Grantee Archive

To encourage the exploration of diversity within communities, Mrs. Latham and Ms. Troyer will work with their students to examine the impact individuals and groups can have on promoting positive change. Students will synthesize learning by creating a business designed to give back to their local community. Students will present to community leaders and other stakeholders and share how their experience has influenced their views of being activists for positive social change.

To build classroom communities and help students learn the lifelong skills of teamwork, leadership, communication, responsibility, and compassion, Ms. Spear and Mrs. Kaichen will take their students to a low elements ropes course. Educators will guide students as they work together to create an inclusive environment and establish personal growth goals. Students will face physical and emotional challenges as they establish a caring community and build upon that foundation throughout the year.

The “Cultural Proficiency Development” project will improve school climate for diverse students by providing educators training in cultural competence, implicit bias, and culturally inclusive curriculum. The project will allow Ms. Barden and her team to build a safe and supportive community for students from diverse backgrounds by increasing educator awareness of systemic inequities. Educators will incorporate cultural proficiency into curriculum and provide opportunities for students to participate in diversity discussion groups.

To develop leadership within her building and district, Ms. Puderbaugh will attend the National Association for Gifted Children Conference. While there, Ms. Puderbaugh will focus on receiving training in consultation for differentiation as well as identification of gifted students in poverty. Upon returning from the conference Ms. Puderbaugh will work with general education teachers in her building to provide academic differentiation for high ability students in the classroom.

The kindergarten team at Badger Elementary School will implement letter, word learning, and reading instructional practices from Jan Richardson’s book, “The Next Step in Guided Reading.” The team will work collaboratively to effectively teach the early literacy skills of letter names, sounds, and high-frequency words. Students will learn how to break and blend words, which will help them solve unknown words when reading, as well as analogy, which will allow them to use known words to read and write words with similar parts.

Ms. Jolley will attend the National Council for the Social Studies Conference, where she will further her knowledge of the Inquiry Design Model and the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework. While there, Ms. Jolley will attend pedagogical and content related workshops that will engage her students with inquiry instruction. Upon returning, Ms. Jolley will share her findings with social studies educators in her district.

Ms. Kibler will introduce “The Gift of Coding,” an innovative professional development and student learning initiative that will build students’ coding skills and utilize those skills to develop math problem solving strategies. Ms. Kibler will attend the Future of Education Technology National Conference and then take the lead in training her colleagues in the areas of coding, coding-based problem-solving strategies, and the implementation of adaptive math. The project will also include coding challenges for students, problem solving linked to coding, school-wide coding challenges, and coding tasks integrated into team building sessions and art activities.

Through “History Alive,” students at Costano Elementary School will learn about prominent figures in United States history by becoming them via reenactments. Students will learn about the entrepreneurial traits of early explorers, technological developments that made sea travel possible, and farming methods used during colonial times. The project will provide valuable context for students as they learn to link the past events with present day issues.

To strengthen the school-wide literacy plan at Mountainside and Aloha High Schools, Ms. Jones and Ms. Carrier will attend the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project Coaching Institute and Book Clubs Institute. The Coaching Institute will support educator leaders in methods of professional development, coaching, and giving and receiving feedback to colleagues necessary to build literacy. The Book Clubs Institute will focus on a reading and writing workshop model across curriculum. The team will bring this work to the whole school by leading the school-wide literacy plan, providing professional development opportunities, leading independent learning teams, and providing one-on-one support.

To enhance students’ creative, multi-disciplinary, and multicultural learning in music class, Ms. Froude and her students will use an interactive whiteboard and laptop specifically designed for the broadest spectrum of music learning. With this technology, students will complete developmentally appropriate music composition activities interactively in groups while they strengthen their critical thinking, coding, problem solving, and social skills. Additionally, Ms. Froude will share student work with other music educators and provide ongoing professional collaboration to her colleagues.

Mrs. Keelin and Ms. Brock will work with colleagues to implement a school-wide research-based social-emotional learning curriculum. The curriculum will provide students with an essential foundational vocabulary for describing their emotions. By employing a hands-on, multi-media curriculum, educators will engage students while guiding their emotional management and situational awareness, which will enhance student learning.

To better understand the obstacles faced by first generation and low income learners, Mrs. Bosiak and Mr. Teague will attend the GlobalMindEd Conference. The team will frame issues faced in their Title 1 School through an international lens that will offer new perspectives on student success rates and ways to make global skills and issues relevant to students.

Mrs. Macht and Mr. Smith will introduce “STEAMing Towards Justice,” an interdisciplinary program that links STEM education with the arts to build scientific literacy while emphasizing the importance of and need for civic responsibility in the decisions students make and actions they take towards the planet. Participating students will conduct rigorous research about topics that address climate change, deforestation, and plastics pollution. Students will learn that these issues not only affect their community, but also underrepresented communities throughout the world.

Through the “Corbin Community Virtual Reality Tour,” Mrs. Doolin and Mrs. McHargue will oversee a multi-purpose project with community service and learning outcomes for both educators and students. While participating in professional development, educators will facilitate a student led project that will allow students to learn about world traditions, culture, and geography through virtual reality. Design thinking strategies and innovative techniques will allow true project based experiences wherein students will communicate, collaborate, and create for a global audience.

To meet the needs of struggling students, Ms. Warren will attend the Institute for Multi-Sensory Education’s Advanced Continuum Orton Gillingham training. Ms. Warren will learn strategies that are appropriate for every tier of the Response to Intervention model, with a particular focus on students with dyslexic tendencies. Upon returning, Ms. Warren will share newly learned strategies through professional development with fellow para-educators and certified staff in her school and district.

Drs. Etheridge and Jewell will evaluate the impact of field experiences on mentoring teachers and teacher candidates by examining how pairs of educators with different experience levels and expectations respond to shared learning prompts. This action research will allow Drs. Etheridge and Jewell to evaluate how educators look at field experiences and how professional learning communities might be beneficial to the mentor-mentee relationship.