Last year, Irene Marchenay was bored, living in Tennessee and retired from 36 years of teaching.

Now the French-born Marchenay is teaching French at Wiscasset Middle High School and hoping to help students find the same enrichment she experienced through her travels that included being an exchange student in the U.S.

It made a difference in her life, and travel has made a difference for past students of hers, she told the School Committee on May 26. The committee supported her request to work with interested students and their families on fundraising for a 2017 trip to France.

“Thank you. Thank you for them,” Marchenay said.

“I truly, truly believe that becoming a global citizen is the only way for the future,” she said at another point. Students on next year’s trip would visit museums as well as historical sites including Normandy, Marchenay said.

Each student’s family would pay the $3,220, or monthly installments of $285, for their student’s trip, according to Marchenay and materials she provided from EF Educational Tours. Stacey Souza, the school department’s administrative assistant, praised EF, saying her family had experience with it and found it to be wonderful to work with.

The trip would run from April 13 to April 21, EF’s proposal states.

Marchenay said it would be her twentieth trip with students and her first one using a tour service instead of arranging the trip herself. Other trips took students of her past schools to France, Quebec and the French Caribbean, she said.

She likes the students to raise the money for their family’s payments; she helps guide those efforts, such as by being an Avon lady and having students sell products, she said, adding later that Avon has a fundraising program. 

As a new hire in Wiscasset, Marchenay is under the department’s probationary period for teachers. She likes that — it’s making her feel younger, the veteran teacher said, smiling, during the presentation.

WES, one year in

Wiscasset Elementary School Principal Mona Schlein reflected on the first school year since the primary school closed and the middle school became an elementary school. It was a huge undertaking and all involved should be commended, she told the committee.

“It’s an incredible environment. People have done an incredible job,” Schlein said.

Fire drills, lockdowns and other demonstrations have helped with acclimating to the building; the new playground and playing fields look incredible, she added.

Slide vandalized

Wiscasset police have increased evening patrols at WES after one of the school’s two slides was vandalized, Superintendent of Schools Heather Wilmot said. The school department is working with the playground equipment supplier on replacement, she said.

Wilmot called the incident unfortunate.