Each year, the Chatham Education Foundation awards Creative Teaching Grants to teachers across the county seeking to bring innovative resources, not available through the district’s budget, to their students. This year, CEF received 31 applications–a record number–totaling more than $36,000. CEF was able to fully or partially fund 29 of the projects for a total of $20,000. This is the most CEF has awarded to date and up from $16,927 in 2023.
Projects run the gamut from STEM to literacy to history to gardening to the arts. Several projects, including “Furry Friends, Cozy Covers,” are geared towards exceptional children. For this project, EC students from Bonlee School and Chatham Central High School will make fleece blankets for animals at the Chatham County Animal Resource Center. “Our students have a deep love for animals, especially dogs and cats,” said Sherry Thurman, an EC teacher at Bonlee. “This grant will help them enhance their fine motor skills and teach them the importance of active, responsible citizenship. Through their responsible actions, leadership, and innovative thinking, they will learn that they can indeed make a difference in the world.”
The Chatham County Arts Council is partnering with CEF to fund three arts projects. These projects include two at Virginia Cross Elementary School: “NC Clay Pencil Pots” and “Sensory Friendly Adaptive Art Materials for Extended Content Standards Students.” For the pencil pots, 4th grade students will work with air dry clay to create an individual piece using a pottery method of their choice. Virginia Cross art teacher Gladys Chevez explained that not only will students gain hands-on experience with the different models of pottery making but they will also gain a better understanding of the rich history of pottery in North Carolina.
For the third art project, Seaforth High School will use their grant to complete phase 1 of a “Black Box Theater Space,” which includes hanging curtains and painting the space black in an existing classroom. According to Seaforth theater teacher Rachel Horowitz Andrews, this will turn the classroom into an adaptive, versatile space, inviting creativity and collaboration. Theater students will be able to learn about and experiment with many types of staging and performance; photography students can use the space as a darkroom; and dance and music students can hold smaller-scale performances, freeing up the Seaforth Auditorium.
Outdoor projects receiving funding include a “Greenhouse for Horticulture” at J.S. Waters School, “Weather Watchers: Creating a School Weather Station” at Siler City Elementary School, and a “Jet Edible Sensory Garden” at Jordan Matthews High School. The sensory garden, explained EC teacher Seneca Haywood, is intended to provide a safe space for students with special needs. “Engaging and spending time in the sensory garden will help them feel calm, happy and more connected to the environment,” she said.
Rose Syroid, an 8th grade science teacher at Horton Middle School, is using her grant for a project she titled “The Evolution of Telephones–a STEM Journey Through Time,” in which she will present her students with prototypes of historical phones so that they can put them in chronological order and predict what future phones will look like and be capable of doing. “I think this is a creative way to get students reading, writing, measuring, researching, citing research, comparing/contrasting and predicting,” she said.
“These are all just a sampling of the innovative projects made possible by our generous donors,” said CEF’s Executive Director Brittany Sandefur. “These grants prove that Chatham residents have faith in the quality of our public schools and we want to equip our teachers with the resources they need to provide a first-class learning experience for Chatham kids.”
Be sure to follow CEF on Facebook (www.facebook.com/CEFnc) as we will showcase several of the projects as teachers and students put them into action.
