Our annual grant program provides the means to connect students with the resources, experiences, and opportunities to meet their full potential and enhance learning in our local classrooms.
Here are the 2018-2019 Grantees:
| Enrichment & Innovation Grants (up to $1,000) | School | Grant Summary |
| Flexible seating benefits everyone | Parkview | More and more students are coming to school with varied learning styles and challenges. I have found that the traditional desk and chair seating no longer works for most kids. Most kids are needing more flexible seating options in order to get their work completed. I would like to use this grant to purchase some flexible seating options for my kids. This would include wobble stools (for those kids that just can’t sit still), floor seats that have an attached writing surface and also some ball chairs. This will allow my students to choose the type of seating that best suits their learning needs. |
| Play is essential to early learning! | Carl Cozier Elementary | We would like to buy tools to enhance STEAM education during child directed work time. Our wish list of tools include Lego building sets, K’nex building sets, Magna Tiles, clay, model magic, fuse beads, jewels, feathers, canvas boards, and paint pens. We want every child to play every day. We need children to have access to toys and tools that will fuel their imagination. Children learn critical communication skills as they play, work, and collaborate with each other.
Through play, children learn skills they will use throughout their adult lives. Children learn how to share, how to negotiate and resolve problems, how to speak up for themselves, and they learn how to function as a member of a group. |
| It’s the Little Things…. | Bellingham High School | I would like to receive a grant to purchase stamps and personalized Red Raider post cards to send out to students each week who are producing quality work. This can be students who have been consistently producing quality work, it could be a student who has been struggling and is showing signs of improvement, it could be a student who just looks like they are having a rough week but are engaged in class, or a multitude of different reasons. In a perfect world, my goal that these postcards would be a highlight of parent/guardians weeks and a talking point with their students. Maybe it would even end up on the fridge! 🙂 |
| Exploring Our World: Light, Chicks and Weather! | Northern Heights Elementary | As an International Baccalaureate school; Northern Heights is dedicated to preparing students for a world that doesn’t yet exist. Our students are encouraged to work in teams, ask lots of questions and to learn through action. In kindergarten that means lots of exploration. Science is perfect in meeting these needs. Most important to early education it requires exploration. Through exploration I am expecting that the students will not only discover the outcomes of temperature measurement, chick life cycle sequencing and light characteristics, but will have questions and findings that are unexpected. In other words they will be teaching me. |
| Visual Triage System (VTS): A tool for Bellingham schools staff and students to access health care when the school nurse is not available. | BSD School Nurse | Three ways a Visual Triage System (VTS) will benefit the Bellingham Public Schools: The initial program would target students at the elementary level starting with students at Columbia (311), Northern Heights (401), and Wade-King (414) Schools reaching 1,126 students.
1. Utilizing a VTS allows students and staff direct access to healthcare support and information. 2. Allowing students and staff easy access to medical advice shows the school district values our relationship with them. 3. A VTS will allow the school nurse to gather better information which can then be used to make a more accurate treatment plan for the student. |
| Snow School – Outdoor Science at Mt. Baker | Shuksan Middle School | For several years, Shuksan Middle School eighth grade science teachers have been taking a group of 30-40 eighth grade students to Mt. Baker Ski Area for Snow School. The North Cascades Institute has been partnering with Mt. Baker to provide an outdoor hands-on adventure around the themes of weather, watersheds and climate. Students study snowpack, snow stability and avalanche risk as well as map-reading skills and microscopic life in the snow! “After strapping snowshoes to their feet, participants join scientists from Northwest Avalanche Center and Western Washington University to collect data significant to current research.†(from NCI website) |
| STEAM in the LIbrary | Fairhaven | My project is to provide STEAM activities before school and during lunch for all grade levels. Students will enrich their school learning by participating in different activities and begin to see the library as not just a place to check out books but to create. |
| BRIDGES FLOW (Fun Learning Opportunities Woot!) | Lowell Elementary | Purchasing 5 sets of Snap Circuit kits and additional components will provide students an opportunity to learn about electricity, magnets, lights, and motors, supporting NGSS learning of engineering practices related to energy through STEAM activities and student inquiry. Snap Circuits will inspire students with a history of significant learning challenges to engage in academic tasks, aligning with our district goal of re-engagement.
