Christmas came a little early for 21 local educators, in the form of grants for their campuses.
Sulphur Springs Independent School District Education Foundation officials, accompanied by administrators, traveled to five different campuses, where they presented a total of $16,561.93 in grants to help facilitate interactive learning experiences for students as they continue to develop problem solving skill sets.
SSISD teachers and staff are encouraged annually to submit application asking for grant funding to help provide enriching, hands-on education experiences. Applications from nine education teams were selected to receive grants this year.
Education Foundation members first thing Tuesday morning, Dec. 3, surprised recipients in their classes and on their campuses with checks.
Lamar Primary School staff received grants for two projects.
Kimberlea Gillem, Kim Slaughter, Kim Moore and Rene Johnson received $1,045 for “Infinity and Beyond,” which will provide a portable planetarium system.
“What a great way to start the day,” said Judy Gillem, upon learning her team would be receiving grant funding.
Melinda Page and Kaci Smith received a $2,785 grant for “Math Alive!” animation on the Promethean board.
Page and Smith echoed the sentiment of most of the educators upon notification, thankful and excited.
Sulphur Springs High School educators Amanda Clark, Hannah Garrett, Kaytlin Meadows and Kaley Williams were awarded $2,000 for their proposed “Decreasing Our Carbon Footprint” project.
While the students “don’t know what’s in store for them yet,” they cheered excitedly for their teachers, who plan to utilize the funding to help provide filtered bottle filling stations at high school.
Two grants were also awarded at Travis Primary School.
Alma Ramirez and Lisa Lantz received $4,070 for their “Inchy Bookworm Vending Machine.” The educators said they’d seen the book program on social media and are excited to try it. This will help provide token for students to “purchase” books from the vending machine.
Christi Emmert was awarded $943.43 for pBuzz musical instruments, novice-friendly wind instruments that play like a straight trombone and are used to introduce kids to brass wind instruments.
Emmert and her students couldn’t contain their excitement to learn they will be getting new instruments; the entire class clapped, cheered and jumped for joy at the announcement. Emmert anticipated students will be even more abuzz when they actually get to use the instruments.
Sulphur Springs Elementary benefits from two Education Foundation grants.
Chandra Arvie and Whitney Vaughn were grateful to receive $705 for “Retro iPad Telephones,” which will allow students to speak clearly into an iPad.
Shelley Burton was awarded $2,254.89 for the “Let My Voice Be Heard!”project, which will purchase Qballs with wireless microphone, so the ball can be thrown around class and kids can be heard by speaking into the with microphone.
“I’m so excited, I can’t wait to order it!” Burton said.
Two Education Foundation grants were also awarded at Bowie Primary School Tuesday morning.
Misty Teer, Brittany Hicks and Tiffany Kral were excited to be awarded a $2,469.54 grant for their “Rock Our School — Transforming Classrooms” project.
Emily Simpson and Tammy Burnside were thankful to received $289.07 for their Tadpole Project.
