You can never start too early when it comes to creating aspirations for success.

That’s exactly what Montello Elementary School in Lewiston, the state’s biggest by student population, is doing in its preschool classes these days.

While nearly every child dreams of “what they want to be when they grow up,” not all of them are encouraged to attain that dream and fewer still are taught the importance of lifelong learning and the importance of obtaining a college degree to reach career goals.

Montello’s staff knows you start small and Principal Deborah Goding said things as simple as introducing the right vocabulary words early on can make a difference.

Learning words like achieve, diploma and professor can instill the ideas that after elementary school comes high school and after that comes college — key steps in the progression of a successful life.

Over their lifetimes, college graduates will earn about $1 million more than those who don’t obtain degrees higher than a high school diploma.

Cheers to Goding and her staff for putting our littlest learners on the path to success early.

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Cheers to the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and the Maine Snowmobile Association for taking the time and making the effort to remind snowmobilers that thin ice and snowmachines are a recipe for disaster.

Early this week, several wardens and warden divers braved the icy chill of Tricky Pond in Naples to create a public service announcement video on the dangers of riding on thin ice. 

Several times each winter snowmobilers in the United States plunge through the ice and die. With common sense and caution many of these accidents are avoidable. Our wardens — tasked with the gruesome job of recovering the bodies of victims — are right about taking a proactive approach to prevent tragedy.

We hope their message doesn’t fall on deaf ears.

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Jeers to dog owner Corey LaMontagne.

LaMontagne was visiting a friend in Monmouth when his two dogs ran off and attacked a llama at a nearby farm. Rather than facing up to the llama’s owner and taking responsibility for his dogs, LaMontagne, of Canton, piled his dogs into his car and took off. Two days later he was arrested and charged with a host of misdemeanor crimes, including owning dangerous dogs and having dogs at large.

LaMontagne could have saved a lot of grief by taking responsibility for his animals right away.

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Finally, cheers to local athletes and high school football linemen Matt Archer of Mt. Blue and Christian Durland of Mountain Valley. 

Often the unsung heroes of the game,  a football lineman does much of the hard and dirty work of blocking and/or tackling while receiving none of the glory of scoring a touchdown or plucking an interception from the sky. 

Durland and Archer are finalists for a new award named for Frank J. Gaziano.  In the humblest of lineman fashion, in acknowledging his nomination, Durland said simply, “I did work very hard at the sport of football, but so much credit has to be given to the coaches and teammates I’ve had.”

That’s a winning attitude.

editorialboard@sunjournal.com