Teachers are Winners

So I teach a Leadership in Technology graduate class at a local university in the summer. One of the assignments is to write a grant; there is a $1,500 grant due at that time, so the timing is perfect. We review them in class, make suggestions, and we evaluate each other’s grants using the actual grant rubric. And then I grade it based on the same criteria of the grant.

I think about seven of them applied, not everyone could apply, you needed to be an employed K-12 educator and you need to be a member of the organization we applied to (which costs $40-ish). You probably see where this story is going…The other day I got an e-mail telling me that one of the students was awarded one of the grants. I was pretty excited, I wanted to write the rest of the class but I was too busy at that moment. When I looked at my mail later I had a message that one of the other students had also won a grant! So I sat down to write the rest of the class, while I was writing I got a third message telling me another student had won!!! I was floored. I’d guess they only awarded 25-35 of these grants and we got three of them! I think the three of them totaled about $3,800, that’s all equipment they’ll be able to buy for their school classrooms and use for the project they wrote and any other uses they’ll come up with.

As a result of winning they’ll also have to present at the next conference (which they get to go for free) and maybe write a short article for the newsletter. Very exciting!