Transcription of Engaging in Education #256
Announcer: You are listening to Love Maine Radio hosted by Dr. Lisa Belisle and recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland. Dr. Lisa Belisle is a writer and physician who practices family medicine and acupuncture in Brunswick, Maine. Show summaries are available at lovemaineradio.com. Here are some highlights from this week’s program.
Talya: Yeah, and I think it’s also important to remember that there are a lot of things that, a lot of skills that can’t be measured by standardized tests, and those skills are really important. If we put too much pressure and too much stock into standardized test, I think they start to hear those messages that they have to do well on this kind of exam to be worth something, and that simply is not the case. I don’t think a lot of teachers think of that.
Jim: We need to be prepared for a job or for a career, and there is a great need for those stem skills in industry. We’re always looking for engineers now and there’s a lot of talk around just the scarceness of engineering resources in the US, in general. I think schools recognize that they needed to help prepare and fill that void.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 256: Engaging in Education airing for the first time on Sunday, August 14th, 2016. How do we engage children so that they are motivated to learn? For each child, this answer is different. Today’s guests have been participating in the education on Maine children both in and out of the classroom.
Talya Edlund was named Maine Teacher of the Year in 2016. Jim Eickmann and Keith Borkowski are community members who work students in the First LEGO Robotics and Odyssey of the Mind Programs. Thank you for joining us.
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Dr. Lisa. My next guest is one of our 50 Mainers who we feature every year in Maine Magazine. This is Talya Edlund. She is a former third grade teacher at Pond Cove Elementary School in Cape Elizabeth who is named 2016 Maine Teacher of the Year. This year, she will be teaching fifth grade at Cape Elizabeth Middle School. She lives in Cape Elizabeth with her husband and two sons. It’s really great to see you today.
Talya: Yeah. Hi. Thanks for having me.
Dr. Lisa: We’re interviewing you in the summer which is probably one of the rare times you’re actually able to be out in the middle of the day doing things.
Talya: Yes, it feels really nice to be able to just move around, and go where I want to go, get a coffee.
Dr. Lisa: Think about that with teaching. It’s very intense. It’s intense, I think, throughout the year, but particularly, when you’re actually with students.
Talya: It is. It’s a really consuming job. I’m lucky because I love it and I’m very passionate about it but it certainly is very consuming, and there are days that I go in about 7am and there until about 5:30 or 6:00.
Dr. Lisa: It’s very energy-intense.
Talya: It is. It takes a lot of energy and moving on my feet all day. Sometimes, I find myself surprised if I’m sitting down.
Dr. Lisa: When I talked to my mother who has been teaching for, I don’t know, a few decades now, and she also has the long hours, especially during the winter time, and she still seems to be continually energized. In the summer, she is always studying new things to teach, and how to teach, and how to reach her students. I am guessing you’re probably the same way.
Talya: Definitely. I think that one of the great things about teaching is that it offers the opportunity to continually be creative and to seek out new things to learn. I think just that thrive and ability to be curious all the time is what really keeps me energized. I think it does the same for my colleagues.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me about your background. Where are you from and why did you decide that teaching was what you wanted to do?
Talya: I am originally from Chicago. In high school, I actually read a book called Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. It’s a narrative of a few kids that grow up in Intercity Chicago, just maybe 15 to 20 miles away from where I grew up. I’ve always been someone that’s been very interested in differences, and social inequalities, and social justice. The book really resonated with me. I ended up cofounding with an English teacher of mine in high school a chapter of the organization, Future Educators of America. What we did was go on some fieldtrips and visit other schools.
At that time, I really didn’t know I wanted to be a teacher but one of the trips we went on was to a school that served kids that lived in the Dousauble Housing Projects. I don’t think those projects are there anymore but the school was so vastly different from mine on many levels. When I went there, I really thought, “My gosh. Schools look so different depending on where you live.” That launched me into a pathway of figuring out how I could make an impact and how I could make some changes for systems like education.
In college, I volunteered with an organization that worked with prisoners and prisoner rights. Through that, I ended up volunteering at a juvenile detention facility, and I facilitated theater and writing workshops right there. Just the individuals, the young men and individuals that I worked with taught me so much about resiliency and courage. Also, really had me thinking a lot about, again, where the systems, where schools, and what systems failed them along the way. I think, really, that’s why I became a teacher.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of the inequalities that you read about, and then you eventually witnessed yourself that you hoped to make a difference with as a teacher?
Talya: I think that what I noticed even when I was 18 in high school was just the culture and the climate of the schools. I walked into that school and there was just high level security and just everyone seemed on edge. I remember sitting in the classroom, and the students were shocked because the other student and I that were sitting observing were both white, and we were the only white people in the school which is truly a terrible thing. That school still exists. That was one thing. Then, the students in the classroom are waiting for a teacher. Their teacher was not there. They were waiting for yet another substitute teacher. There was just a lot of confusion, I think. I remember that.
Then, I did teach in Brooklyn in Bed-Stuy for three years. It was very similar. Ten to fifteen years later, some of the same inequalities existed. My students were incredible but the things that they were facing in their lives were just really difficult. Students who were living in shelters, students who had faced different kinds of traumas, students who didn’t have any acute trauma in their lives but they just dealt with the day-to-day stresses of being poor and not sure where they were going to sleep that night. It made things really difficult in the classrooms at times.
