there are 50 teachers in the Vital Signs community, with 50 more joining us in 2010. Fourteen of our teachers were instrumental in advising and testing the development of Vital Signs to ensure its success in middle school classrooms statewide.
Contact us if you are interested in connecting your classroom with the Vital Signs community.
