l to r: Bill Plouffe, Horace A. "Hoddy" Hildreth Jr., Mary Evans, Maine Audubon Executive Director Kevin Carley, John Tatko.

Mary Evans, 2008 Maine Audubon Educator of the Year

Maine Audubon’s Educator of the Year award recognizes the outstanding efforts of a Maine educator who has made a significant contribution toward expanding children’s or adults’ knowledge of the natural world and wildlife conservation in Maine.

Wednesday June 18, 2008 -When asked where she learned to appreciate the environment, Maine Audubon’s 2008 Educator of the Year Mary Evans remembers vacations in the Hamptons as a young girl.

On those summer days, her grandparents taught her to grow vegetables and gave her plenty of time to explore the mud and muck for clams and other creatures.

Throughout her 24 years in education, Mary has been repeating the favor—teaching her students to care for the environment by taking them outside to see the wonder of nature’s connections.

Fields Pond Audubon Center Director Judy Markowsky first met her when Mary was raising a hand to volunteer for Maine Audubon’s “Secrets of the Forest” program. The project trains volunteers to take Bangor students on nature walks to learn about the Maine forest.

Mary helped Judy develop a curriculum for the explorations, and now every fourth-grader in Bangor participates in the Fields Pond program.

“That characterizes Mary Evans. She is a doer,” Judy said.

Here are just a few ways Mary has worked to develop environmental education in her classroom and others: participating in a program to show fellow teachers the importance of the Penobscot River,

incorporating ecology lessons into the fourth-grade science curriculum she wrote for Bangor schools, and taking part in several Maine Audubon teacher workshops.

In 1996, Mary was nominated for Maine’s Presidential Award for Science Teaching, a testament to her commitment and innovation as a teacher.

But it is by her students that Mary judges the success of her work.

“My overall goal is, and I’m quoting from Rachel Carson, is to ‘inspire a sense of wonder’ in my students. I want them to be awed,” Mary said. “It may sound a little clichéd, but my way of trying to save the planet is by teaching the next generation of advocates for the environment.”

She has engaged her learners to have a positive impact on their communities while giving them the important skills and benefits environmental education provides.

Over the years, Mary’s students have raised Atlantic salmon and clams to release into the wild, mapped and documented habitats in the woods behind their schools, and made people aware of pollution by stenciling storm drains. She geared each lesson to teaching them by example about our connections and responsibilities to the environment.

It is for this longtime commitment to environmental education that Maine Audubon names Mary Evans its 2008 Educator of the Year.

##