City schools awarded $225K grant

SOUTH PORTLAND — You know how people sometimes grumble about how teachers get the summer off? Well, not this year, not in South Portland at least.

At the June 13 school board meeting, South Portland Superintendent Suzanne Godin announced the receipt of a $225,000 Power of Education grant from the National Semiconductor Foundation. The money will be used to pay for professional development and stipends to as many as 50 teachers over three years to implement a “project-based” STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) curriculum for 720 students at the city’s two middle schools.

The first 10 teachers will get their training this summer at the Maine Mathematics and Science Alliance in Augusta.

“We already have eight who have expressed interest,” Godin told school directors.

Beginning next fall, and for the next three years, trained teachers will lead students through intense, three-week sessions in STEM-related subjects.  The grant application lists the initial topics as energy (Grade 6), ecology (Grade 7) and physics/design challenge (Grade 8). Each project will be dedicated to hands-on study, in which children will learn by doing, as opposed to traditional classroom memorization.

“Our goal is to provide teachers with the knowledge and tools to teach in a way that gets kids excited about science and math so they may excel in these subjects,” said Joan Scott, community relations director for National Semiconductors.

“This is a tremendous opportunity for South Portland to be a leader in this type of learning for middle school students,” said Godin.

“This provides a national model for the ways integrated STEM projects can serve as a centerpiece for a middle school’s science inquiry work,” added Godin. “It will also demonstrate how ‘citizen science’ – science that serves real purposes in the community – can engage and inspire students and at the same time deepen their understanding of core scientific ideas.”

National Semiconductor’s “Power of Education” grant program, which will dole out $1.2 million over the next three years to schools in California, Maine, Scotland and Malaysia, where it has operations, is the company’s most recent investment in education.

Over the past 14 years, National Semiconductor has poured nearly $6 million – about 50 percent of all its giving – into teacher training and materials in the fields of technology, science and math.

“We choose to invest in programs that not only increase teacher’s content knowledge in science and math, but that also focus on inquiry-based methods, hands-on experience as well as the connection of literacy in teaching science and math,” said Scott. “We believe the South Portland School District’s efforts in engaging students in science, technology, engineering, and math in middle school will translate to such interest in high school and beyond. We are pleased to play a role in this effort.”

Angela Marzelli, a Grade 5 teacher at Dyer Elementary School, has been hired to act as full-time coordinator for the STEM program. The district has committed $13,000 as its share of Marzelli’s salary.