KHS LIBRARY TABLE REFINISHING
KENNEBUNK LAND TRUST TRIBUTARY BRIDGES
KHS ART CLASS DRAWING HORSES
CENTER FOR WILDLIFE ENRICHMENT
KHS COURTYARD PICNIC TABLES
OCEAN TRASH "5 SENSES" PROJECT
EMMONS HOUSE RESTORATION
The renovation/restoration of the Emmons House started in September in 2022. The house is located on the property of the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust Headquarters. The house is going to be used as an Alt Ed "classroom" and as a place for visitors to stay while they visit the trust. Mr. Sharood has been guiding the students through the process from getting funding for the project to replacing floors and windows. We all have been working hard on the renovation and it's amazing how far we've come. We can't wait to experience the final product.
BIRD FEEDER KIT BUILD
An independent project this year was building bird feeder kits for one of the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust's field trips. We all helped the kindergarten students put together the bird feeders using drills. For many of them, it was their first experience with power tools. They loved it and we had fun teaching them how to use the tools safely. Hopefully lots of birds will come to snack at their bird feeders this spring!
COMMUNITY HARVEST MEAL PREPARATION
For Christmas, we went to St. Martha’s Church to help with holiday meal prep for Community Harvest's Noel Dinner. We packed plates, napkins, and bags while the other amazing volunteers helped cook and bring food to folks in need. The experience of giving back to the community during the holidays is one that means a lot to us. We hope to make it an annual tradition!
CS3 CHRISTMAS PARTY SHOPPING
During the holidays, we took a trip to Walmart to buy some gifts for children in our community. Each of our groups was given a list for a kid with their clothing size and boot/shoe size and interests. We spent some time looking for gifts that we thought he kids would all enjoy. Everyone in Alt Ed loved this and are eager to do it again. The gifts were distributed and CS3's annual holiday party.
LEAF BOX
One of the indepdent projects during first quarter was the design and build of the leaf box for the maintenance department. The folks driving the trucks will suck up all of the leaves on the school properties and contain them in the box so that they can be moved to compost piles off campus.
COCOONS LONGHOUSE
At Cocoons we made an Abenaki Longhouse and made a new trail to get to it. We cleared out saplings from a property off site and carried them through the trail. We used birch trees to create a solid frame and then weaved saplings throughout the frame to create an enclosed structure. We then stripped birch bark off of the posts to use as protection from weather and rain on the roof. At the end, we invited all of the preschool students to come see the longhouse. We had a fire and sang songs. The end result was rewarding and the whole process was an amazing experience.
COMMUNITY GARDEN RAISED BEDS
One of our biggest community partners is Kiauna Community Gardens. We have built almost all of the raised beds at both community gardens in town. They have recently asked us to make 22 more as the ones that they made out of hemlock have not held up so well. Quite a few of our students have helped put these together for them.
UNIFIED BOCCE COURT BUILD
We do a lot of work with the Unified teams at Kennebunk High School. For the new bocce team, we are building a permanent outdoor bocce ball court. While this is one of our smaller projects, it has made a huge difference for our unified sports teams.
CONSOLIDATED SCHOOL OUTDOOR CLASSROOM
In the spring of 2022, the RSU21 Facilities Department reached out about the possibility of the program helping to weed, remulch, and plant new plants at Consolidated School's Outdoor Classroom. After several days of work and many popsicles later, the finished product looks beautiful. We hope that students at Consolidated will enjoy the space for many years to come.
SEASHORE TROLLEY MUSEUM GRAPHIC DESIGN
Alternative Education students are working with the SeaShore Trolly Museum. Students worked to build shelving units, and worked digitally to help promote the Museum on social media. The Seashore Trolly Museum is a museum located in Kennebunk and is dedicated to storing and telling the history of trolleys in the world. The museum is home to one of the largest trolley museums in the world.
COMMUNITY OUTREACH SERVICES FLYERS
Alternative Education students worked with Community Outreach Services to help create flyers that would be hung up around Kennebunk to let others know about their services. COS helps provide people in town with food, heating and other necessities that may not be accessible to some. We helped create flyers about their specific needs program. Their fueling program, and their food donation program. Students partnered with Michelle Allen to help create flyers to spread the word about these programs.
For more information visit: www.coskennebunks.org
GAME CAMERA DATA COLLECTION
Students worked with the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust to collect data on the Emmons Preserve and the Meadow Woods Preserve. Students placed Game Cameras at 4 separate locations to observe wildlife activity. Throughout the course of four months, students collected pictures of deer, raccoon, coyote, squirrel, geese, bobcat, and turkey.
