By linda denicola
Staff Writer
FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP — Three innovative school projects have been recognized by the Freehold Township Foundation for Educational Excellence and will be awarded grants totaling $4,000. The winners of the 2002 Small Grant awards were announced at the Board of Education’s Dec. 10 meeting.
School district Business Administrator Sean Boyce said the foundation has awarded 31 educational grants to date and gifted more than $30,000 to Freehold Township’s K-8 schools.
"The foundation is a wonderful thing for the school system. They raise money and award it to teachers to implement their own ideas," Boyce said.
All of the projects are cooperative, some involving two teachers and others involve a number of teachers from across disciplines. According to a release from the foundation, the creative faculty members are Anitra Pontillilo and Kim Fitzpatrick of the Laura Donovan School for their project called, "Artfully Expressing Good Character."
As part of the project students at the school will work collaboratively with the art teacher, school counselor and professional artist to create a mural and a sculpture.
The purpose of creating the artwork will be to illustrate the six pillars of character defined in the school’s Character Counts Program.
The six pillars of character are trustworthiness, respect, responsibility, fairness, caring and citizenship. Additionally, students will visit the Ground for Sculpture in Hamilton to see art on display as well as have their own gallery opening to share their competed artwork with the school community.
A number of staff members are involved in a project at the Eisenhower Middle School called "Children for Peace – A Cultural Program." Barbara Truscinski, Marie Woolley, Sharon Buchinsky, Erin Lichtman, Thomas Kale, Pati Shelly, Beverly Walsh, Eleanor Spargimino and Tom Foreman’s project involves students in 7A as well as sixth, seventh and eighth grade peer mediators who will create a videotape of original artwork encouraging world peace.
The students will create a large fabric mural "quilt" focusing on making the world a better place by writing their thoughts, hopes and wishes through poetry on pieces of fabric that will be attached to the quilt. The ongoing work will be videotaped and displayed in the school for the entire year.
At the end of the year it will be donated to Project Linus NJ, Inc. Selected students will also create their own artwork and poetry encouraging peace, or perform music and dance presentations encouraging peace.
The artwork and presentations will be performed by the children and videotaped. Videotaped cassettes will then be shared and exchanged with their counterparts in Israel and in Ramallah in Palestinian territory.
The last project, "Watershed Steward-ship in the Palm of Your Hand," was created by Pat Eisemann, Joyce Egenolf, MaryAnn Fox, Gatian Kaier and Scott Reilly of the Barkalow Middle School.
With the grant, they will purchase two palm held computing devices to bring the academic enrichment program water monitoring projects at Lake Topanemus to a new level.
These devices and their probes measure temperature, pH and dissolved oxygen. They will mesh with the current chemical and biological testing procedures to give greater depth to the data reports the students send to the state Department of Environmental Protec-tion. The plan is to build on this equipment and the collaboration that this grant opportunity has afforded to continue this project for many years to come.