The Portage County Retired Teachers Association awards grants supporting innovative ideas in the classroom and in schools. The grant committee received 20 applications for the 2022 awards. Four proposals were chosen to receive $500 toward their projects:
Ravenna Integrated Preschool teacher Cindy Chrin will use the grant money to prepare “School-to-Home Connection Kits.” The kits will be designed to engage the family and student in learning experiences in their own home. The activities in the kits will be integrated into second-semester curriculum for the 2021-2022 school year.
Bio-Med Science Academy teacher Julia Hunter will use the funds for a multi-disciplinary group project based on The Giver, by Lois Lowry. Students will create a 3D model of a utopian society. They will be tasked with creating a constitution and laws, forms of agriculture, transportation, schools and everything else necessary for a real society.
Sarah Lambert, from Brown Middle School in Ravenna, will be introducing reusable boards called Wipebook Flipcharts to her classroom to promote group work, confidence in problem solving, and information sharing in the classroom. Her grant proposal outlined classroom research from the book “Building Thinking Classrooms in Mathematics” by Peter Liljedahl.
Vanessa Shafer and Kris Gilmer from James A. Garfield Middle School will use the grant money to fund a collaborative STEM and art project using coding and mathematics to create a Jackson Pollock inspired painting with a Sphero SPRK robot.
Correction: Because of incorrect information provided by a source, an earlier version of this article misstated the amount of the grants. Each award is $500, not $50.
Natalie Wolford is managing editor at The Portager. A native of Randolph, she studied film in New York City and is producing a feature-length documentary about her aunt, a small-town journalist.