A Rewarding Experience

Every year I am invited by the Education Foundation of Sarasota, Florida, to read

grant proposals, written by classroom teachers.

As a retired classroom teacher, I am vitally interested in anything that makes a teacher more effective.

When I was teaching, I had a visionary administrator who sent willing teachers to workshops to learn how to write grants.

I personally was the grateful recipient of several grants for my classroom, and helped write some for the school as a whole. I also wrote a booklet for the Accelerated Reader Newsletter on helping teachers to write effective grants.

I still have a vital interest in public education, having four grandchildren of school age. Along with about 150 volunteers, I go in once a year and read grant proposals sent in by Sarasota Teachers. There are lots of changes in the 12 years since I taught. Technology has changed the way the classroom functions, just as it has our business and personal lives. My grandchildren know what an Activboard is, what a memory stick is for, and benefit by the use of the latest developments.

I was familiar with terms like "learning disability", "accelerated", and speech therapy.

But the foundation gave us a two-sided sheet of all the areas of special learning and it boggles the mind. Have you heard of Cognitively Challenged? Digital Signal Processing? Pregnant and Parent Teens? All were new to me.

The Education Foundation of Sarasota sponsors the Edge of Excellence Grants yearly.

In 20 years, they have made 3738 awards to teachers. Executive Assistant, Lindsay Letts, told me that they had almost 150 applicants this year. The award is for $500 and the number of recipients depends on the amount of money contributed. Since 1990, The Foundation has made grants totalling over $2.2 million dollars and has benefitted more than 350, 000 students.

For more of my comments, go to my blog archives for October , 2008.

For more information: go to www.EdFoundation.net.

If you would like to be a grant reader, just contact me. I'll tell you how and we can go together!

They treat us like royalty, offering a sumptious buffet of breakfast and lunch food and unending coffee! You can work as many hours as you wish.