March 2025 Grant Recipients

This grant will be used to help teach new English as a Second Language (ESL) students. These students--many of whom are new to this country--are struggling to learn English, and yet are expected to catch up with their native-English speaking peer students. Every year our district has more of these students, but has a limited budget to meet this growth. Specifically, the district lacks funds to purchase a full, regular ESL curriculum for non-English speakers. This grant, if given, will help purchase a comprehensive set of curricular materials that explicitly teach English vocabulary, grammar, and other language concepts to new English learners.

We have implemented a form of teaching called Thinking Classrooms, where students will be in groups of two or three working through the curriculum at white boards. For Geometry, students need calculators that can compute trigonometry functions. I am down a class set of 12 calculators. 3 of them are an older style that compute problems in a different format, making it difficult to teach students how to use them. The other 9 are getting old so some of the buttons stick or they have been beaten up and scratched.

The goal of building Thinking Classrooms is to help students enhance their problem-solving skills, develop critical thinking skills, actively engage in the material, and build collaboration skills. Calculators are an essential tool in helping students accomplish these goals.

Utilizing the book, You Have What it Takes, by Kelly Gibbons, we will expose our re-entry class to current and modern trends as they relate to mental health issues in today's society. We will utilize the actual author to facilitate this endeavor. She will work in conjunction with the director of our program and his staff to create a curriculum that coordinates the book and actual class time.

Due to the fact that our population has been incarcerated for a varied length in time, our goal is modern/current exposure to positive mental health attributes and how they can prepare for their re-entry back into the community. With Ms. Gibbons as our lead, we plan to develop an aggressive, positive impact laden curriculum that is steeped in our residents learning that You Have What It Takes to be successful along with their daily attendance in the award-winning Pre-Release program.

I teach 8th grade economics. This project is a real world simulation of expenses that most adults encounter in their life. Students will be able to choose a career based on their GPA and they can choose to have a family. They will spend a week preparing and learning different aspects of reality town, such as writing a check and job responsibilities. The program has workbooks and materials you can purchase to make the experience even better. Currently our school does not have the funds to purchase the program, but I think it would be a great resource for kids to have a brief moment of adult life and be able to see kind of what to expect.