BRIDGES FLOW fosters curiosity and knowledge in young scientists through cooperative learning. Students will replicate steps, predict and measure outcomes, and experiment with variables using Snap Circuits. Students will record key learning and data in their journals. |
| Girls United Wrestling, Strength and Conditioning Program Development | Squalicum HS, Bellingham HS, Sehome HS | The Girls United Wrestling Team needs strength training equipment for our practice facility. Strength training in wrestling is a critical component for wrestler development. Without access to a weight room at Shuksan Middle School (our practice facility), we are in need of training equipment such as Sand Bags (specifically for training), Jump Ropes, Boxes, etc.
Access to this equipment will provide the much-needed training opportunities for these young women, and level the playing field with other girls wrestling teams that have access to weight rooms on their campuses. |
| Strategies for a Rainy Day | Roosevelt Elementary | Our goal is to provide students with games that are strategy based and allow for learning social skills such as taking turns and following rules. Each of the five games is designed to use outdoors. Some require teamwork. These games are social, and do not require the athletic skill that many playground games require, so all students may be successful.
All students at Roosevelt will have access to the games and equipment we purchase. We will be able to differentiate the rules. And, we will train some older students to introduce and run the games with our youngest students. |
| Ping-Pong, Parcheesi and Puberty : Screen-Free ways for coping with it all | Shuksan Middle School | I propose that the BPSF promote positive social interactions at SMS lunches by providing them with a sturdy Ping-Pong table (paddles and balls) and a collection of board games and art supplies stored in a moving cart. When provided fun screen-free activities, students can build social and communication skills. |
| I FLY with AP Physics 1 | Squalicum High School | I-FLY STEM field trips are an amazing way for students to experience physics in the real world. Students will take part in a physics lesson surrounding the BIG PHYSICS IDEA of; “How does surface area/ weight affect your terminal velocity while falling?†Students will determine the terminal velocity of various objects, as well as themselves. Students then get the REAL world experience of INDOOR SKYDIVING! (100% SAFE) Students will get to fly 2 times each, simulating a 10,000-foot drop. This is a fun and exciting physics experience that will enhance student learning and encourage students to continue onto more physics! |
| Exploring and connecting to our world with nonfiction picture books | Kulshan Middle School | Middle school students are curious and want to see how they fit in their school, community, and world. Nonfiction picture books provide an accessible entry point for information about our wonderfully diverse world. It is a golden age for picture books written for older readers, with beautiful and informative texts ranging from history to biography to science, and more. Having a robust nonfiction picture book collection in secondary libraries provides reader choice, presents diverse perspectives, people, and communities, and connects to all content areas, including STEM, Music, Art, Language Arts, Math, Science, and even PE. |
| Launching Shuksan Aerospace Club – To Infinity and Beyond! | Shuksan Middle School | Six student leaders will form an after-school aerospace club attracting 12-30 6th-8th grade students focusing on rockets, aircraft and space. This new club will offer fun activities designed to challenge and stimulate student learning in aerospace science which is not currently included in the curriculum. Commercial and non-commercial materials would be used. Students will research their proposed projects, learn from each other, and learn how to work as a team using effective communication strategies. Potential projects include model rocketry, free-floating model planes, tethered Lindbergh Electric Airplane Flight (LEAF) and indoor parachute bottle rockets. They will be rewarded by the successful completion of projects they have developed from start to finish. Potential competitions include Science Olympiad, Technology Student Association and LEAF STEM events. Field trips to the Boeing Factory, Museum of Flight, Heritage Flight Center, local aerospace companies and the Redmond Space X campus will open a world of possibilities for their futures. |
| The Enemy Pie Experience with Local Author Derek Munson | Cordata Elementary School | The goal is to fund an all-day school visit by children’s author Derek Munson to Cordata Elementary. Three presentations would be in 2nd grade classrooms (The Enemy Pie Experiment) and then a whole-school assembly (Author Presentation).