Dr. Lisa: When I hear you talking, I think about my own situation as a doctor and how I’m trying to help people get to the next level of health, but sometimes, there are things that they are dealing with that are so elemental that I have not that much control over. Maybe they don’t have enough food to eat, or they lost their job, or they are homeless. It’s tough to be in that place whether you’re a teacher, or a doctor, or another professional who is trying to be a part of the situation. How did you work with that?
Talya: I think really the first and foremost avenue towards addressing those kinds of challenges really is building relationships. I think there’s a lot of research of that shows that building relationships is really what makes the strongest impact and having this long-term relationship with students certainly plays a part in changing their narrative or can play a part in changing their narrative. I think that that really is the first place.
I think then, the more you learn and the more research and well-read you are on different strategies and approaches to helping kids and helping communities overcome some of those challenges, the more capable you’re going to be and the more equipped you’re going to be to deal with those things. Really, at the end of the day though, it comes down to relationships.
Dr. Lisa: You’re from Chicago and you taught in New York City. Here, you’re in Maine. How did that play out?
Talya: After college, I took a roundabout course to teaching. I lived in Hawaii for a little bit. Then, I led trail cruise in New Hampshire but always, my heart was being pulled towards the classroom. After living and teaching in New York City for a while, my husband and I decided to travel for a bit. When we came back, we just wanted to find a community where we could maybe start a family and feel that things were a little bit more manageable than they were in New York City. We just liked what Portland had to offer. We liked the diversity that Portland had. We liked just the community feel that Portland had. We had some friends who lived here and encouraged us to move here. That’s where we ended up, and we just fell in love, and stayed.
Dr. Lisa: Your husband is also a teacher.
Talya: He is.
Dr. Lisa: Did that help bring you together in some way?
Talya: Absolutely. Something that I always admired in my husband before we were married was just his passion for education. A lot of our early conversations were about really the impacts of teaching and classroom practices. I think, through that, we ended up finding some common ground that we still have.
Dr. Lisa: You lived in Cape Elizabeth then. You teach in Cape Elizabeth.
Talya: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Your boys are how old?
Talya: I have a five-year-old about to start kindergarten and an eight-year-old that’s about to start second grade.
Dr. Lisa: What has that been like for you to teach within the system that your children are part of?
Talya: I was nervous about it at first but as it turns out, it’s been really great because I love the school that I teach at. I love the school that they go to. The teachers just care so much for them. Every day, my son who is in second grade now, he’ll come home and he has some story about some individual just making him feel like a million dollars. That’s priceless.
Dr. Lisa: It is funny, as you’re saying that, I think about my own children, and more of the interactions that they described are about their friends or about how someone made them feel. They’re older now but even so, they’re not always coming home saying, “Guess what we learned about World War II Germany.” It’s not as much about the ideas sometimes as it is about the milieu, I think.
Talya: Yeah. I heard someone say once that people, they don’t always remember what you say but they almost always remember how you make them feel. I think that’s really true and I’ve seen that with my kids.
Dr. Lisa: You are moving up. You’ve taught second grade and third grade, at least, in Cape Elizabeth, and you’re moving up to fifth grade. As your son is getting older, he’s going into second grade, do you feel like you’re just continuing to move up the track a little bit?
Talya: There are times where I feel like what I’ve been doing all day during the school hours mirrors what’s happening at home. Moving on to older kids that are older than my son I think will be a little bit of a break from that. That’s nice.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me, as a third grade teacher, and just what does your day actually look like? What are you doing with the kids and how does that interaction play out?
Talya: The kids start rolling in about 8:00 in the morning, and some of them have breakfast, and some of them don’t. In third grade at my school, they go right to an Allied Arts. They either go to art, music, gym. Then, when we come back to the classroom, we’ll have a class meeting. Then, really, as the year progresses, what we do during the day becomes driven by what they are doing and how they interact with one another. There’s a lot of group work, a lot of building, a lot of creating in my classroom. It’s pretty noisy in there. There’s a lot of group work. That’s something that I’ve had to let go of a little bit because it’s different when I first started teaching. I thought I was doing well with my kids and my students were sitting very quietly, and being very productive with their pencils and their paper. Now, I think that that, for me, is a sign that a lot of learning is not happening.
Dr. Lisa: My mom, when my kids are growing up, she would always say that the quiet children were the ones that she worried about. The noisy ones, she didn’t worry quite so much about. That actually makes me feel a little bit better that you’re talking about the noise levels in the classroom and how that’s a germination of creativity and learning.
Talya: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: I don’t know. How long have you been teaching now?
Talya: Sixteen years now.
Dr. Lisa: Have you noticed a shift with the learning results and all the standardized testing that’s taking place from a pretty early age?
Talya: Yeah. I think that there’s been a lot of pendulum swings back and forth in terms of testing. When I first came to Maine, I walked into a system of local assessments. What those were were curriculum-based assessments that grade levels would come up with on their own. It was a bit unwieldy and confusing.