Data was reported to the conservation trust in an effort to document wildlife movement patterns on the new trust trails and properties.
LOBSTER TRAP COMPOST BINS
The Alternative Education students created compost bins out of lobster traps and gave them to people in Kennebunk, Maine. It took about two months to finish this project, there were 100 compost bins that needed to be created and given away. We also made a handout to explain what can go into the compost bins and what can’t go in them. It also explained the science behind the compost bins. We worked with the Kennebunk Compost Working Group to get this project completed.
OUTDOOR CLASSROOMS FOR RSU21
Students worked with district principals to design outdoor classrooms for all schools in RSU21 at the beginning of the 2021 school year. The outdoor classrooms allowed to students to engage in class projects, group discussions, and restorative circles outside of the school building. All materials for the outdoor classrooms were generously donated by Bob and Linda Zuke.
SIA'S GARDEN
In memory of Sia, a KES student who passed away last year, we worked on a fairy garden for Kennebunk Elementary School. We built and installed wind chimes, a trellis, and bird houses. We listened to the radio as we worked on what Sia would have loved, it was an amazing opportunity and I think I speak for everyone when I say we were grateful to work on the garden.
Photo from Seacoastonline.com article.
KENNEBUNK REC DAY CARE PROJECT
When the Kennebunk Rec Daycare shut down we were tasked with organizing the contents of the building. We sorted what could be donated to other daycares and preschools and what had to be trashed over the course of a week. We ended up donating multiple tubs of toys and different playhouse equipment to different centers all around our area.
FITNESS TRAIL
The fit trail is a .33 mile long trail located at the Kennebunkport Conservation Trust headquarters, it has ten stations with exercises that can suit different ages and abilities. This project has been going on for three years now. The ribbon cutting ceremony will be in the Spring of 2020.
Interested in sponsoring a station or donating to the project? Email us, jholmes@rsu21.net.
ARUNDEL PARKS AND REC
Students have been working on a storage shed for the Arundel Parks and Rec Department. The shed will store equipment for the recreation programs. It is located on the side of the ML Day school in Arundel. This has been an ongoing project in which the students have learned the basics of carpentry.
COMMUNITY GARDEN RAISED BEDS
In the winter of 2019, students built 10 cedar raised beds for Kennebunk's Community Gardeners. In the spring, students filled the raised beds with super soil, which will help the gardeners grow produce, which will be donated to local food banks and shelters.
The beds are located at the Holland Road Community Garden.
PARSONS BEACH PICK UP
Holy. Crap.
At the end of quarter three, Alternative Education students came together to do something significant and help the ocean. This ties in with the theme of quarter three, Ocean Health; which focused on the problems facing the Gulf of Maine as an ecosystem. Two of the things that we focused on trying to reduce were plastics and invasive Green Crabs. What we found surprised all of us. 75% of the trash we collected was... DOG POOP BAGS. Yuck.
EASTERN TRAIL SIGNS
The latest project was making sandwich boards for the Eastern Trail. The Alt. Ed Program worked with Nancy Borg and she is on the staff of the Eastern Trail Alliance. The Eastern Trail is a community walking and biking path. The sandwich boards were built in order to communicate information to people on the trail. The boards are placed at important locations. The project was finished in May 2018.
STEM LAB SHELVES
Alternative Education students took a bit of time to make shelves for both the STEM Lab, and the science department at KHS in an effort to aid them in settling in to their new classrooms with lots of space to store materials.
TROLLEY MUSEUM PATHWAY
The students in the Alternative Education program worked in partnership with Kurt Hissong, to recreate a pathway from the trolleys to the back trolley barn at the Seashore Trolley Museum. The pathway was created in the 1970's but has since overgrown with weeds and grass. The students spread new stone dust, donated by Hissong, onto the path and lined the path with edging to prevent future overgrowth.
LITTLE BOAT THAT COULD
"The Little Boat That Could", a partnership between Alternative Education, The Kennebunkport Conservation Trust, The Landing School, and Educational Passages, has been featured in several newspapers and on Channel 13 News! Click the links to read the articles and watch the clip!
Josh Ellis, the project manager on the boat project, also wrote a press release and summary of the project. See the links below to learn more!
"I have figured out what I want to do after high school because of this class. A lot of the career exploration components are really useful....just gathering data and assessing what's good and what's not when you are looking at college and career schools...checking around and asking questions is something you don't do in normal school."
- Josh Ellis '17