The AEF has just announced seven new grants that total $16,800. The projects being funded will expand and enrich the curriculum and benefit students from elementary to middle and high school.
Six Innovations in Education Grants are included in the spring funding.
- Lean on Me: Weighted Tools to Help Me Learn! enables the purchase of six weighted products to help students in K-5 self-regulate, thereby increasing their attention and allowing them to learn. These tools assist elementary students with focus and attention by helping them stay calm and organized, help “wiggle worms” stay in their seats, and provide proprioceptive feedback for children with autism, sensory integration disorders, and other neurological challenges, enhancing outcomes and behavior control.
- Heavy-Duty Sewing Machines for Fiber Arts supports the purchase of three sewing machines that will be used by AHS Visual Art students to experiment with a wider range of materials in the construction of 2D and 3D sculptural artworks. This expands the current curriculum and sets the stage for a new Fiber Arts course to be offered during the 2024-2025 school year.
- STEAM Circuits in Art provides the materials to incorporate LED’s, coin cell and AA batteries, circuits, and spinning motors into 2D and 3D artworks, connecting concepts learned in K-5 science units to Visual Art. This will also build a foundation in circuit-building skills as the art studio is transitioned into more of a makerspace.
- Ottoson Middle School Sensory Garden facilitates the creation of a sustainable garden for students and staff that will become an outdoor learning space for experiential learning. It will serve as a site for interactive activities and experiments, reading outdoors as a class, and finding inspiration for creative writing or art projects. Additionally, the garden one will offer a soothing environment to focus attention, reduce stress, and connect humans with their surroundings.
- AHS Hydroponic Garden Pilot supplies the necessary equipment to contrast two methods of hydroponic gardening during a hands-on collaborative project that is connected to the Environmental Science curriculum. Additionally, the pilot will cross boundaries to encompass the Makerspace, FACS (supply of garden to table foods), other science courses, and AHS clubs such as S.A.V.E while providing access to year-round greens and herbs in a sustainable manner.
- C4: College. Career. Community. Collaboration. enables students in the Compass program to take part in 12 collaboratively-planned field trips over three years that help them understand the range of possibilities for secondary education, career advancement, and community engagement. These trips supplement existing programs and support academic, social-emotional, curricular connections, and transitional needs.
One Continuing Scholar Award has also been announced. This grant enables AHS Mandarin teacher Xioahui Cao to spend a month at the prestigious Nanjing University taking part in a course specifically designed for full-time Mandarin teachers in the U.S. The Study Program for American Teachers of Chinese is made up of four courses: Modern Chinese Literature, Classical Chinese, Contrastive Studies of Chinese and English, and Seminar on Chinese. The content in these classes and the authentic materials she collects while she is in China have direct application within her classroom teaching at AHS,and she will adapt her lesson plans to include them.