I remember one of the assessments that I needed to give to my second graders had to do with melting chocolate bars. We would give each student a piece of chocolate bar. Then, we would all run out into the parking lot, and put it on the roof of or the inside dashboard of a car. Then, come back later in the day to see if it had melted or not. Then, the students had to write down their observations which, to me, seemed somewhat silly.
Eventually, we got rid of those assessments and moved on to something a lot more standardized. I think we’re still trying to find a happy ground for where assessments really measure learning and also guide instruction.
Dr. Lisa: Not to mentioned the fact that how many cars would you need to actually have dashboards full of chocolate.
Talya: It was pretty ridiculous. We were using, I think, two or three cars, and teachers would leave their cars unlocked. It was short lived.
Dr. Lisa: That sounds strange but I don’t want to judge because we do weird things in the medical profession too, but there is an interesting question. That is, what is it that we actually hope for a second grader to know, and how do we figure out whether they know that or not, and why is it important? I don’t know who even comes up with these things.
Talya: Yeah. I think, right now, what we have, the system that we have, the Common Core is a really good guiding map for where we want kids to get to and what kinds of thinking skills of depth of knowledge we want them to have but I think it’s important that we remember to honor that learning is a process and all kids are going to learn at different paces. Someone gave me the example a few weeks ago of when kids learn how to walk. There is an exact set date and time where a child learns how to walk. I think the same thing happens with reading, math, and writing. I think it really is a process and I think really an important part of that process is to make sure that students are highly engaged and feel ownership over their learning, and frankly feel excited about their learning.
Dr. Lisa: I want to go on record in saying I am not trying to suggest that people who create standardized tests are doing silly things. I think that it is important to be able to have some ideas to what you’re doing actually is having an impact on the kids but I think you’re right, especially in the younger grades, it seems like there’s such a broad variation in what we can expect the kids will be able to do.
Talya: Yeah. I think it’s also important to remember that there are a lot of things that, a lot of skills that can’t be measured by standardized tests. Those skills are really important. If we put too much pressure and too much stock into standardized tests, I think kids start to hear those messages that they have to do well on this kind of exam to be worth something, and that simply is not the case. I don’t think a lot of teachers think that.
Dr. Lisa: I think about some of the more successful people that I’ve ever worked with, and I think they have a very high level of social and emotional awareness and intellect. How do we measure that? How do you measure someone’s social skills effectively? If we were to measure them, then how do we give that feedback to a second grader?
Talya: Yeah. I think that just giving them opportunities to use those strengths to be social, to communicate in a way that works best for them, and to celebrate that with them as often as possible gives them the feedback that I think they deserve.
Dr. Lisa: You’re excited to go into the fifth grade next year.
Talya: I am.
Dr. Lisa: One of the things that you like is that the literature is just a different level.
Talya: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me about that. Tell me about the fifth grade years, and what is it that is so appealing to you.
Talya: I think that what’s neat about third graders who I’ve been with for the past few years is that they’re just starting to develop those critical thinking skills where they can really analyze the situation and form their own theories and judgments about them, but I think you have to be very mindful about the choices and content that you have third graders read or that you offer third graders because I think that they’re understanding of the world is not as layered or complex as fourth or fifth graders.
I don’t know. I’ve always been someone who loves books and loves literature. When I think about the books that I want my students to read and truly be able to have good conversations about, and lots of theories and ideas about, I like the idea of some of the things that fifth graders are able to read about. Things like kids in the foster care system or love and loss. Those are things that are hard for third graders to really grasp with a level of sophistication that I think fifth graders can.
Dr. Lisa: What are some of your favorite books from that era?
Talya: I love Tulk Everlasting. Of course, Because of Winn Dixie. I am reading a book right now called Counting by 7s which is fairly new and it’s just fabulous about this little girl who is gifted but because of that, is very misunderstood, and she also loses her family, and she’s adopted. There’s all kinds of complexities in her life that reflect reality. I am really enjoying that.
Dr. Lisa: It’s true. As you’re talking, I am thinking about Tuck Everlasting which I read a few years ago and I am thinking about a lot of the books that I read right in the timeframe, and there was a lot. It was almost as if your world was opening up, and it was mostly through story.
Talya: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: There’s an excitement to that.
Talya: Yeah, I think stories have this way of connecting us and reflecting our realities but also have this way of opening our minds to what other people go through and what other people’s lives might be like. I think that’s really important. I think that is a way to really build empathy in kids and help kids become, I think, conscientious citizens.
Dr. Lisa: You’re named the Teacher of the Year for Maine …
Talya: I was.
Dr. Lisa: … in 2016.
Talya: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: What are the qualifications for that? Why do you think that they afforded you this honor?
Talya: I think that certainly there are incredible teachers at my school and throughout the state. I think that I just happened to have the strengths and relationships with the right group of students at the right time. It ended up being almost a yearlong process of essay writing, and interviews, and discussions, and getting to meet other people until I was finally named, but I think that the honor has just afforded me a new perspective, a broader perspective on what’s going on in our educational landscape, as well as what’s going on nationally with teachers.
Dr. Lisa: What have you learned?
