Sun, 04/19/2020 - 09:12 pm

SUSAN JOHNS

Westport Island’s Daisy Delano, 11, at a Wiscasset gravestone. Courtesy of Kelly Delano

Westport Island’s Kelly Delano hadn’t been to Fort Edgecomb since childhood. Thanks to a unit Wiscasset Elementary School fifth grade teacher Justin Stygles has been giving students on local history, Delano recently returned to the site and got to wander around it with daughter Daisy, 11. The two have also been visiting cemeteries.

Stygles found that lesson in an old binder. “Figuring that students would be home, and needing to get outside every once in a while, I thought this might be a fun experience,” Stygles said in an email response to questions. “This gave families a chance to share in an experience together and teach the rest of us (about) who are at rest here in Wiscasset. I mean, a governor (Samuel Emerson Smith, at Evergreen Cemetery)?”

In a phone interview Sunday, Kelly Delano said Stygles’ dedication has impressed her, including his making of video tours for students who can’t get to those sites, recorded read-alouds, Zoom meetings and a book drop off. “He has been amazing. The stuff he’s been doing is above and beyond,” Delano said.

She and Daisy’s father, James Denges, have temporarily closed their Brunswick restaurant, Pedro Ohara’s, during the pandemic. Besides texting back and forth with their regulars “more than ever” and looking forward to reopening, she said she is doing the best she can teaching Daisy, who points out when something isn’t how the teacher does it. Delano has been learning Zoom and watching YouTube videos on math, English and other subjects. “I’ve never looked up so many YouTube videos in my life.”

In a phone interview after making a swing and helping her mother clear brush, Daisy said it was fun at the cemeteries seeing how long people lived. At the Ancient Cemetery, she did a stone rubbing. And she has been writing about the places Stygles included in the unit.

Stygles is grateful for parents supporting their children’s work and letting their children stay in contact with him via Zoom, phone calls, or Facetime. “On the learning side, I have to say, this experience has allowed me to start building new units, or rebuilding, such as the Wiscasset unit, and explore/reconstruct some teaching practices I lost sight of over the past few years. But I won't lie. I miss the students I have little to no contact with. I think about them all the time.”

“Yes, I charged out into town on four-plus mile walks to embarrass myself filming selfies in town” for the unit, he wrote. “What would have been our town writing walks in the spring, I had to bring Wiscasset to the students, through a B-grade, low-budget, film production. I stopped at the bigger houses like Castle Tucker, Nickels-Sortwell, Wiscasset Jail, and the Customs house.” He got exercise and, he said, “like teaching in the classrooms , where I'm bringing learning to students, now I am trying to do it virtually.”

Soon, students will be starting to compare and contrast High and Water streets using photographs, video and Lea Wait’s “Stopping to Home,” Stygles said.