The Enemy Pie Experiment explores the ingredients of both friendship and “enemyship†in a unique and entertaining way. It includes a reading of “Enemy Pieâ€, a brief discussion about friends and enemies and a crazy experiment. The Author Presentation includes a reading of “Enemy Pie†and a discussion about how the story became a book. From inception to the illustration process and beyond. |
| Social Emotional Development through 2nd Grade Worktime | Cordata Elementary School | Goal: Students will develop social emotional skills during worktime using puppets, dress up costumes, and Legos. These choices allow for play that strategically focuses on problem-solving, social stories, self-management and communication. |
| Flexible and Functioning Fourth Graders | Carl Cozier Elementary | I hope to provide flexible seating options for my students to help them focus, strengthen bodies and improve the environment and culture of the classroom. When given a survey to the class on what options they would like (provided choices on a picture list), wobble stools and rocking chairs were the top choices. These flexible seating options were on the list because they are sized appropriately for 4th grade students. Having these diverse seating options will give students choice and improve their physical health. Continuous movement will increase muscle activity, reduce strain on spine, and raise their stamina to sit and work at a task. |
| Puppetry with a Purpose | Columbia Elementary | With last year’s grant, I was gifted a portable stage lighting system for our puppet show. My class was able to bring awareness to the Global Refugee Crisis raising $1,000 for Doctors Without Borders. To continue to educate others about global issues, we need a portable puppet stage upgrade. We are asking for $400 to purchase a durable, portable stage. This year, we continue to explore issues with movement including refugees and immigration but will also be exploring environmental issues impacting our planet. We hope to create another puppet performance that helps us educate others about these issues. |
| Be the Change You Wish to See | Options High School | In US History classes at OHS, after studying the Civil Rights Movement in American History, students will interview local change agents who dedicated themselves to improving a specific issue in Whatcom County, nationally, or in the global community. During oral history interviews, students will take several photos of the interviewee to be used alongside the edited interview in a published book format. Students will collaboratively practice the skills of writing, editing, and listening through the interview and publishing processes. My hope is that students see that change occurs one step at a time accomplished by ordinary people taking extraordinary action. |
| Birchwood Elementary Family Heritage Museum | Birchwood Elementary | This spring our goal at Birchwood is to transform our cafeteria, gym, and hallways into a Family Heritage Museum. The goal of this event is to provide an engaging way for students and families to honor their experiences, share pride in their family heritage, and celebrate their unique background. Expected outcomes of this event include gaining a richer understanding for the diversity within our school and learning about the background and cultures of our school community. This event supports our school’s implementation of the Caring School Community (CSC) program by fostering inclusion of families, collaboration, and community-building within our school. |
| Pathway to Learning | Birchwood Elementary School | This project would provide an aesthetically pleasing sensory pathway in the hallway. A sensory pathway is a path indicated by floor and wall decals that guides students through specific sensory motor movements.