Talya: I’ve learned that teachers across the country face the same challenges. I’ve learned a lot about rural poverty and the realities of living and growing up in a rural school because my experience has always been teaching and living in a more urban setting. I’ve also learned that we do a really good job for our students for the most part in our country. I think our biggest issue truly is poverty. Our biggest hurdle truly is addressing the challenges of poverty, and that’s true nationwide.
Dr. Lisa: I live in Yarmouth. I know in Yarmouth, not everybody is exceedingly wealthy. We definitely have a broad range of people. I think, sometimes that’s hard for people who maybe fall on the lower end of the income spectrum because Yarmouth, like Cape Elizabeth, there is more. There is more available to some but not to all. DO you see that that impacts the children in your classroom?
Talya: I do. I think the two communities are very similar. I think it can be really difficult especially as they get older and more aware of differences between their lifestyles. I think that can be really hard for some kids. I think that it can be really hard to make sure that we have the right services that catch the needs, that capture the needs of kids that might not have as fortunate of a situation.
Dr. Lisa: My observation of Maine, having lived here many years, having nine younger brothers and sisters who went through Maine schools, having three kids of my own going through Maine schools, and having my mother who is a teacher, as well as cousins, and uncles, and aunts is we do a really nice job with our educational system. Maybe we’re not perfect but we’re pretty good. I think we really want to be good. We really want our children to learn. Has that been your observation?
Talya: Absolutely. I think that there was such a difference when I came to Maine in terms of the culture and the attitudes that teachers have towards students. I think there’s just a level of respect for students and a level of caring for students that, for me, was very impressive. That wasn’t my experience in New York City. The other piece that I think we do a really good job with is having small class sizes so that there really are opportunities for individualized attention, and meeting kids’ needs on a one-to-one basis. That’s been really impressive.
I think we also have some pretty cutting edge ideas here. We have a strong network of very innovative teachers across the state, teachers who are really committing to integrating technology, and using technology not just for skill and drill experiences but really using technology to launch kids into 21st Century learning. There’s a lot of movement towards connecting classrooms across the state, and across the country, and even globally.
I think we have a very strong teacher leadership movement here as well. A lot of teachers that are understanding that their voices matter, and that they can speak to legislators, and that they can speak on behalf of their students and their profession. I think that that’s something that is fairly unique in Maine because we do have that small town feeling. People feel like they can know each other and talk to each other here.
Dr. Lisa: Talya, it’s been a pleasure to have you in today.
Talya: Yeah, thank you.
Dr. Lisa: I hope that people would take the time to read about you in Maine Magazine as one of your 50 Mainers, and maybe get to, I don’t know, stop in and say hello. You’re back in the classroom again in the fall. We’ve been speaking with Talya Edlund who is the 2016 Maine Teacher of the Year. I appreciate your coming in and taking the time to talk about this very important subject with me.
Talya: Yeah, thank you so much.
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Dr. Lisa: Our guests are interesting and that they are not teachers but that they work closely with the school systems in the areas of First LEGO Robotics and also, Odyssey of the Mind. Jim Eickmann is the engineering manager at the Corning Incorporated Life Sciences Plant in Kennebunk. He started working for Corning in 1999 after earning his BA in Physics and PhD in Optical Sciences. Since moving to Maine in 2009, Jim has been involved with science and technology in the community. In particular, he has enjoyed the opportunity to both increase interest among middle school students in STEM or Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, and help build their schools through programs such as First LEGO Robotics. Jim and his wife live with their two sons in Kennebunk. Thanks for coming in today.
Jim: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: We also have with us Keith Borkowski who is the plant controller at the Corning Incorporated Life Science Plant in Kennebunk. He joined Corning in 2012. Keith has been involved with Odyssey of the Mind for nine years in the town of Wells. His Odyssey of the Mind involvement started as a parent. He’s been coaching for the past seven years and the coordinator at the elementary school for the past five. To Keith, Odyssey of the Mind is a great way for kids to learn and display their STEAM skills or Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math skills. Keith and his wife, Margaret, live with their two daughters in Wells. Thank you for coming in.
Keith: Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: One of you is interesting in STEM and one in STEAM. I’m just fascinated. Are we now calling all things STEM STEAM or is there still a divergence of thought?
Jim: I think it’s more of an evolution from STEM to STEAM. It started as STEM and there was a lot of interest in the math and the sciences. Then, as people got interested in programs like robotics and Odyssey of the Mind, they saw that there was this creative element to things as well, not just the technical side of things. That’s where the A got added in. You do hear STEAM coming in a lot more now. You still hear STEM but STEAM coming in a lot more now too.
Dr. Lisa: What I wonder is, what’s left out? If you now have STEAM, is it just reading, and language arts, or history, or literal arts? Maybe this isn’t even a question that you guys can answer. I don’t know.
Keith: Yeah, STEM actually does cover those topics also because you need to be able to read the problems, understand them, and be able to take that and put it into your solution.
Dr. Lisa: I won’t ask you to understand the educational mind because I know that’s not exactly what you do. You both actually work for Corning Incorporated Life Sciences. Explain to me what that is.
