Fort Fairfield seventh-graders
complete 11th annual river trip
FORT FAIRFIELD, Maine — If you happened to be driving across the Aroostook River bridge around 11 a.m. Aug. 29, 2014, you might have been surprised to see a flotilla of 14 canoes and 16 kayaks paddling down the river. The group of 36 students and 14 adult chaperones from Fort Fairfield Middle High School was completing the school’s 11th annual Aroostook River trip.
“The river trip is our kick-off event to the Geography and Maine Studies unit that we do in seventh grade,” said teacher Paul Lamoreau. “We think it’s a great way to start off the year, and a lot of these kids haven’t had much experience being on a river, which of course is how the native people and early explorers and settlers got around.”
Before the start of this year’s trip, Lamoreau was a little worried about low water conditions, but the weather was close to ideal.
“The temperature was perfect, the skies were clear and calm, and the water level was better than I anticipated,” he said, adding that some of the participants’ boats got hung up, but they were able to keep the boats moving without much trouble.
“A few students had more intimate contact with the water than they would have liked. With novice paddlers, you are going to have a few flips, but we do water safety training and everybody has a properly fitting life jacket,” he said. “Plus we have experienced people there to assist anyone that needs help.”
The trip began in September of 2004 after a group of the school’s middle level teachers, including Lamoreau, Sharon Kozura, Andrew Mabry and Gail Doughty, returned from a summer Middle Level Institute at the University of Maine at Orono. They decided they wanted to do some kind of team-building activity in seventh grade to start the year.
“Adolescence is a very unique age group, and we wanted to do something active that would get their attention and get them working together,” Lamoreau said. “And with rivers being such an important part of the history of many Maine cities and towns, it seemed a natural fit.”
Lamoreau added the trip would not be possible if not for the assistance of the parents and volunteers from the community. He said he likes to have a ratio of three students to one adult chaperone, so the need for volunteers and water craft is significant.
“People in this town have always been very supportive of our school’s activities, and that is what makes this trip happen,” said Lamoreau. “A number of our staff and community members like nothing better than paddling down a river, so the adults enjoy it as much or more than the students.”
The first couple of years they recruited people to donate canoes, kayaks, life jackets and paddles for the trip, including a local Old Town canoe dealer and the University of Maine at Presque Isle. After that, Lamoreau said, the school and the town of Fort Fairfield formed a partnership with the 21st Century program and purchased a number of canoes and kayaks for students to use.
“By the fourth or fifth year, we had 10 canoes and a dozen kayaks available to the school through this program, which really cut down on the amount of scrambling I had to do,” he said. “But it’s still the people in town and the staff here at school that keeps this thing going.”
