Our program at the May 27th meeting was on our club’s Teacher Mini-Grants program. Our club began the program after Gil Stromsoe attend a district assembly in 1989 and found out about the program by the another club in our District. The Board of Directors approved the program in 1989 and the first Mini-Grants were awarded in 1990. Since then over $100,000 has been awarded by the club. This year 40 applications were received of which 23 Mini-Grants were awarded. Three of the teachers presented a thumb nail of their grant, so that our members could understand how the club Mini Grant money is being spent.
The first teacher was Lucretia Anton. Lucretia is a 5th grade teacher at Holly Avenue. Her project was “The Six Pillars of Character Counts”. Her mother is a Rotarian and as she was raised her mother questioned most ever day what she had done for somebody else (from her mother as a Rotarian believe deeply in Community Service). With the money she received she purchased workbooks and other resources to present the information at school assemblies which encourages students to care about other students and treat each other ethically.
The second teacher was Holly Castillo who works with 8th graders at Foothill Middle School. Her project was entitled “Newton’s Water Rocket”. She used the grant money to purchase a rocket launcher for two litter water bottles. With the rocket project it targeted students to see how Newton’s laws affected the water bottles performance. Through practice and study they had to determine how much water and compressed air would affect how high the rockets could go. The top student rocket went about 1100 feet.
The last teacher was Jeannie Ackerman who teaches 12th grade economics at Arcadia High School. The title of her project was “Engageonomics”. Jeannie used as a basis the Freakeconomics series of work books. The project uses resources to grab the student’s attention and then tie it into Economics. Economics is a required California academic course and is routinely at the bottom of the list of courses that students want to take. The grant gave her a tool to engage the students and get them into wanting to appreciate and learn economics.
Our speakers were very thankful for the Mini-Grant program that provides money for innovative teaching resources, especially now that state funding keeps getting cut by our state government.