Jim: We’re a division of Corning Incorporated. Our division is focused on making products that help the life sciences, or medical, or pharmaceutical industries. A lot of our products are used at universities to do research. They’re also used to produce a lot of things like vaccines and medicines. While we don’t make those types of vaccines or medicines, we make products that help companies make them.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, what is plant controller do.
Keith: I’m the one responsible for the financial reporting of the plant. Also, making sure that we follow all the legal aspects of finance and accounting.
Dr. Lisa: I’m interested, Jim, because you pointed out that it’s not a BS or a Bachelor of Science in Physics. You actually have a bachelor of arts. Is that unusual?
Jim: Yes. Most physics undergraduate degrees are a science degree. I attended a liberal arts college and there’s a lot of emphasis on not just your major but making sure that you got a broad exposure to a lot of different areas, science, arts, humanity. They weren’t calling it STEAM back them but it’s more of a STEAM-type of approach.
Dr. Lisa: What does it mean to have a PhD in Optical Sciences?
Jim: That was furthering my education trying to narrow down and focus. After having this broad exposure, I was really interested in how I can apply it. That’s where I looked to get a further degree. Optics was just an area that was very interesting to me. That’s what I pursued.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, as the plant control of what type of educational background do you have?
Keith: I have a BS in Accounting and I’ve also passed the CPA exam.
Dr. Lisa: It’s interesting, you guys cover all the different fields. We’ve got finances, and business, and we’ve got BA of the Liberal Arts. It’s seems like Corning is really meaning to bring in a lot of different pieces to do the work that they do.
Jim: There is a lot of-cross functional efforts. Keith and I, even though I’m in engineering and he’s in finance, we work quite a bit together both collaboratively and trying to help each other understand what’s going on in the different functions in our plant.
Dr. Lisa: I guess, the reason I’m so interested in this is because we talked a lot about STEM and STEAM. Eventually, kids get out of the educational system and they get jobs. I’m wondering how each of you got to the place where you now are employed and essentially a science-related field.
Jim: For me, I was always interested in science or the way things work from getting on a microscope when I was little to just reading books about how things work, and things like that. I knew I wanted to somehow end up in sciences. After getting my PhD, I knew I wanted to be in applied science or engineering. Corning was a great fit for that career interest for me.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, how about you? Was there something about working within the scientific field even though what you do is financial?
Keith: Yeah, for the life sciences industry, it’s really interesting to me to see what the products can do now, and all the changes, and evolution that’s going on in the industry. Currently, my daughter is at Brown University. She’s getting firsthand knowledge of all the changes. She’s right at that forefront of what’s going on. It was great for me to get into the life sciences industry to see what was going into the industry at this point in time.
Dr. Lisa: Both of you are doing things that I think are somewhat new to the educational scene, at least, in Maine. I believe Odyssey of the Mind has been around longer than the first LEGO Robotics Program but this type of in the school’s effort to encourage kids to do things with science, technology, arts, engineering, and math, this is somewhat new within the last few decades, I would say. Why do we care? Why do we want to get kids doing things that are not just classroom-oriented to help get them interested?
Jim: I think there’s several reasons. One is I think, as you said, they need to be prepared for a job or for a career. There is a great need for those STEM skills in the industry. We’re always looking for engineers now, and there’s a lot of talk around just the scarceness of engineering resources in the US, in general. I think schools recognize that they needed to help prepare and fill that void. The programs like the Robotics or Odyssey of the Mind really help develop those at practical skills outside of just the classroom teaching.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, tell me about Odyssey of the Mind. What does that actually involve?
Keith: Odyssey of the Mind is a creative program where the kids are responsible for the understanding the problems that they will solve and coming up with their own solutions 100%. There’s no interaction with the parents. We can teach them skills like how to saw, or how to use a drill, but they have to come up with all of the aspect themselves. They actually have to take the problem. There’s five different types of problems. They’ll take one problem and that will be what they’ll work on for the full year. That’s a long-term problem. This year, my team is working on the vehicle problem. They have to build a vehicle that can hold two kids, be propelled without cycling, no pedaling by human, and travel a course, and pick up several different items to be adapted.
What’s great for me is that it starts with the kids have to do it all themselves. I also coach soccer. At that point in time, you’re telling the kids what to do. In this, the kids have to actually go out and do the program themselves.
Dr. Lisa: How about you, what about the First LEGO Robotics Program?
Jim: First, it has very similar core values to Odyssey of the Mind in the respect that the kids should be doing the work. They come up with the solutions for the problems. The coaches are there to help or teach basic skills but it’s really relying on the kids to define the problem and come up with some creative solution to it. In the case of, first, the problem is a little bit more defined in terms of there’s one problem of robotic competition or a robotic challenge that all of the teams work on, the same problem. The creativity, the variety of solutions is pretty amazing when you see how one team solves it compared to another team, but it’s always the kids working to come and figure out how to solve the problem.
Dr. Lisa: Heidi Kirn is our Art Director for Maine Home Design. From what I understand you brought her daughter along with an entire team of kids to St. Louis because, for the second time, your team was the state champions in the First LEGO Robotics Competition. That’s big deal there.
