feature stories
Mini-grants produce maxi learning
Oct 4, 2007 7:23 PM
UFT Teacher Center program funds educators’ dynamic ideas
Dawn Brooks-DeCosta (left) of Thurgood Marshall Academy with students and Della Saunders, one of the grandparents who learned the art of quilting from her southern ancestors and, in turn, taught it to the school’s younger parents.
Thurgood Marshall parent Tiffany Watson admires some of the artwork.
Do you have an idea to enhance the learning environment in your school? The UFT Teacher Center Mini-Grant Program awaits you.
Last year more than 70 educators received grants of up to $2,500 that in a variety of ways helped to spark students’ participation in their classrooms.
Mini-grant-winning proposals also address issues that affect the entire school community. Grant guidelines include such topics as designing a family engagement program; promoting collegiality and raising morale in the work environment; unconventional approaches to instruction; and mentoring new teachers in a particular area or grade level.
“We’re looking for programs that can be replicated by other teachers in the building,” and implemented on an ongoing basis, said Gino Giustro, the UFT Teacher Center’s mini-grant coordinator. Applications are being accepted through Oct. 30 [see box below].
Brooks-DeCosta confers with artist and author Faith Ringgold (left).
Lt. Nagel’s fellow firefighters, (from left) Lt. Tom McNamara, Capt. Charles Roberto and firefighter Anthony Reinecke, at the ceremony.
Paras and parents
Ideas that have received funding cover a broad range of activities, For example, last year the Teacher Center awarded a mini-grant to Linsey Miller, a teacher-administrator at the Hungerford School, PS 721 on Staten Island, to help her get paraprofessionals working with parents, so that together they could improve the learning environment for students at the District 75 school. The program, called “Bright Futures,” encouraged paraprofessionals and parents to participate in workshops that integrated literacy, science, culinary arts, and communication styles.
“Our goals were to increase paraprofessional learning and parental involvement,” said Miller. “We definitely succeeded in meeting our goals.”
As a result, “Students are solving problems and creating new concepts and associations,” said Miller.
Teacher Doris Meyer, the recipient of a mini-grant for her “Hero of 9/11” project, at the PS 158 ceremony.
Former school secretary Janet Nagel stands by a plaque renaming the auditorium at PS 158, Manhattan, in honor of her husband, Lt. Robert B. Nagel, a firefighter who died on 9/11.
Art in Harlem
Similarly, Dawn Brooks-DeCosta of Thurgood Marshall Academy, a K-2 school in Harlem, wanted to provide a way for parents to get involved in their kids’ education.
“We have really good parents and they wanted to do something,” said Brooks-DeCosta. The arts educator sent students home with fliers announcing a series of workshops she had designed for parents to participate in the learning process.
Parents eagerly signed up to attend the monthly workshops at which they could paint with watercolors, make collages or books. They even visited the Museum of Modern Art for a special presentation on how to involve children in the arts.
Parents kept art journals at home, while their kids kept journals at school, said Brooks-DeCosta, explaining that her goal was to fuse literacy with the arts.
“A lot of times kids bring work home and parents don’t know what it’s about. So this gave parents a chance to come into the school and get the same information.”
While students during their daytime classes studied African-American migration from the South to northern U.S. cities in the early 20th Century their parents discussed the same subject in their evening workshops.
A lot of grandparents were participating, said Brooks-DeCosta, and many of them recounted memories of being taught the art of quilting from their southern ancestors. The grandparents worked with younger parents to make two quilts, she said, which added an intergenerational aspect to the program.
The program concluded last May with an exhibition called the “Harlem Museum,” featuring the works of art created by both parents and students. As a result of this program, parents learned more about what their children were doing in school and enabled them to reinforce their children’s education.
Benjamin Cardozo HS teacher Nancy Orens listens along with her class as student Matthew Wong reads one of his poems.
Orens’ students came up with some creative designs for the covers of their books.
History of a hero
Doris Meyer, a teacher at PS 158 in Manhattan, won a UFT mini-grant last year to fund “Hero of 9/11,” a project that gave 5th-graders at her school a chance to study the history behind that infamous date.
One of the firefighters who climbed the stairs of the inferno raging in the Twin Towers to rescue others and, in his pursuit, met his own death was New York City Fire Department Lt. Robert B. Nagel, the husband of a former secretary at the school. A year after the 2001 attacks, the community dedicated a plaque to Nagel’s memory in the school auditorium.
