Thursday | December 17, 2015

All News

Several area teachers were recently surprised when Santee Electric Cooperative employees showed up at their schools with up to $1,000 each in grant money. The money came from a cooperative grant program called 'Bright Ideas,' which allows teachers to compete for funding outside of often limited school district resources.

Santee Electric Cooperative employees, armed with flowers, goody bags and 'big checks,' visited Manning High School, Manning Early Childhood Center, DP Cooper Charter School, Kenneth Gardner Elementary, Kingstree Middle Magnet, Hemingway MB Lee Middle School, Andrews High School, Georgetown High School, Kensington Elementary, Johnsonville High School, Main Street Elementary School, Ronald E. McNair Junior High School and The Carolina Academy in the 'Prize Patrol' van to surprise the 2015 Bright Ideas winners. Many surprised teachers and students were thrilled when the doors of their classroom opened and a co-op representative announced they were winners!

Bright, excited educators have come up with numerous ways to utilize these funds to teach their students. Lee Floyd of Johnsonville High School will make learning exciting and practical by allowing his carpentry class to create a new stadium entrance. George Geer and Elizabeth Bourne will immerse students at Andrews High School in the world of computer hardware and software, while Micheal Haynes, Tammy Kubula, and Stacey Bell will teach students to grow an organic garden at Manning High School. Legos for imagination and real world connections are the route Keyanna Hampton of Main Street Elementary School and Keitt Easterling and Fletcher Bazemore of Kensington Elementary will go to involve their students in learning.

Many teachers are also enhancing science curriculum through the 'Bright Ideas' grants. Urica Brown at Georgetown High School's grant was named Using Gizmos and Gadgets to teach physics while Lisa Holden-Smalls at Ronald E. McNair Junior High School titled her grant Wind Power and will allow students to discover ways of creating a wind turbine. At Kenneth Gardner Elementary School, Chelsea Beck wrote a grant titled Every Cloud Has a Silver Lining in order to purchase weather tools for her fourth graders.

Other teachers will integrate science topics with other subjects such as the arts, writing and math. With her grant Lurena Bynum will allow students to use technology, math manipulatives and craft items to create a garden. Jennifer Maples, Amanda Cullars, and Debbie Ipock will collaborate in art and writing to help students create Claymation films.

A few teachers will even use the grant for teaching art, history and critical thinking skills. Samantha Bentley at DP Cooper Charter School will improve language, reading, and writing skills by using document-based questions. At The Carolina Academy, Andrea Atkinson, Chrissy Tanner and Mary Godwin will use grant money to help produce a theatre class production of 'The Wizard of Oz.' Martha Rhodes of Kingstree Middle Magnet School, asking for technology to provide students the opportunity to produce a television show, also excelled in her grant writing skills and her students will benefit from the grant she received.

Finally two grants will provide for the needs of special needs students. Mary Owens and Kim Avant at Hemingway MB Lee Middle will provide Moby Max Tablets to special education students. At Manning Early Childhood Center Carlette Morris, Jennica Greco, and Robin Prothro will provide stimulation stations for students with sensory processing issues.

In all, $14,021.00 was awarded to schools in Williamsburg, Georgetown, Clarendon and Florence counties. All certified classroom educators were eligible to apply if they taught in grades kindergarten through 12 in the co-op's four-county service area. Teachers were awarded grant money if they could prove in an application that they had an innovative idea for a classroom project. Each school was eligible to submit more than one application, but individual teachers were limited to one application per school year.

Santee Electric Cooperative adopted this grant project from the North Carolina Electric Cooperatives and Palmetto Electric Cooperative, which have awarded more than $2 million since their program's inception in 1994.

To apply for next year's grant, keep an eye on santee.org during August when the application will be made available.