Jim: Yeah, it was. It was a very big deal and a very exciting trip. We had ten kids that this was their second year together on a team which is also unusual and their second year winning the state championship which I think is unusual too. The trip was to the World Festival in St. Louis. The first organization which does First LEGO Robotics and a couple of other programs for high school and elementary students has this World Festival each year. It’s the largest convention in St. Louis, 40,000 people, and close to 1000 different teams of kids there. The kids had a great time and it was very exciting to get to see all the other teams from 40 different countries around the world.
Dr. Lisa: These kids that you brought were seventh and eighth grade.
Jim: Yes. Yeah. The age group for LEGO Robotics run from eight to fourteen. This was there last year of eligibility. They’re all in thirteen to fourteen years.
Dr. Lisa: How about Odyssey of the Mind, what’s the age breakdown on that?
Keith: The bracket that we’re in this year is division two, and it’s sixth to eighth graders. The seven kids in my team are all in sixth grade. As a first year division two team, they ended up winning the state title.
Dr. Lisa: Is there some a national festival or competition that you are going to as well?
Keith: Yes. We’ll be going out May 24th through the 29th to Iowa State University. We’ll be competing in the World Finals. There would be approximately 820 teams from, I believe it’s 25 different countries will be out there. We’ll be competing against teams like Poland, and China, Mexico.
Dr. Lisa: Why is it that the Kennebunk-Wells areas seems to be doing so well in these competitions for the state?
Jim: I know in Kennebunk, I think, what I’ve seen over the last five years is really a rapid increase in interest in the First LEGO Program. I think that interest, by not just the students but the parents and the rest of the community to support it because it does take a lot of work to do these programs, really has helped with the success. The first year, five years ago that I did the program, I believe they were out 20 or 25 kids in the district that were in the program. This past year, there were over a hundred. It’s really grown dramatically. It takes a lot of support to do that and the community as well have gotten behind it, as well as the school district.
Dr. Lisa: How about Wells?
Keith: Wells has had a long tradition with the Odyssey of the Mind including a couple of the board members for Odyssey of the Mind actually still resides in Wells and did the program with their kids, I don’t want to date them, but 20 or 30 years ago. We had some fairly good success and it was over the last 10 years.
Dr. Lisa: I think when I was growing up, science wasn’t as, I’ll use the word sexy. Let’s just put that out there. It wasn’t as appealing that we didn’t have as many kids. We had a math team, we had literary magazine, but that wasn’t the same as what I’ve interest science and technology. Why has that changed?
Keith: I know one reason is the technology itself makes it more accessible. The LEGO Robotics kids for example are completely different from any LEGOs I ever played with growing up. Technology that’s a part of those is pretty amazing. To make it accessible and usable by students that are eight to fourteen year olds, without that, it would be hard to get them as interested.
Jim: I believe a lot of the careers these days are actually tied into the sciences and technology especially with the evolution of the computers and the chips. I think there is just that need where kids have to have that going into a lot of the career these days.
Dr. Lisa: Why does LEGO care about robotics? Why the connection between those two things?
Jim: The robotics competition came out of the first organization which was founded Dean Kamen. He’s an innovator who invented things like the Segway and several other medical devices actually. I’m not sure of the history but I think he partnered with LEGO because it makes it accessible, it helps make the technology accessible to kids that may have already been used to playing with LEGOs. LEGO itself has always been a toy that’s geared towards creativity and getting children to design and invent on their own. The boxes come with instructions but you don’t have to follow them in order to play with the toy.
Dr. Lisa: I think that’s true. I don’t know how many times I would step on LEGOs as they were scattered across the floor. The children didn’t spend all that much time making them. I think the first time was the time that they made them, they thought they were supposed to make them into. Then, after that, they just did their own thing which is actually pretty great.
Jim: It fits well with the mission of First and the whole trying to get kids involved in a problem solving, and creativity, and technology.
Dr. Lisa: How about Odyssey of the Mind, how did that come to be?
Keith: Odyssey of the Mind was started back in 1978, I believe, by a Professor Nicholas down in New Jersey, and he’d actually given his college course kids a problem to try to solve which was to build a device that would walk across water without falling into the water. From there, he started the organization and has been going on since then.
Dr. Lisa: Each of you have children. Jim, you have two sons. Keith, you have two daughters. How has your interest in science trickled down? I guess, Keith, you said your daughter is at Brown now.
Keith: Correct. My daughter went through the Odyssey of the Mind Program, started in fifth grade, and went through eighth grade. She went out two world finals and actually won world finals in eighth grade. Then, decided with her high school workload, she wanted to not do the program as a participant anymore, but she was on the board of directors for Odyssey of the Mind as a student representative, and helped out in all of the events and the tournaments all through high school.
Dr. Lisa: How about your other daughter?
Keith: She started in second grade. This is her fifth year and this will be her fourth year going out to the world finals.
Dr. Lisa: What does your wife think about all these?
Keith: When it’s not the season, it’s okay. During the season, it eats a lot of time trying to coordinate, especially the kids have such busy schedules these days. Kids in my team do track, baseball, football, dance, math club. There’s a lot of things that you’re trying to juggle, and make it so that all seven kids can meet at the same time.
