When Hickory Elementary School teacher Wendy Rodgers took her students out of class Friday morning to join the rest of the school’s students and teachers for an assembly, she had no idea that it had been called for her.
Rodgers, who teaches second grade at the school, soon found out that she would receive a minigrant she applied for to develop a curriculum that would involve students designing a garden.
“Ever since I started teaching, I wanted to do a community garden,” she said. “It’s a module that we do as part of science; they learn about plants and growth cycle and that sort of thing, and with this population of students, a lot of them don’t have the opportunity to go outside and experience that.”
Schools Superintendent Clayton Wilcox and officials from the Washington County Public Schools Education Foundation presented Rodgers with a check for $998.
The minigrant will help pay for iPads that the students can use to research and design their gardens to grow the right type of foods to meet the nutritional needs of the population.
The students will also calculate costs, write a proposal and eventually present their design to the class.
Rodgers jumped up and down when she received the check, shouting “Yes!” as it was presented.
“These kids mean the world to me,” an emotional Rodgers said later. “When I see what they go through every day, to be able to give them something to take into the community, I’m so excited.”
Robin Rose, coordinator of Washington County Public Schools community partnerships and development, said that such a program could address the needs of the community.
“This is a high FARM (Free and Reduced Meals) rate school, and nutrition is an issue, and hunger is an issue in this school, so we felt that teaching the kids at a young age how to plant a garden, how to nurture a garden, teaching them about healthy foods as opposed to processed foods, would help not only the students but have a larger reaching impact on the community, as well,” she said.
The education foundation presented minigrants to teachers at 11 schools across the county Thursday and Friday, which were “prize patrol” days. Officials went to each school to present the checks.
A web-based math program, the installation of a weather station and vegetable mats in a horticulture class were among the projects that received the grants.
In addition to Hickory, other schools with winning teachers included Hancock Elementary, Hancock Middle Senior High, Maugansville Elementary, Washington County Technical High, Marshall Street, Cascade Elementary, Rockland Woods Elementary, Pleasant Valley Elementary, Boonsboro High and South Hagerstown High.
Rose said the foundation gave out $9,618.75 this year, most of which was donated by county school system employees.
“WCPS employees donate a considerable amount of money that’s used primarily for the awarding of the minigrants,” she said. “We’d like to award every teacher who submits a proposal, but unfortunately our resources are not that expansive or vast.”
Since 2008, Rose said the foundation has awarded more than $80,000 in minigrants.
“It’s very rewarding to be able to give this much money back to teachers who work so hard each and every day, sometimes without the resources that they need, to really be creative and give our kids an advantage here in Washington County,” she said. “We can help the teachers have the opportunities to have an innovative and creative way to teach our children.”
Minigrant winners
Here are the winners of this year’s Washington County Public Schools Education Foundation minigrants:
• Hancock Elementary School
Teacher: Danette Santor
Award: $500.00
Project: “IXL at Math”
• Hancock Middle Senior High
Teacher: Tom Mazzone
Award: $983.78
Project: “Veg-mat-able”
• Maugansville Elementary School
Teacher: Colleen Ayling
Award: $997.20
Project: “Intermediate Life Skills Garden”
• Hickory Elementary School
Teacher: Wendy Rodgers
Award: $998.00
Project: “Second Grade Community Garden”
• Washington County Technical High School
Teacher: John Jones
Award: $945.00
Project: “Recreating the Photography of the Great Depression”
• Marshall Street School
Teacher: Kathryn Quigley
Award: $999.69
Project: “Adaptive Music”
• Cascade Elementary School
Teacher: Erin Code
Award: $894.05
Project: “Math Ops Math Fair”
• Rockland Woods Elementary School
Teacher: Lorna Burdick
Award: $775.00
Project: “How’s the Weather Up There?”
• Pleasant Valley Elementary
Teacher: Daniel Lindner
Award: $752.27
Project: “We Can Do the Rubik’s Cube”
• Boonsboro High School
Teacher: Jacqueline Rebok
Award: $778.00
Project: “French Authentic Literacy”
• South Hagerstown High School
Teacher: Aubrey Hammond
Award: $995.76
Project: “Creative Studio Portraits”
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