Wilhelm Fellows Awarded

We are pleased to announce two new recipients of the Jeffrey D. Wilhelm Fellow Award.

Amy Philbrook has been named the Wilhelm Fellow for 2012 and David Farady has been named for 2013.

The Wilhelm Fellow is awarded annually to a member of the Annual Institute who exemplifies devotion to teaching, collegial spirit, and scholarship.
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Amy Philbrook has been an elementary teacher since 1988, taking a significant amount of time off to raise her four, active boys.  After three years as an education technician teaching writing and other subjects to third graders, Amy will begin this fall as the sixth grade teacher at Mount Desert Elementary School in Northeast Harbor.  For twenty years, Amy and her family lived year round on Little Cranberry Island, but now live in Northeast Harbor during the school year.

In 2012, Amy introduced institute Fellows to yoga (breathing in, stretching out and opening the mind) as a way to support student engagement with writing. Amy’s work with third grade teacher Rebecca Heniser and her students can be seen on the Edutopia website as part of its series on “Schools That Work.”

Amy returned in 2013 as a course mentor to support our 2013 Institute Fellows. Each year, she has demonstrated a special brand of quiet leadership that supports others as they grow and pursue their own interests while helping to build a cohesive community of writers and teachers.

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David Farady is in his third year teaching 9th grade writing and literature at Erskine Academy in South China, Maine.  He earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in creative writing and English from The University of Maine at Farmington, an MAT in English Education from Boston University, and he attended The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (located in Portland, Maine) with a focus on non-fiction writing and editing.

Relevance is David’s guiding principle in teaching, and during the 2013 July institute he inspired other fellows with his nontraditional choices in the texts he uses to grab the attention of his students and encourage critical thinking.  As his teaching demonstration description stated, “If you struggle with getting kids excited about creative writing…and if you want to look at
questionably (in)appropriate art and brainstorm questionably (in)appropriate stories, then this workshop could be fun for you.”

David proudly notes living in Hallowell, “the smallest city in Maine where it is written in the town by-laws that every major holiday must be accompanied by a parade.” He most enjoys catching live music and losing himself in the western Maine mountains.

The Wilhelm Fellow Award was established in celebration of the contributions made to the Maine Writing Project and the educational community of Maine by our former site director, Jeffrey D. Wilhelm. Recent recipients include Teri Brown ’09, Susan Sandler ’09, Patsy Baldus ’10, and Pete St. John ’11.