Troy Howard Middle School's Thrive Team Honored

 Troy Howard Middle School's Thrive Team was honored by the Belfast Bay Watershed Coalition for its environmental action at its annual meeting. The Plastic Pollution committee praised the work of Violet Falconer, Leila Fowler, Truly Curry, Kenadi Harvey, Matthew Wisniewski, and Adrian Hull. The students made a brief presentation of their findings on plastic pollution and their action advocating for the replacement of plastic silverware. With the enthusiastic support of new school director Alison Goscinski,  the school now uses metal silverware saving the district money and reducing waste. 

"We care about the waste stream and what we're putting into the environment," says Matthew Wisniewski, a sixth grader. 

"A one-liter plastic bottle of water contains 240,000 particles of microplastics," adds classmate Adrian Hull. 

What's next for the young activists? "Being part of Thrive opened up a lot of opportunities to talk to other people (about environmental issues)," says Leila Fowler. She spoke animatedly about recycling the piles of paper used in the school, as well as making sure all the lights used low-energy LED bulbs.

BAHS NAHS Scoop.Eat.Give. Filling Bowls, One Sundae at a Time

 

BAHS - BMI Marine Studies

BAHS students in our BMI flagship course Marine Studies recently wrapped the semester-long elective with presentations of their major marine-themed projects. Wide-ranging, timely, scientific and/or commercial in purpose, these student-choice efforts were presented as powerpoints, posters, hands-on demonstrations and models showing their interests, curiosity and passions with the marine world. Topics ranged from establishing a Belfast fishing charter business, updates on the BMI social media pages, examination of the whale entanglement issue, public service announcements on plastics in the ocean and endangered coral reefs, the differences between movie sharks and real sharks (in honor of the 50th anniversary of JAWS), a 3D printing effort replicating the Institute’s Minke Whale bones, examination of marine species such as the weedy seadragon and whale sharks and seahorses, as well as aerial drone applications charting marine life or mapping extent of harbor ice, and a student-designed certification course in underwater ROV handling and operations. And this is just one facet of all the great stuff going on with BMI.

CASS MathMagicians

The 5th grade CASS math team, the MathMagicians competed in the Kennebec Math League Math Competition in China, Maine on January 15th. We competed against 48 sixth graders from 8 schools. These 5th graders came in 1st place in the 6TH Grade team event and individually Gus MacLeod won first place and Oona Morley 2nd place. Amazing kids.