VIDEO: Homewood teachers surprised with foundation grants

March 23, 2016

4:42 PM

Homewood City Schools Foundation reveals grant awards from Starnes Publishing on Vimeo.

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Frank Couch

Homewood City Schools Foundation

The Homewood City Schools Foundation awarded over $30,000 in grants to teachers for items ranging from books for an elementary summer reading program to graphing calculators for advanced high school math classes. Photo by Frank Couch

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Frank Couch

Homewood City Schools Foundation

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Frank Couch

Homewood City Schools Foundation

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Frank Couch

Homewood City Schools Foundation

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Frank Couch

Homewood City Schools Foundation

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Frank Couch

Homewood City Schools Foundation

Several teachers at Edgewood Elementary and Homewood High School were surprised with grants from the Homewood City Schools Foundation Wednesday morning.

This spring’s foundation grants total $36,000 and will be divided between all five Homewood schools.

Foundation President Trent Ponder and board member Justin Russell visited Edgewood Elementary School Wednesday morning to surprise teachers with their checks. Grants at Edgewood included funding for science, math and reading at multiple grade levels.

Emily Blackstock, who teaches fourth grade and helped write a grant to foster science literacy among fourth-graders, said teachers hope to plan over the summer and have a new unit of study ready for students for the next school year.

“It’s great to know that we will be able to integrate science and reading and do a multidisciplinary approach with them," Blackstock said. "We don’t want their learning to be segmented, but we want them to learn things and be able to integrate it all together.”

First-grade teacher Susan Hanson wrote a “No More Pencil and Paper for Me” grant proposal focused on bringing hands-on activities into lessons. The grant funding will provide VersaTiles during math and language arts assignments.

“We wanted to be able to engage them more, to give them an opportunity to show us what they know and be more involved,” Hanson said. “With technology and everything else that is so quick and constant, we needing something that would appeal to their interests and would be something they would be engaged in.”

Foundation grants will also sponsor FUSION, a program that integrates science and literacy for students in kindergarten through third grade, and a summer reading program.

This will be the second year a foundation grant helps sponsor a summer reading program, which helps struggling readers maintain and improve reading skills during the off season. Funding will provide for books and journals for students so they can take notes on their reading, and the school will host an Edgewood night at the Homewood Public Library in addition to a mid-summer event for exchanging books.

At Homewood High School, foundation grants were awarded to the world language department, math department and library.

Spanish teacher Martha Parker said the grant for Chromebooks and microphones to benefit world language students was a collaboration between several teachers.

“We have been finding with the new textbooks that we have, students need to access the Internet, use computers all the time,” she said. “This is going to open up more opportunities for them to practice expressive skills and daily communication in the classes. It’s really a complete blessing.”

Funding for the “Boundless Opportunities” grant will go toward expanding the collection of OverDrive Young Adult ebooks for students. Another foundation grant will pay for new graphing calculators for pre-calculus and other math classrooms.

Teacher Melinda Rouleau said the graphing calculators allow students to visualize the graphing concepts they are learning and can help students check their work. The calculators are also a needed update in technology, she said.

“We’ve been needing these for a long time,” teacher Kim Gossett said.

Grant funding at Hall-Kent Elementary will go toward Junior Patriot News, a broadcast news program; two Osmo Genius Kits to teach technology for hands-on learning in science, reading, writing and math; a summer reading program and the construction of two Little Free Libraries; and a robotics program to teach coding skills and digital literacy.

A summer reading project and a broadcast program at Shades Cahaba Elementary will also be supported through grant funding, and a summer learning loss prevention program will be funded at Homewood Middle School.