Chances are, if you’re any type of teacher these days, you hear the familiar word ‘grant’ thrown around quite a bit from friends, peers, or perhaps even administrators. Chances are, you may have even applied for a few of them, too. These days, it’s not uncommon for teachers to spend hours and hours of their free time perfecting applications and chasing many opportunities.
As learning initiatives evolve and adapt to better serve students in the 21st century or, in recent years, better allow for productive learning experiences from anywhere, rest assured we’re always doing our best to gauge how we can help. We’ve even created a bunch of useful content for school leaders, classroom teachers, librarians, and various education professionals.
Though she works mostly with kindergarten aged students, Sara truly sees immense value in exposing kids to STEAM learning in early education. Not only does she truly consider this an opportunity to help them build relevant skills, she also knows the importance of inspiring them to get more excited about using new ideas to solve simple or complex problems.
In large part, we created this grant program to help educators boost equity and access for any of their underserved students and we’ve loved how it’s evolved into one of the easiest technology grants for teachers to apply for. The program is open to all educators from classroom teachers and district administrators to technology directors, librarians, and makerspace leaders.
For those we select, we create a feature on their project, background, and hopes for enhancing STEAM experiences for students as well as providing new EdTech tools for their classroom. Plus, educators can choose from the hundreds of fun STEM supplies on our store once they’re selected—mixing and matching however they please to meet the $500 target.
For up to nine weeks this fall, Liz and other educators will be working with hundreds of different elementary students to introduce them to new STEM opportunities, projects, and interactive assignments. The end goal involves inspiring these kids to utilize their new insights as inspiration for potentially pursuing different STEM opportunities in various industries in the future.
Karim’s a kindergarten teacher who’s committed to leading STEM learning opportunities for early education students in the core classroom. Realizing the importance and value of STEM in early education, he’ll also be leading a new afterschool program beginning this fall to help introduce children to EarlyEd coding while also aiming to reduce inequities in STEM access.
Cynthia will combine different STEAM and real–world elements using PBL, including having kids do research on organisms, underwater environments, the importance of ecosystems, and more. Besides initial research, kids will also read nonfiction books, explore the geography in this environment, and collectively design an oceanic ecosystem mural to cap things off.
Working with students at Riverside Elementary East, Jennifer has played a key role in starting a school STEAM program that is set to enter its second year. She has helped children in many traditionally underserved categories by committing to increasing equity in STEM learning and inspiring children from all backgrounds to explore STEM opportunities.
Xaviera receives $100 to put towards school supplies every year but, as we know, this isn’t always enough to create impactful STEM experiences. While thankful for that money, she’s also explored STEM grants to further her resources. Particularly as she works to improve her STEAM lab, these new materials will be super helpful for her and her students.
