FREEPORT – Freeport Middle School students took two first places in a national contest, in which teams of students create short pieces using images, words, video and music – all based on curriculum.

Principal Ray Grogan recognized the students during the Regional School Unit 5 school board meeting held on May 14. School officials watched videos that won awards from Meridian Stories, a creation of Freeport resident Brett Pierce that supports curriculum through creative use of digital technology. Freeport Middle School seventh-graders took first in the nation for their science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) film on reducing food waste, while an eighth-grade group won for a presentation on the Bill of Rights and the U.S. Constitution.

Each winning group made a video presentation of just under 6 minutes to the school board.

Ben Barry, Josh Burke, Taylor Rinaldi, Griffin Agnese and Colby Benway formed the eighth-grade team. Maya Wolfe-Downing, Ben Morang and Carlotta Ziervogel won the seventh-grade competition, and collected a $400 award from the Perloff Foundation STEM Challenge. They will put that money toward a better use of food waste at the school. Grogan said they will do that by seeking ways to improve the method of composting, and by looking for water fountains that conserve water.

Shawn Favreau teaches the eighth-grade group, and Jane Ross teaches the seventh-graders.

Grogan said that Pierce, executive director of Meridian Stories, is the parent of a Freeport High School student who went to the middle school.

Pierce says he founded Meridian Stories in 2011 as a response to the question, “How do you get youth to re-channel the massive, daily energy that is expended online toward deeper explorations of meaningful, curricular content?”

The result, Pierce said, is Meridian Stories, which takes the “creative, digital energy of youth today and provides them with a thoughtfully scaffolded and educationally substantive framework to release that energy.”

Pierce, a former producer with Sesame Workshop, the creators of “Sesame Street,” said that in the first year, the nonprofit initiative had 13 schools and two years later, it grew to 35 – almost all from Maine and one from Michigan.

“This challenge was unique in the levels of thinking that is demanded of the student teams,” Pierce said. “Funded by the Perloff Foundation and co-developed by my Freeport colleague Bob Moore, this challenge asked the students to identify a critical local problem: Propose a solution using STEM; implement that solution; and create an engaging video narrative about the whole process.”

The seventh-grade STEM videos focused on wasted food.

The eighth-graders won their Meridian Stories Award by creating movie trailers on the stories behind the creation of a Congressional bill or a Constitutional amendment. This is the second year that Freeport Middle School has entered the social studies competition. Both years the focus has been on Constitutional rights, a mainstay of the eighth-grade curriculum, Favreau said.

Morang and Ziervogel shared their Meridian experiences with the seventh-grade team in emails to the Tri-Town Weekly, as did Barry on his experience with the eighth-grade group.

“It started off with Maya and Carlotta, who basically had the idea of making a compost bin,” Morang said. “I then joined global studies to help them build it, but later was much more involved then I thought I would be.

“We essentially wanted to cut down on costs for waste, and stop food from going to landfills because of the hazardous effects food can have on the environment. I started making the compost bin, while also researching the topic with Maya and Carlotta. We ended up with a great compost bin, and what would be a great effect on the environment.”

“Our project was to try and reduce food waste in a local school,” Ziervogel said. “We chose the Pownal Elementary School to do this for and constructed a compost for them. When the compost was done we went to Pownal to teach them how to take care of the compost and why it is good to compost. We let the kids put their handprints on the compost so that they would have fun while learning. The video that we submitted was a documentary that showed all the steps in our project and our final results. We added how Ben built the box and what the whole point was.”

Barry and his classmates were on a different mission.

“The challenge that I did was creating a movie trailer based off of one of the Constitutional amendments,” Barry said. “My group members, Griffin Agnese, Josh Burke, Colby Benway and I chose to do the Eighth Amendment, banning cruel and unusual punishments. We did about one week of research, brainstorming, and writing and one week of shooting. I did the editing myself with Final Cut Pro and it was submitted to Meridian Stories.

“We later won first place in the contest with 199 points out of 200 which is the greatest amount of points ever received on Meridian Stories,” Barry said. “So that is definitely is something I’m proud of. And not just me, but my whole group should be proud because I couldn’t have done it without them.”

Freeport Middle School’s winning eighth-grade team in Meridian Stories competition includes, from left, Ben Barry, Taylor Rinaldi, Griffin Agnese, Josh Burke and Colby Benway. Carlotta Ziervogel, left, and Maya Wolfe-Downing appeared on May 14 at a Regional School Unit 5 board meeting to accept recognition for winning the seventh-grade competition in Meridian Stories. Ben Morang also was part of the winning team.