Great things happen when your school, your students, and your community come together.
— Susy Remillard, teacher, Nauset Regional Middle School
Giant Fish Splashes Down at Nauset Middle School
In Orleans, Middle school students and environmentally focused nonprofits are creating together - from a pollinator garden to a giant fish sculpture.
Click on image to watch the short reported story.
01 July 2026 – ORLEANS, MA –Bracketed by a giant 22 foot fish sculpture on one side and a new pollinator garden on the other, Nauset Regional Middle School says its ChangeMakers program puts environmental lessons to work.
As the school year wraps up, the program’s environmental lessons take on tangible form through partnerships with area non-profits and an artist with a passion for recycled art.
“Great things happen when your school, your students, and your community come together,” said Susy Remillard, exploratory teacher at the school who just led the project through its second year.
What does ChangeMakers do?
“Our local nonprofits are often looking for a youth voice in their work and the ChangeMaker program gives them the opportunity to partner really closely and for the students to understand the mission of each nonprofit,” explained Remillard.
“Each term with my ChangeMakers we partner with a different environmental nonprofit and in the fourth term we actually bring some of those plans into action.”
What projects did ChangeMakers create?
The Association to Preserve Cape Cod and students planned, developed, and shared information about native plants and brought in grant funds to actually plant a pollinator garden and swings.
At the opposite side of the building – easily visible from the Orleans Cardinals playing field – a 22-foot fish sculpture welded from recycled and found materials, gracing the entrance. Just beside it a colorful mural represents a healthy pond.
Why art?
The art represents outcome from work with the Orleans Pond Coalition and support from sculptor Scott Feen and his Atlantic Workshop.
“Art speaks to people a lot,” said ChangeMaker student Jonathan Byran.
What is the giant fish?
“We created a large scale sculpture. It is 22 feet tall,” said Scott Feen, artist from the Atlantic Workshop.
Feen works primarily with recycled materials – and this project drew on the lessons from damaged ponds by incorporating left over aluminum from the Orleans holiday “buoys of joy” installation, as well as ocean debris gathered by the Center for Coastal Studies.
“We drew it out on my workshop floor here in Orleans and then took that and bent all the metal and started welding it all together,” he explained of the hand-on design-to-build effort. While Feen did the actual welding, the design and the rest of the process was all students.
What does the program mean?
“I think it’s where the class room meets the community, said ChangeMaker student Maisie Callahan. “It’s a great way to branch out and learn more.”
“It is a tangible outcome,” said Remillard.
“People walk in, they see the active and lively community, creative community that is their middle school. These are the places where we are preparing our kids for the future … when they feel empowered by constructing a 20-plus foot tall fish then they know that anything is possible.”