Dr. Lisa: How about you? What does your family think of these whole situation?
Jim: It’s not just for my wife or my family, it’s a big time commitment, as Keith said. I know, for us, we practice five or six hours a week pretty much September through April. That’s as much or more of a commitment than a lot of other activities or sports. It’s a busy time, for sure, and it makes you appreciate the times when you’re not busy doing those activities.
Dr. Lisa: How do your sons experience science?
Jim: They’re both very interested in it. I appreciate that they’re both well-rounded. My older son, unfortunately, when we moved to Maine, the Robotics Program hadn’t really gotten up to speed yet. He wasn’t able to participate at the same level as my younger son, but they both enjoy science and are very curious by nature. It fits well with them.
Dr. Lisa: They way you’re describing it, it sounds like a sport. It sounds like, you’re right, you’re practicing even more than your average, say, swim team and the season is probably longer than your average swim season which as a swim parent I know, that’s a long season. How do you keep your interest and energy up, especially where you both have full time jobs at Corning?
Keith: For me, keeping energy up is when you see the rewards of what the kids come out with it. I’ve had parents come up to me afterwards and say that from the beginning of the year to the end of the year, they’ve seen such a change in their child whether it’d be the interaction with other kids or their desire to go off and learn something. It’s really about where the kids grow and what you’re doing for the kids, and not just telling them how to learn it but watching as they learn how to learn. That’s what they’re going to need as they grow up and go to college.
Dr. Lisa: How about you, Jim?
Jim: Yeah, I think, as Keith mentioned, the rewards, to me, really make it an energy gain. It’s not something that drains the energy. Really, it’s easy to keep the energy up because seeing them work through problems, seeing light bulbs go off, or seeing them having fun working together, these kids aren’t always friends before they get on a team and new friendships form. All those types of things really just fuel the energy and make it easy to keep going.
Dr. Lisa: What does Corning thing of the work that you’re doing in these schools?
Jim: Corning has been great. They’ve been a great supporter both in allowing Keith and I, or at least, I know from my state, allowing us to take the time to do it because it is some time commitment, and we can’t wait necessarily until the end of the workdays. Sometimes it cuts into the workday even to do the work. From a time perspective and understanding that we have other things to do, they’ve been great, but also financially. Corning and the Corning Foundation has made several donations to the Robotics Program, to our team in particular. Obviously, it costs a lot of money to transport 14 or 15 people halfway across the country, and they really help make all that possible.
Keith: Both Corning Corporation and the Plant have been very good for my experience in Odyssey of the Mind. A combination of (a), giving me the time and allowing me the time to go off, and do the teaching that I need to do, and have the meeting stored in the week, but they’ve also been very supportive with shipping props out whether it’d would be Iowa or Michigan State, and also for the financial donations to help us defray the cost of going out to the competition.
Dr. Lisa: Do you feel this type of support from a corporation or a company, do you feel like this is unusual the interaction and support with the school system?
Keith: I don’t know how unusual it is but I think it’s something that more and more companies are looking at and are doing both from the standpoint of being good members of their community, but also from a somewhat selfish standpoint of Corning as a technology company. Corning has an interest in fueling the growth and development of the next of technology people.
Dr. Lisa: Jim, how can people find out about the First LEGO Robotics Program?
Jim: On the web, you can go to usfirst.org. There’s also a Maine Robotics Organization that’s run out of Augusta I believe. They do a lot with LEGO Robotics. They coordinate the state and regional tournaments in Maine. They also offer things like summer camps with LEGO robotic.
Dr. Lisa: Keith, how can people find out about Odyssey of the Mind?
Keith: There’s a couple of different things. In the State of Maine, there’s actually a Maine Odyssey of the Mind website, it’s meodysseyofthemind.com. For the national organization, it’s odysseyofhemind.com.
Dr. Lisa: I appreciate all that work that you’re doing in your communities. I think that it really makes me feel happy that you’ve dedicated so much time and energy to helping kids get excited about science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. I hope that people will take the time to learn more about these programs whether just on a general sense or for their own children.
We’ve been speaking with Jim Eickmann who is the Engineering Manager at the Corning Incorporated Life Sciences Plant in Kennebunk. Also, who works with the First LEGO Robotics Program in his town, Kennebunk. We’ve also been speaking with Keith Borkowski who is the Plant Controller at the Corning Incorporated Life Science Plant. Keith is also a coach with the Odyssey of the Mind team in Wells. I appreciate all the work you’re doing in the community. I also I appreciate, I think, specifically bringing Heidi Kirn’s daughter out there two years in a row, Jim. I know she’s gotten a lot out of it. I hope many more good things will come out of Odyssey of the Mind, and also the First LEGO Robotics Program in your area.
Keith: Thank you, Lisa.
Jim: Thank you very much.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve been listening to Love Maine Radio, show number 256: Engaging in Education. Our guest have included Jim Eickmann, Keith Borkowski, and Tanya Edlund. For more information on our guest and extended interviews, visit lovemaineradio.com. Love Maine Radio is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our e-newsletter and like our Love Maine Radio Facebook page.
