Top Teacher Has E On Whales

If award-winning science teacher Marvin Eveland gets his way, Kendrick Junior-Senior High School will soon have life-sized, inflatable blue whales on school grounds.

Eveland has learned he will receive the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science and Mathematics Teaching and an all-expense-paid trip to Washington, D.C., to meet President Clinton.

Eveland also receives $7,500 for the school’s science program.

One project Eveland hopes to fund is his Inland Whale Project, which he credits with helping him win the award. Eveland has teachers and students construct 80- and 100-foot inflatable whales to show them the immense size of the sea mammals, he said.

“And it’s great because students who have grown up in the Inland Northwest may have never seen a real whale, so this gives them some perspective,” he said. They can be deflated and sent to other schools to share in the learning.