WOOLWICH

Elizabeth Harrington was recently named Maine’s Elementary Physical Education Teacher of the Year for 2013.

She was nominated by her principal, Tom Soule, and the school was notified last week.

“I work hard not to be a ‘gym’ teacher,” Harrington said. “I’m grateful for the honor, but it wouldn’t have been possible if the other teachers, the parents, and the whole community weren’t on board.”

At a time when many schools are cutting back or eliminating their physical education programs, Woolwich has transformed its program from doing situps and playing volleyball to a curriculum of “wellness” that works outside the schoolhouse doors as well as within them.

“The children in my classes learn more than how to improve their soccer skills,” she said. “We promote wellness, lifestyle changes that can change the way the kids live their lives after school and into adulthood.”

For instance, the students have a community garden and a greenhouse, and they also have some young apple trees. Unfortunately, before they got to pick the apples, they vanished.

“We don’t know if it was animals or some enthusiastic local apple pickers who didn’t realize the trees belonged to the school,” she said. “Next year, we’ll probably put nets over the trees to discourage animals, and maybe put up a sign that says that the apples are part of our garden.”

The students hold a “walk to school” day once a year. Woolwich is a community that is large in area and doesn’t have sidewalks, so once a year the children walk down from the fire station to the school. Police stop traffic on Route 1 so the kids can cross safely.

Woolwich also holds a field day, where students participate in different activities. The middle school students have a community service day, spend time with seniors at the Moorings in Bath, and do schoolyard clean ups. “They get as much out of those programs as the seniors and those they help get,” Harrington said. The seventh and eighth grade also does a ropes course at Monkey C in Wiscasset.

Third graders learn to swim at the Bath Area YMCA. The middle school students held a dance-a-thon to raise the necessary funds — $2,000 — for the six-week program.

Students learn to snowshoe and do other outdoor activities that they might later be able to do with family or friends. To encourage family activities, the school holds “family fun nights” where kids and parents learn to do arts and crafts and play different games.

Wellness extends to food, too, and students participated in a program called “Eat a Rainbow” in which they learned about how important it is to eat fresh fruits and vegetables, and ended with a “rainbow snack” in the color of the day. Parents helped by cutting up the vegetables and fruits and serving it.

“We’re always doing new things,” Harrington said. “Our fifth and sixth grade ‘green team’ just set up fitness stops on the walking path for kids to do at recess. They wrote little ‘mammal poems’ and the signs showed a movement that the kids could do while they read the poem.”

Harrington instituted a jump rope team once a week after school. “I remember jumping rope all the time as a kid,” she said, “and playing all kinds of games. Kids have to be taught those things, because nobody does such old-fashioned things anymore.” She said she’d like to teach playground games that have fallen out of favor, such as hopscotch, which is good for both exercise and balance.

She tries to work with the classroom teachers to reinforce what is happening in the classroom. “Our kindergarteners were learning about the Monarch butterfly life cycle,” she said. “So we created a physical education program based on ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ (a children’s book by Eric Carle).

“Overall, I want kids to learn how to increase their fitness, and be able to advocate for their own personal health,” she said.

ghamilton@timesrecord.com