Asking for funding from the Spirit of 67 Foundation
by Laura Montgomery
I've worked in District 67 for as long as the Spirit has been granting teachers' wishes. I've had the pleasure of using Spirit-funded programs and materials for my classrooms, my students and the teachers I've worked with, but until last year, I never authored a request myself! Funny, huh? I've even been involved with the non-profit Foundation and Teacher Grant Program in my boys' home school district for the last 8 years, but I've never asked for money myself.
Last year, I asked for money to purchase updated Mac laptops so that my video announcement club kids could assist in utilizing the greenscreen effect for their weekly video announcements. This is the technology that allows the weatherman to stand in front of the changing weather maps! Our kids at Deer Path have been fascinated by this technology for years, but our aging laptops did not have the most recent version of the iMovie software that would allow for it. All the greenscreen edits were done on my machine...not in the hands of the kids (not good!). It turned out that the Spirit didn't need to fund my request because the district budget was able to purchase 4 new laptops for me! In fact all four of those machines have been USED constantly this year! Just what the Spirit wants!
But this year, when the idea for transforming the old Administrative Center into a "21st Century Learning Lab" materialized, I got right on it! Now THIS was a project I could get excited about! Back in the Fall of 2008 when I attended the Google Teachers' Academy in the Chicago offices of Google, I got a glimpse of what an exciting learning (and working) environment could look like! The other 50 teachers attending that day all asked each other, "What if our schools could look like this? What if our kids could create, collaborate and communicate the "Googley way?" Imagine the learning that could come of this? In recent years, there have been lots of educators "flipping" learning spaces... in high schools and universities but not many in middle schools (to my knowledge).
So, after talking to lots of different teachers with varied perspectives, I wrote out my first application. It's included here. Below that is the slides for the formal presentation to the Spirit Grant Committee.
I've worked in District 67 for as long as the Spirit has been granting teachers' wishes. I've had the pleasure of using Spirit-funded programs and materials for my classrooms, my students and the teachers I've worked with, but until last year, I never authored a request myself! Funny, huh? I've even been involved with the non-profit Foundation and Teacher Grant Program in my boys' home school district for the last 8 years, but I've never asked for money myself.
Last year, I asked for money to purchase updated Mac laptops so that my video announcement club kids could assist in utilizing the greenscreen effect for their weekly video announcements. This is the technology that allows the weatherman to stand in front of the changing weather maps! Our kids at Deer Path have been fascinated by this technology for years, but our aging laptops did not have the most recent version of the iMovie software that would allow for it. All the greenscreen edits were done on my machine...not in the hands of the kids (not good!). It turned out that the Spirit didn't need to fund my request because the district budget was able to purchase 4 new laptops for me! In fact all four of those machines have been USED constantly this year! Just what the Spirit wants!
But this year, when the idea for transforming the old Administrative Center into a "21st Century Learning Lab" materialized, I got right on it! Now THIS was a project I could get excited about! Back in the Fall of 2008 when I attended the Google Teachers' Academy in the Chicago offices of Google, I got a glimpse of what an exciting learning (and working) environment could look like! The other 50 teachers attending that day all asked each other, "What if our schools could look like this? What if our kids could create, collaborate and communicate the "Googley way?" Imagine the learning that could come of this? In recent years, there have been lots of educators "flipping" learning spaces... in high schools and universities but not many in middle schools (to my knowledge).
So, after talking to lots of different teachers with varied perspectives, I wrote out my first application. It's included here. Below that is the slides for the formal presentation to the Spirit Grant Committee.