Bollman Bridge

GIRL SCOUT Junior Troop 1345 started the school year well. Barely a week into the year, the troop presented a small health fair at Bollman Bridge Elementary during a back-to-school picnic Sept. 7. Junior Scouts Alyson Marino, Andrea Hricko, Deborah Firestone, Sharnise Hendrick, Heather Jarrell, Rachel Jones and Olivia Owens had spent the previous evening putting together health packets to distribute at four stations. The girls organized the stations in the cafeteria, with information about dental care, basic first aid, the importance of exercise and proper nutrition.

At Bollman Bridge Elementary School, Staff Appreciation Week will include massages and minifacials. At Hammond Middle School, all employees will receive custom-made bookmarks and several meals. Atholton High School is hosting a root beer float party, and Centennial Elementary School is asking students to bring in real or hand-drawn flowers. Staff Appreciation Week, the first full week in May, was started by the national PTA in 1984. Each year, the event tests the creativity and resources of Howard County parents as they find budget-conscious ways to honor their schools' teachers and other employees.

Bollman Bridge Elementary is losing its principal today, and the students want her to know she will be sorely missed.To prove it, they named last Thursday "Carey Wright Day."Students drew pictures of her and hung them everywhere in the halls. They presented her with hundreds of silk and real flowers in cups, baskets and tin cans. They gave her poems, drawings and books that sat neatly in many stacks on her desk and floor.And the parents, teachers and students threw her an ice cream party and gave her a VCR."

They emptied their piggy banks, scoured their homes for loose change and gave up their lunch and snack money. Some held bake sales and sold lemonade. Ben Reider, 9, a fourth-grader at Bollman Bridge Elementary School in Jessup, even looked behind his family's washing machine and found $1.50. In what officials say was the largest charitable fundraising campaign ever mounted by the state's public school system, students throughout Maryland collected $1.32 million for families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.

By day, he teaches physical education to dozens of students at Bollman Bridge Elementary School in Jessup, five times a week. By night, and on weekends, he coaches the Howard County Kangaroo Kids jump rope team and his son's basketball team.It's all in a week's work for James E. McCleary, recently named Physical Education Teacher of the Year among the state's elementary school teachers by the Maryland Association for Health, Physical Education, Recreation and Dance."He's just an exceptional person," said Jackie French, Howard County's supervisor of physical education and the one who nominated Mr. McCleary for the award.

The five-member Board of Education denied yesterday an appeal to reinstate school bus service to roughly 25 students at Bollman Bridge Elementary School but said it would monitor a construction site that parents said was dangerous to students who walk to school.Also yesterday, the board heard reports that class sizes were increasing and that fund-raising efforts last year brought in about $1 million for the county's elementary, middle and high schools. The board also got a timetable for the completion of an evaluation of the middle school program.

JUANITA had never been to school before last week's visit to Bollman Bridge Elementary. She was one of the coolest ones there, despite the lack of a trendy hairstyle or the latest jeans. She is so cool she travels in a picnic cooler. Juanita is an iguana. Juanita is one of dozens of critters that visited pupils through a PTA-sponsored program Jan. 10. Lisa Nowakowski, the "Lisa" in "Lisa's World of Reptiles and Amphibians," toted 10 coolers filled with cold-blooded creatures to the auditorium to show to preschool through fifth-grade children.

THOUGH IT is hard to believe, Bollman Bridge Elementary celebrates its 10th anniversary this year.It seems like only yesterday this was the newest school in our area. Now there's Forest Ridge and the new Gorman Crossing in the southeastern corner of the county, joining Hammond and Laurel Woods. What a rate of growth!The PTA of Bollman Bridge plans to celebrate this anniversary with a family picnic Sept. 11. Families of current and former Bollman Bridge students are welcome to come see the changes in the school over the past decade.

THERE'S MUSICAL talent at Bollman Bridge Elementary. Adam Gross, a fifth-grade student, has been invited to join the Peabody Conservatory Children's Chorus.Fellow trolls -- that's the Bollman Bridge mascot -- Greg Giroux, Amy McHale and Katie Ryan have been invited to join the Howard County Children's Chorus.Congratulations to the singers. We all look forward to hearing you in concert.'Coffee and Conversation'The Board of Education holds its second "Coffee and Conversation" meeting at Atholton High on Oct. 24 at 7 p.m.Come meet the powers that be in your child's life in an informal setting.

FOR CHILDREN, September marks the beginning of the new year.The Julian calendar's designation of Jan. 1 as New Year's Day may be convenient -- an excuse for a bash on a long winter night -- but September is the time for special beginnings: a new school or grade, new clothes, new books, new friends.So now that the truly best season of the year is upon us, here's some of the news from the neighborhood.Pam Butler, Bollman Bridge Elementary's principal, is pleased that the school's PTA is holding an informal back-to-school picnic.

