Media contact: Noelle Lemoine, communications assistant; tele: (413) 597-4277; email: [email protected]
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., June 16, 2003–Williams College will formally announce the recipients of its 2003 Bicentennial Olmsted Awards at a Williams College ceremony on Tuesday, June 17.
The Olmsted Awards are given annually to a teacher or group of teachers at each of the three public schools supported by Williamstown. The winning teacher or group at each school receives $5,000 to be used for professional or curricular development.
This year’s project winners are: (Williamstown Elementary) Susan Hyde and Harriet Neiman for “Audio-Library”; Susan Pleines for “Kids’ Kites Kits”; Jane Culnane, Becky Meier, Sue O’Riley, Kate Seid, and Lisa Shannon for “Shakespeare Fourth Grade Residency”; Joelle Brookner, Mindy Hackner, Susan Hyde, Madeline Levy, Harriet Neiman, Paula Plock, David Rempell, and Tom Welch for “Williamstown Students’ Book Award.” (Mt.Greylock) Mike Caraco for “The Next Steps for Mt. Greylock Math”; and (McCann) Barbara Malkas for “Using Problem-based Learning to Meet the Science & Technology/Engineering Standards.”
The grant to the Williamstown Elementary School will provide funding for four projects.
Continuation of the Shakespeare residency program allows teachers to explore nontraditional teaching methods through their interaction with the professional actors from Shakespeare and Company. Through the program, fourth-grade students learn about Shakespeare and his time, work on a rehearsal performance of a Shakespearean play, and explore Elizabethan and literary vocabulary.
The purchase of audio materials for the school’s library will support fourth, fifth, and sixth-grade literature curricula. The audio materials will help make literature more accessible to students who are auditory learners or who have limited reading ability.
The kite project will give more than 100 students kite building kits and the opportunity to learn about aerodynamics, gravity, and the life of Ben Franklin.
The Williamstown Students’ Book Award program is designed to promote reading. Each year, a committee of adults nominates 12 books for consideration and the elementary school and town libraries make multiple copies of each available to students in grades five and six. The students vote for their favorite and the winning book is honored at a themed ceremony.
The grant to Mt. Greylock will allow the school’s math department to incorporate Computer Algebra Systems (CAS) into its classrooms. The grant will cover the cost of training the school’s math teachers to use CAS, which can simplify expressions, solve equations, and take derivatives.
The grant to McCann will facilitate the development of a problem-based technology and engineering curriculum to fulfill the requirements of the Massachusetts Science and Technology/Engineering Curriculum Framework. Problem-based learning, which is intended to be more pragmatic than traditional education, provides students with opportunities to work in teams toward solving applied problems. Ten teachers, representing both academic and technical disciplines, will develop the new curriculum this summer. Next year, teachers will teach a pilot version of the new curriculum.
The Bicentennial Olmsted Awards are funded by an endowment from the estates of George Olmsted, Jr. ’24 and his wife, Frances. They were established during the 1993 Williams Bicentennial Celebration as an extension of the national Olmsted Prizes. The national Olmsted Prizes are awarded each year to secondary school teachers from across the country who are nominated by the Williams senior class. Olmsted, a lifelong proponent of superior teaching, was the president and chairman of the board of the S. D. Warren (Paper) Company.
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Published June 16, 2003
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