Students in 5th grade at the school last year were in kindergarten when the attacks occurred and Meyers thought it was important that they know the full story behind the plaque in their auditorium.
So Meyer led a group in writing a biography and song about their school’s 9/11 hero. She wanted to make “the memory of Lt. Nagel live on in the school for years to come, to be more than a plaque on the wall.”
She brought in an artist-in-residence, Irish musician and singer-songwriter, Gabriel Donohue, to work with the kids to compose an original song entitled “One Firefighter.” Donohue, who grew up in the walled medieval town of Athenry, is based in New York and is noted for his strong sense of storytelling and history in his music.
At the culminating event for the project, Meyers had students sing the song and read from the biography they researched and wrote. The audience included firefighters from Lt. Nagel’s Engine Company, his widow Janet, family and friends.
“The kids learned to appreciate the school’s dedication to a hero, and what it means to be a hero,” said Meyer.
The students and Orens with the books they created using their imaginations and a Teacher Center Mini-grant.
During a Saturday workshop for paraprofessionals and parents at the Hungerford School on Staten Island, paras (from left) Noemi Quintana, Cynthia Burton and Francesca LaSpina work together on a project.
Students turned poets
Giving a child full ownership of his or her own body of work became the focus of Nancy Orens’ “Presto Poetry” project at Benjamin Cardozo HS in Bayside Queens. Orens inspired students to believe they could write and publish their own books and gave them the tools to do it: blank books in which they could inscribe their own poems — and on the cover their names as “author.”
Participating students read from their books at a Young Authors Convention, attended by family and friends and organized by Orens last June. This year, other teachers at the school are coming to her to find out how she got the money to fund it.
Once again, a UFT Teacher Center mini-grant played a significant role, and enabled Orens to purchase all the necessary materials her students would need: markers, calligraphy pens, scrapbook materials, peel-off stickers and the blank books from Treetop Publishing, accessible at www.barebooks.com. Some of the books had pre-formatted covers, featuring pictures of strawberries, oceans, sports, flowers, or unicorns. Students who used them were instructed to devote one of their 10 poems to the book cover subject.
Orens said she was able to use her $2,000 mini-grant to purchase many more blank books than were needed for her initial program and she will continue to offer the program in future classes.
Orens teaches College Writing, a required course at Cardozo. She is one of the few licensed reading teachers in any high school in the city and has earned a reputation for working well with students with deficient test scores.
She offered the Presto Poetry books to her whole class last year and 12 students, one-third of the class, volunteered to participate. The project effectively lured some of her struggling students to willingly engage in a more rigorous writing process.
The students had to go through six steps to complete the writing process, she said: brainstorm, first draft, revise, second draft, edit or proofread, then type the final copy
“I wanted these kids to know you can’t just go to the computer and type it out and turn it in,” said Orens.
At the end of the year, when she sought their input for evaluation, Orens said many of her students said they never knew the difference between revision and first draft and that they will never again hand in a first draft.
If you have brainstormed and revised and edited a good idea for a mini-grant that can be as successful as these examples, the Teacher Center wants to hear from you.
Hungarford teachers Linsey Miller (left) and Janet Manolarkos, recipients of the mini-grant along with Chapter Leader Al Volta and Sherma Williams, put together the ingrediants of a successful lesson.
Para Gloria Borden (center) with parents Tony Dalessandro and Mingwon Summer.
How to apply
Educators have until Oct. 30 to submit an application for the UFT Teacher Center Mini-Grant Program. A mini-grant provides you up to $2,500 for a special project in your school or classroom. All educators — teachers, paraprofessionals, guidance counselors, school psychologists, social psychologists, social workers, attendance teachers, lab technicians and secretaries — are eligible.
Proposals should address issues affecting the whole school community — students, educators and parents.
For more information, including specific guidelines for the grants and a copy of the application go to the UFT Teacher Center Web site — www.ufttc.org — and click on Mini-Grant Application. You will be able to access a PDF file.
You can either print out the application and fill it out using a typewriter, or fill it out the interactive form electronically and then print it.
Applications must be postmarked no later than Oct. 30.
Two-hour informational meetings in the Manhattan, Queens or Brooklyn UFT borough offices will describe the grant program and help you write your application. (Previous meetings were held in the Bronx and Staten Island.) The meetings start at 4:30 p.m. The dates and locations are as follows:
MANHATTAN: Friday, Oct. 5.
QUEENS: Tuesday, Oct. 9.
BroOKLYN: Wednesday, Oct. 10.
