The Community Foundation of Muncie and Delaware County, Inc. has announced that the following Robert P. Bell grants totaling $1,161 have been awarded to local teachers for the second quarterly grant cycle of the 2008-2009 academic year. It is estimated that nearly 200 Delaware County students will benefit from these grants.
- Juli Dorton, Delta Middle School, was awarded $265 for seventh grade art students to study the life and words of artist Vincent Van Gogh. They will create small, individual paintings in the style of Van Gosh, and the unit will culminate in the reproduction of Starry Night as an 18 foot by 6 foot wall mural.
- Pamela Meier-Fisher, Wes-Del Middle School, was awarded $144 for eighth grade English students to participate in a unit about the propagandized "artist colony" (concentration camp) of Terezin, where from 1941-1944, 12,000 doomed Jewish children expressed their emotions through drawings and poetry. Several of the drawings and poems were compiled into the book I Never Saw Another Butterfly. Students will create a permanent classroom butterfly display to honor all of the Terezin children. In addition, each student will create two smaller butterfly memorials, each bearing the name of one child that perished at the camp. Each student will send one of their individual memorials to the National Holocaust Museum's Butterfly Project, where an exhibit of 1.5 million handmade butterflies is scheduled for 2012.
- Amy Cullum, Wes-Del High School, was awarded $204 for high school Spanish students to create personal flip charts with various Spanish verb tenses. One of the most difficult aspects of working in the past tense in Spanish is the choice between preterite verbs and imperfect verbs. By physically choosing the cards which will have verbs and clues to each tense in Spanish, students will get a better understanding of how to pick the correct verb tense in the context of a sentence.
- Pamela Meier-Fisher, Wes-Del High School, was awarded $248 for eleventh grade College Prep English students to study female activists, scientists, artists, first ladies, explorers, and athletes who have become "pillars" of our community. Students will research a famous woman, write a paper about the life of their chosen woman, and create a three-dimensional, four tier pillar out of clear glasses. The levels of the pillar will be mounted on plywood and divided into four categories: Beginnings (first level), Links to Others (second level), Challenges (third level), and Legacy (fourth level.) Students will fill each level of the pillar with objects, photographs, and drawings to tell the women's stories visually.
- Renee Huffman and Carie Mottweiler, Burris Laboratory School, were awarded $300 for kindergarten and middle school students to work collaboratively on a service learning project. Middle school students will measure and cut the edging of fleece material for blankets. Kindergarten students will tie knots to finish the edging of the blankets, and then students will take a field trip to a local nursing home to deliver the hand-made blankets to residents.
Bell Grants of up to $350 are awarded to teachers with innovative ideas, programs or projects designed to stimulate learning in their students. The next deadline for Bell Grant applications is February 1, 2009.
For more information about Bell Grant applications, contact Suzanne Kadinger, Foundation Program Officer, at skadinger@cfmdin.org or by calling (765) 747-7181.
