The Falcon Education Foundation awarded 18 grants to Falcon School District 49 teachers at the November board meeting. The grants, totaling $11,000, will bring innovative classroom projects and activities to life across the district.Amy Matisek, Falcon Education Foundation board president, said FEF received more than 50 applications. The FEF board, which is comprised of community members and D 49 staff, selected the winners.”The projects have to align with district standards and offer an extended experience for students,” Matisek said. FEF dives further into the projects, while looking for teachers who are thinking outside the box, she said.Funding for the grants comes from local businesses and community members. Matisek said FEF holds a dinner in the spring, and the sponsorships, ticket sales and a live and silent auction generate enough donations to fund the grant program each year.”I get really excited to see the unique ideas the teachers come up with,” Matisek said. She said she enjoys knowing the grants provide educational opportunities that would not otherwise get funded.Some of this year’s projects include bringing zoo animals into the classroom, extended science experiments, Spanish language teaching aids, microscopes for outdoor exploration and disc golf equipment.Tammy Whitted, kindergarten teacher at Falcon Elementary School, said she applied for the FEF grant after attending a science festival at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs.Whitted said the grant money will buy materials for science experiments she saw at the festival. “The kids learn better when they can touch and feel it,” she said. “It gets them into deeper thinking when they can do more than just talk about it.”Debby Gillis, sixth grade teacher at Skyview Middle School, said her students are enthused by the prospects her grant award will bring. Gillis said Skyview is raising money to build a greenhouse on school property, but completion is several years away.”Instead of waiting for several years to implement some of the projects we could do in a greenhouse, we decided to start purchasing items that will eventually go into the facility, and perform a number of the activities and labs in our classrooms,” Gillis said.”Kids need and want to have practical applications of the content in the present tense.” (They want to know) how things impact their lives now. A greenhouse provides a multitude of hands-on applications of concepts from just about every content area.”In an unusual move, Matisek said FEF awarded a grant to provide food to families at Evans International Elementary School.”Many of our students and their families are facing financial hardship and are not able to provide adequate food for their families,” said Mary Scherb, second grade teacher at Evans Elementary.Scherb said these students return to school after the weekend lacking energy and the motivation to learn. “By providing food to these families, we are helping our students stay healthy so they can attend school daily and have the ability to focus on their school work,” she said.They identified six families having the greatest need, and Scherb said they are working in partnership with Care and Share Food Bank to provide food backpacks that are sent home with students each Friday.For Scherb and Evans Elementary, the FEF grant is just the beginning of their program, Send Hunger Packing. Scherb hopes to promote awareness of the need throughout the community, gain ongoing sponsorships and grow the program to feed up to 50 families.
