Nobleboro’s Educators in Residence: Noah and Nelson
This winter marks Noah’s third year at Nobleboro Central School and Nelson’s second year at the school. The staff and students of Nobleboro have been so incredibly welcoming to both of us since our return, and it is those positive responses that really make the EIR program such a wonderful experience.
Nobleboro Central School is a very small school, with approximately 150 students in grades K-8, but that seems to bring the school closer together, creating a supportive and community based environment for the students to learn in and the teachers to work in. It is this environment that has enabled the EIR program to operate so successfully at Nobleboro; by attending basketball games and working to include ourselves in the community of Nobleboro we have been able to create deeper connections with the staff and students.
On a day to day basis, we sit in on classes in the Center for Alternative Learning (CAL), in the middle school wing of the building, and with the other classes, trying (and sometimes failing) to minimize the size of the distraction we create. Beyond the afterschool program that we run, we are always in the cafeteria for lunch, helping out by opening milk cartons, persuading the kindergartens to eat their food, and talking to the middle schoolers about their favorite fruits, vegetables, or type of precipitation.
Every day tons of students come up to us to tell us how unbelievably excited they are to come to the afterschool program that we run. Each day we have a couple grades after school for about an hour of eating healthy snacks, playing outside, and conversation. This program has exploded this year with approximately 15 students attending every day.
This year promises to once again be a blast, especially with the boys’ and girls’ basketball teams fresh off their back-to-back victories against Bristol and Wiscasset. We are excited to keep expanding the popularity of our afterschool program and to dig even deeper into the community here at the Nobleboro Central School.