Winning Big: Microgrants Bring Communities Together
At WeAreTeachers, our number one priority is providing teachers with the support and resources they need. Recently, we teamed up with Quantum Learning Technologies to offer a Student Engagement microgrant. The premise was simple: you give us your best student engagement ideas, we post them online and the ideas that garner the most votes receiv
e a cash prize and a flip video camera to capture your results.
As usual, you amazed us with your submissions! There were so many fantastic student engagement ideas (which are still available online to enthuse and inspire you) and from those submissions, ten teachers won microgrants to help them implement their best ideas for student engagement.
We were thrilled by the excitement and passion that the teachers had for their winning submissions, but what we are hearing back from these teachers is even more exciting. It seems that, by submitting their ideas and asking their students and colleagues to vote for them, they created a sense of unity for their school and their community. Many teachers reported back to us that their students were going home and telling their parents and friends to vote, and entire schools and even school districts were rallying around their submission.
Illinois elementary art teachers Dawn Stanislawski, who won for her submission, “In The Eyes of the Artist” pointed out that the best part of winning the grant was the notoriety it created for her class and her idea, “The most exciting part is that the buzz about it around the district and community is amazing. People really wanted for us to win it,” Ms. Stanislawski said, “I have had parents, students, family members, friends asking me on the status.”
Viriginia teacher and microgrant winner Rachel Harrison agreed, stating that the best part of the winning the grant was something non tangible: the connections it created for her. Ms. Harrison won for her idea “Documenting the Service and Sacrifice of Veterans.”
“It was a really rewarding experience!” Ms. Harrison said, “I was able to get our entire school, parents, and other teachers from other schools involved through the voting process. Because I was able to contact so many people, they were able to see what we were doing and I made a lot of contacts with great ideas to improve my project even more! Even if I had not won, I still would have won because of the networking the contest allowed me to do in my own school division.”
California teacher Kelly Maxey, whose project “Three Cups of Tea Business Venture” won the most votes, said that involving her class was the best part.
“What made the experience more meaningful to me was that my class of fifth graders was so involved in the process. They would call family members and friends to get them to vote for us. They would tell me every day how we were doing in the competition. Their enthusiasm made the whole thing that much better!”
You can’t imagine how much it thrilled us, the WeAreTeachers team, to hear that the microgrant itself was engaging students and communities nationwide! The best part is that it’s not too late to create some buzz for your class, as we constantly continue to offer exciting new microgrants. Currently, we are partnering with PCI Education and turning our attention to Special Education teachers, with a microgrant designed especially for them. Watch in coming months for more microgrants, and apply often! As the winner of the Student Engagement microgrant can testify, you could win some cash, a flip video camera and, best of all, the cheers of your community!
