Teachers honored with prestigious awards

     Two NEARI teacher members walked away with honors this week in their fields of study. Edwin Calouro, Bristol-Warren, became the third state winner of an Abraham Lincoln Fellowship from The Horace Mann Companies, and Shannon Donovan, Scituate, is one of four winners of this year’s prestigious Senator John H. Chafee Conservation Leadership Awards from the Environment Council of Rhode Island.
     Calouro will join 49 other colleagues – one from each state – in a five-day learning experience centered around the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield, Illinois. Participants will study Lincoln’s life and legacy through classes, field trips, and a variety of other activities. This is the third year of the program – previous Rhode Island winners were Cynthia Perry (2007) and Elizabeth King (2006), both teachers in Portsmouth.
     Donovan’s Community Energy Education Project (CEED) began as a curriculum for high-school freshmen, but has grown to encompass the entire school and community. Science students learn about environment and energy issues, research how these issues affect their local community, and practice presentation techniques to communicate their findings. The project culminates in an annual “Energy Night” when the students share their results with the community. This program has become a model for other schools that participate in the National Energy Education Development Project.