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Announcer: Love Maine Radio is made possible with the support of Berlin City Honda, The Rooms by Harding Lee Smith, Maine Magazine, Portland Art Gallery, and Art Collector Maine. Audio production and original music have been provided by Spencer Albee. Our editorial producer is Paul Koenig. Our assistant producer is Shelbi Wassick. Our community development manager is Casey Lovejoy. Our executive producers are Kevin Thomas, Susan Grisanti, and Dr. Lisa Belisle. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, please visit us at lovemaineradio.com. Here’s a preview of next week’s interview with Lucas St. Clair
Dr. Lisa: Having spent quite a bit of time in Northern Maine and driving back and forth to Northern Maine and having been to Nantucket and Kathdin, it takes a while to get there. It’s a hike.
Lucas: Yeah. I went there yesterday morning. I spent the whole day on the East Branch of the Penobscot. I drove the loop road in the proposed park, did a small hike, and then drove home. I was back by 8:30.
Dr. Lisa: You don’t think that being that far north should be any impediment?
Lucas: No. National parks, by nature, are in rural places but it’s to drive to Arcadia from here, it takes the same amount of time to take the drive to the proposed park. When you think about where we are situated in the country, there are 90 million people within a day’s drive of the Kathdin region. It’s a quarter of the population in United States. Then, you think about when people come into the United States from Europe especially, Boston, New York, Washington DC, those are points. To have natural parks very close to those areas, I think, would really drop people to Northern Maine.
The Park Service gets about 20 million visitors a year from Europe alone. If they fly to the East Coast, they would very likely come to Northern Maine. When you look at a map of where national parks are, there’s Arcadia and there’s isn’t another one until the Shenandoah all the way down to Virginia, in this very dense part of the United States. It feels like a long day drive to shoot up there for the day. If someone is on vacation, the family is on vacation, they’re excited to go to Arcadia, they’re likely go to Bangor, and an hour to Arcadia, and then an hour to the North Woods. It seems like a trip. That’s going to keep people in Maine longer, in Penobscot County longer. I think that people certainly go.
Dr. Lisa: It seems like there’s an actual process that, I guess, communities go through when you’re proposing a national park and getting to the place where the community lies in, but there’s also a process that you have to go through that’s fairly logistical. It has to do with the federal government. Describe that for me and what’s that been like for you.
Lucas: Sure. There are two ways to create units of the National Park Service and there are, I think, almost thirty different units of the Park Services, the national parks, there’s the national seashores. There’s national monuments. There are national historic parks, battlefields, reserves, preserves, and there all have various different areas that they protect. There’s two ways to create those units. One, the president can do it or the congress can do it.
For a long time, we worked on a bill, a piece of legislation that would be introduced by a congressional delegation and pass through congress. We worked on that for several years. We drafted a piece of legislation, we worked with our congressional delegation, and we worked with people in the Katahdin regions and say, “Are we addressing your needs within this piece of legislation?” As we address more and more the concerns and the needs, more and more support grew, and our congressional delegation became more interested and intrigued by the idea.
In the end, we wanted to do something to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the National Park Service which is here this year, 2016. We were putting pressure on our delegation saying, “2016 is the year so we really want to have the introduction of legislation then.” They weren’t ready. They weren’t willing. We worked on that last fall, the fall of 2015 with them. When we got signals that they weren’t going to introduce the legislation, we started to have conversations with the White House and said, “Okay, if we can’t do it this way, we’ll go to the President and see if he will do it.”
In order to have the President do it, he can use the 1906 Antiquities Act which creates a national monument. It can be administered by the Park Service. That’s what our goal is now. About half of the national parks that were created were initially created as a national monument. Acadia was done, Woodrow Wilson, President Wilson in 1916 used the Antiquities Act to create Acadia or it was called Sieur de Monts National Monument. The Grand Canyon, Zion, the Olympic Mountains, all of the big parks in Alaska, they’re all created by being a monument first. Often times then, it’s followed up with a piece of legislation that creates the national park.
That’s the path that we’re on now hoping that the President will use the 1906 Antiquities Act to create a national monument. We will transfer the land that we own to the National Park Service and we’ll also provide a $40 million endowment for operations and maintenance of the park. You’ll often times hear about a backlog of maintenance and the parks can’t pay for themselves. It’s a challenge that we saw that needed to be addressed. The foundation will donate that $40 million to take care of the operations and maintenance so it will essentially pay for itself.
We are hoping that support continues to grow. Senator King has had a public meeting. Almost 1300 people came to it. There was about 12 or about 1100 people in support of it. It was a great showing of support. Congressman Pollock went and had a congressional field hearing in East Millinocket. About 60 people spoke at that and 47 of them were in support, included elected officials in the local towns. Both King and Congressman Pollock have heard that there’s more support than opposition in the region. They’re moving into a more comfortable space but in the end, it will be the President’s decision and we’re getting signals from people that work for him that it’s positive and we’re moving in the right direction but we don’t know anything definitively yet.
Dr. Lisa: Is there a bit of a time crunch given that he’s an outgoing president?
Lucas: Yeah. When we have a new president, there will be a new Secretary of Interior, and a new Director of Park Service, and all the people of the council for Environmental Forest …
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