Stipends valued at $500 were awarded to 39 SBISD educators and campus teaching teams during the 20th annual J. Landon Short Mini-Grants for Educators presentation.
The presentation occurred during the Sept. 29 regular monthly meeting of the SBISD Board of Trustees. A panel of independent judges chose the winning competitive applications.
Applications awarded grants this year ranged from an aquatics science special project, mischievously titled “Dissect & Dine,” to extra funding for a service-oriented academy where high school students have cooked at a homeless mission and at the Ronald McDonald House in the Texas Medical Center.
The Mini-Grants competition is named for lifelong education advocate and supporter J. Landon Short, who was a founding member of the SBISD Partners in Education Advisory Board. The annual competition and district awards are coordinated by the SBISD Community Relations Department.
More than $18,000 was awarded this year through the permanent endowment of The Robert and Janice McNair Foundation, as well as through generous gifts from the Spring Branch Educational Foundation, First Community Credit Union and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.
Mini-Grant award highlights this year include:
- Helping Hands, Feeding Others. Northbrook High’s Donald Miller and Stacy Tyler were awarded extra funds to help students in the Childress Academy Foundation reach out to others in need by cooking at a homeless mission and for families at the Ronald McDonald House in the Texas Medical Center. “If you ever want to see Spring Branch kids doing something great outside the classroom, come see our students helping others. You’ll be impressed. I always am,” Donald Miller says.
- Dissect & Dine. Spring Woods High science teacher Gina Disteldorf knows how to write a catchy headline. Through this award, aquatic science students in Disteldorf’s class will be able to dissect and study a host of sea living organisms – clams, octopus, squid, snails, fish and shrimp. Dissected fish can’t be consumed, but the grant will help pay for snack trays of smoked oysters and fried seafood, delicacies that some of her students may never have tasted. “Girls are always braver than boys,” says Disteldorf, describing her experience with food tastings, not laboratory dissections.
- Six teachers at Spring Branch Middle School applied for and won six separate mini-grants this year. Most of the awards focus on literacy skills and reading. Winning teachers from the middle school are Dianne Gebhardt, Ashley May, Amy Servat, Misty Stelly, Jeff Walsdorf and Ashley Wundram. Six out of 39 grant awards? That’s quite an achievement for a campus.
A reception for teachers who won grants and their families was held before the Board of Trustees meeting.