The Howard County Board of Education recognized seven "Friends of Education" during its meeting last night, honoring their extraordinary contributions to the school system -- which included donating electric guitars, participating in tutoring programs and volunteering thousands of hours. "Aren't they like unsung heroes?" said board member Sandra H. French, who sat on the five-member committee that chose the winners from 14 nominees. "We are in their debt." Five individuals and two organizations received the designation: Vivian Bailey, a Columbia resident who acts as "grandmother in residence" at Running Brook Elementary, but also raises funds for supplemental materials, encourages business partnerships, reads to children and collects clothing for needy families.

Mike Schemmel knows how to make math fun. With 25 pupils divided into four teams, the student teacher at Bollman Bridge Elementary School in Jessup transforms the classroom into something like the set of Jeopardy. "You bought a shirt for $9.88; sunglasses for $3.25; and a pack of gum for 52 cents," he begins, then asks for the total. A few minutes pass, and Schemmel, 34, says, "Boards up," which means the fourth-graders have to show their answers. "Thirteen dollars and 65 cents is correct.

Bollman Bridge Elementary School dedicated its new stained-glass windows May 2, and they are beautiful, said PTA cultural arts Chairwoman Paige R. Carey, whose four children are pupils at the school. "I am very excited. I was so happy," said Carey, whose son Nicholas, a fifth-grader, designed a panel in one of the windows. "The windows just make such an amazing impression on you. It's an amazing sea of colors and patterns. And what's really interesting, as the art teachers explained it, it really gives you a child's eye view of the world."

SOMETHING seemed to be seriously amiss recently at Bollman Bridge Elementary School in Jessup. In one hallway, pupils were throwing paper airplanes, and their teachers were allowing it. In a classroom, pupils were covering a dead fish with paint. High-schoolers were roaming the halls, that is, when they weren't taking over classes or eating lunch. What was going on? No need to panic. It was just this year's installment of a wonderful Bollman Bridge tradition: Awesome Art Day. This year, the daylong program was held March 31. Awesome Art Day is nearly as old as the 15-year-old school, although nobody seems to know exactly when it started.

The Reservoir High School transition team will sponsor a "Resi Night" from 6:20 p.m. to 7:50 p.m. today at Gardens Ice House, 13800 Old Gunpowder Road, Laurel. Tickets are $5, payable at the door. Skate rental is included. The event is the second of four designed by the team for students who will be entering Reservoir High School or transferring from other schools to become acquainted before the school year begins. A cosmic bowling lock-in is scheduled for 11:45 p.m. to 5 a.m. Aug. 9 at Columbia Brunswick Lanes, and a "Beach Party" family picnic will be held from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Aug. 23 at the school.

HISTORY BOOKS and documentaries make fine learning tools, but if you really want insight into an event, there's nothing like asking someone who was there. That's what children at Bollman Bridge Elementary School got to do last week, thanks to Sam Ginty's World War II project. "I thought it would be cool to have veterans come and talk to the kids in fourth and fifth grade," said Sam, 11. Sam's maternal grandfather, who served in the Army as an artillery sergeant, sparked his interest in World War II. "My grandfather told me all about World War II and what he did," Sam said.

HERE COMES Valentine's Day, when we remember love. We grant -- and receive -- tokens of affection, small bits of cheer in this winter season.It is a brief reminder that spring will come, although February and March seem to be the longest months.Third-graders at Bollman Bridge Elementary are enriching their Valentine's Day observances with philanthropy.Erica Esposito and Katie Skojec are working together to help a child in a foreign country receive medical care.The two girls are selling carnations to fellow students for Valentine's Day. The proceeds go to Operation Smile, a program offering facial reconstruction to children who need the surgery.

Last night the Girl Scout leaders held their community meeting. Jessica Kemper, the coordinator for the Bollman Bridge Elementary cluster was pleased to discover the interest in Daisies, the kindergarten level of Girl Scouts.Last year there was one troop, this year there are four. The Daisies meet, in groups of eight to 10, either in Bollman Bridge or in the homes of the leaders.This year Jenny Jones and Dana Volmerhausen lead Troop 2120. Cindy Clemens and Roxanne Mino lead Troop 2111. Margot Chassee and Linda Campbell lead Troop 1761, and Sandy Swindburne and Shelley Engel lead Troop 678.*Cub Scout Pack 617 holds its annual Fellows Cake Bake in the Bollman Bridge cafeteria on Tuesday.

YOU HEAR about tutoring programs designed to give struggling scholars a boost. But a local math tutoring program helped high-achieving second-graders get on the fast track by teaming them with tutors who are on that track themselves - their sixth-grade counterparts at the school next door. The program started in the fall at Bollman Bridge Elementary School, and it concluded last week with a pizza luau celebration. The tutors, most of them Bollman Bridge alumni, came from Patuxent Valley Middle School each week for a 30-minute session with one or two of the younger children.

SOME BOLLMAN Bridge Elementary School pupils and parents recently got boxes full of shaving cream, sidewalk chalk, board games and magnets to take home. But the items were not for playtime or arts and crafts; instead, they were meant to enhance the children's reading skills. "Anything that seems like play is really motivating," said Toni Pinkard, a reading specialist at the school. Why use the same old pencil and paper to practice writing words when instead you can squirt blobs of shaving cream on a table and trace letters with your fingers?