Jonah Tafuri of Bridgton, a former Stevens Brook Elementary student, has been making face masks for the SBES students throughout the 202-2021 school year.  

Jonah, now a senior at Baxter Academy for the Technology and Science in Portland, has been hand-making these face masks as part of Baxter’s “Flex Friday” project.  Baxter pairs their stem-based curriculum emphasizing real-world problem solving with a humanities program that connects ideas across disciplines, and the Flex Friday projects are a result of this.  The students design innovative projects that have an impact on the community and Jonah choose to make masks for his former elementary school. To date, he has made 140 masks, varying in size to accommodate the students in kindergarten through fifth grade.  

When Jonah was asked why he chose this project and Stevens Brook Elementary School as the recipient, he responded, “I knew before I had decided on a project that it had to involve assistance in Covid-19 prevention somehow. I chose to sew masks for Stevens Brook because it was the school that I had gone to as a kid and to also help prevent the spread of Covid-19 in my town as a whole. I don’t want there ever to be a worry of masks running low in the school. It makes me happy that the masks have already been put to good use.”