Oxford Hills Middle School students who attended Roberts Farm programming as Oxford Elementary School fifth graders helped celebrate SAD 17’s new experiential learning classroom during its ribbon-cutting ceremony last Friday. Pictured from left: students Emma Marston and Ava Tripp; SAD 17 Superintendent Heather Manchester; Healthy Oxford Hills Director Holly Legee-Cressman; and student Emily Desjardins. Nicole Carter / Advertiser Democrat

NORWAY — Maine School Administrative District 17 officially celebrated completion of its Roberts Farm Experiential Learning facility during a ribbon-cutting ceremony last week.

The project happened in a whirlwind starting in 2023, when district officials unveiled a plan to replace the aging and degraded modular class used for the last 14 years for experiential learning programs at Roberts Farm Preserve in Norway, with the help of $890,000 in American Rescue Plan Act funding.

While it was the adults in the area – educators, voters, contractors and designers, that pushed the project through on a tight schedule (it had to be completed by the end of the 2024 calendar year), students from Oxford Elementary School were also instrumental in raising awareness and rallying the community to the cause.

Those students, now seventh graders at Oxford Hills Middle School, were on hand for the ribbon-cutting and recognized for their contributions that are making outdoor education an ever increasing part of their peers’ learning.

Two years ago the kids, members of Melissa Guerrette’s fifth grade class at Oxford Elementary School, were part of the districtwide cohort that regularly attends programming held at Roberts Farm.

With a modernized facility for science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) at stake, Guerrette saw it as an opportunity to further engage her class not just in their curriculum but also to gain real-life experience in community development.

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“I saw an ideal opportunity for student-centered learning that would include community connections,” Guerrette explains. “When told there was prospect of building a new classroom, they were immediately interested and highly motivated. The project took on a life of its own – they believed it to be their own idea from the very first day, so I ran with it!”

Oxford Hills Outdoor Learning Coach Sarah Timms (left) reads the op-ed letter written by former Oxford Elementary School student Desmond Martel and published in the Advertiser Democrat in 2023, advocating for a new STEM classroom at Roberts Farm in Norway. Also pictured, Wes Nugteren, Healthy Oxford Hills program specialist and educator. Nicole Carter / Advertiser Democrat

Guerrette began facilitating a process where her students brainstormed, researched and composed persuasive pieces for various audiences, to advocate for the new building.

“Their work was done inside of the grade-level literacy units about opinion writing and research-based reading” she continued. “Instead of using the topics and articles included in the packaged curriculum materials, we used authentic resources from this community.”

Through their unit, the students developed strategic perspectives on outdoor learning.

They worked with the school’s math coach to learn about conducting surveys. They crafted, distributed and collected questionnaires from students and teachers of all eight elementary schools in Oxford Hills, and analyzed the data. They recorded interviews with SAD 17 administrators and Roberts Farm staffers and met with the architects, and assigned a subcommittee to study why the old modular unit was no longer adequate for programming.

“The students also had to gather and organize specific information (about outdoor ed) and/or quotations that would support their position.” Guerrette said. “And once they had drafted their arguments, they had to work with real feedback and revisit their word choice and language.”

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The final steps were to apply what they learned into communications mediums of their choosing, with the focus to convince adults in the community to vote in favor of the referendum supporting the new building at Roberts Farm Preserve, which took place during June 2023’s state and local elections.

“All of the students created persuasive products, even though some did not choose to submit their finished product for publication,” she said. “Two collaborated to make a persuasive video that was shared via social media. Another published an op-ed article in the Sun Journal/Advertiser Democrat, and two others delivered speeches at a virtual Healthy Oxford Hills meeting.”

For Guerrette, the challenge was to guide the students to commit significant amounts of time and energy in an important community matter that included grown-up interactions of interviewing adults and experts, analyzing data and public speaking.

Students from the 2022-23 school year at Roberts Farm in Norway. The class had embarked on a multi-faceted community development unit to support constructing a modernized STEM classroom at the preserve, as project representatives from construction and architectural partners Callahan and Placework look on. Nicole Carter / Advertiser Democrat

“As their teacher, the biggest win was that they had a real reason to use their literacy skills, they saw first-hand that their voices have power, and they’ll remember that they contributed to the community in this way,” she said. “We’re incredibly fortunate to have the community partnerships we do and have such an amazing space in Roberts Farm to support experiential learning.

“The opportunity to bring students to Roberts Farm is excellent because our community is a beautiful natural space and our surroundings offer a bountiful environment for curricular tie-ins. It’s important because we can expose students to traditions, pastimes, culture, and histories of our community and the indigenous inhabitants of the land.

“But there’s a third quality about time shared at Roberts Farm that’s a little harder to explain without experiencing it. When we share common time and experiences at Roberts Farm, we get all the benefits of hands-on learning, physical activity, and connection to the place we live. And we also get an opportunity to connect on a human level with one another in this setting, too.”

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