Movement and physical activity improve learning outcomes and can help with self-regulation. This sensory path will assist students to build motor skills, improve self-regulation, obtain specific sensory input for those who need it most, and access a quick way to move their bodies with intention. The expected outcome is increased attention for students in the classroom, improved sense of wellbeing, and improved learning for our students. |
| Cultural Representation in Our Classroom | Birchwood Elementary School | Build a classroom library in which students will see their culture represented. |
| Shh! Recording in Progress;Technology Tools to Improve Student Communication and Writing | Sunnyland Elementary | We would purchase headsets with microphones that can be used with our school computers to increase the verbal communication of all our students and the written communication of our students with writing challenges. All students would have access to the microphones to audio record answers, read aloud text, and more in order to share their ideas with their teachers, peers, and families through programs such as Seesaw and OneNote. Students with learning differences that struggle to write would use the microphones to efficiently use speech-to-text programs. This helps them get their amazing ideas into written form. |
| BIG IDEA Grants (up to $5,000) | School | Grant Summary |
| Combining the excitement of sport with the rigors of science and technology! | Bellingham/Sehome/Squalicum | The positive impact FIRST Robotics has on students is gratifying and well documented and provides a hands-on, real-word application of all the local, state, and national standards in math, science, and technology. Through participation in FIRST, students get to learn from professional engineers, master STEM skills, learn to use sophisticated software, hardware, and power tools while researching, designing, prototyping and building a sophisticated, competitive robot in only 6 weeks! Students also improve teamwork, interpersonal, and communication skills and see first-hand how powerful education can be when applied to a project they are excited about and motivated to complete. |
| Mirrors and Windows: Building Classroom Libraries to Celebrate Diversity | Roosevelt Elementary School | Love and belonging come first at Roosevelt. To deepen this ideal, we are looking to build our diverse collection of books to include books with protagonists and experiences that reflect our diverse community of students and feature underrepresented ethnicities, disabilities, cultural or religious backgrounds, gender nonconformity, and LGBTQ+ orientations. In addition, Roosevelt is currently moving towards inquiry-based instruction. Each grade level is building a unit that is conceptually based along the themes of identity, family, community, culture, and migration. To do this work well, we need to have “mirror†literature that is current, relevant, and reflective of our students’ experiences, as well as “window†literature that is reflective of experiences of people in the wider world. |
| The World Peace Game | Options High School | John Hunter’s 2011 TED Talk introduce his World Peace Game to the world. Through this hands-on simulation students critically, creatively, and collaboratively wrestle with complex, confusing, and chaotic geopolitical problems. Joe Wooding and Bruce Mansfield want to bring this experience to Bellingham. Here’s the catch. It can’t be bought. It must be built.
The first step is becoming a facilitator. We plan to take a master class with John Hunter himself. The five-day session certifies educators to use the World Peace Game in their classroom. After becoming facilitators, our vision is to train high schoolers to engage elementary students in the work of peace. |
| Help the Hamsters and boost the BUDC! | Sehome HS, Bellingham HS, Squalicum High School | The Bellingham United Debate Club, 24 students from three BSD high schools debating as one club, requests $5,000 to help fund a portion of our 2019 tournament travel to 4-6 tournaments in Washington and Oregon. Tournament costs can run roughly $1,300 for a two-day tournament. Our distance from the Seattle area, Spokane and Portland, sites of most of our tournaments, requires at least a one-night stay at roughly $100 per night per room plus tournament fees ranging between $50 – $250. BPSF funding will be essential to our ability to attend the most competitive tournaments. |
| Diverse Students Deserve Diverse Books | Sunnyland Elementary School | “Imagine a world in which all children can see themselves in the pages of a book.†-www.diversebooks.org
We want to significantly increase the diversity of the collection in our school library so that our diverse students see themselves on the covers and in the pages of the books they read. We expect this effort to increase the academic achievement of underrepresented students and to decrease absences and behavioral referrals from this population. This is part of a larger strategy at Sunnyland to increase equity, diversity, and inclusion based on Zaretta Hammond’s Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain. |
| Middle School Student Tech Ambassador Team | Shuksan, Fairhaven, Kulshan & Whatcom Middle Schools | We want to expand and increase visibility of the Student Tech Ambassador Teams (STAT) at every middle school through community outreach opportunities at feeder elementary schools and promotion of digital leadership and healthy media habits with peers. Our goal is to empower STAT members to continue their leadership and service throughout the school year with the outcomes of raising awareness around healthy technology use with middle school and upper elementary school students. To help identify our STAT members around campus, we are asking for funds to provide matching STAT T-shirts and professional badges and lanyards for each STAT member. |
| Our Perspective: What it means to be a Good Human, Powerful Communicator, and Make a Positive Impact. | Kulshan Middle School | This project will invite all Kulshan Middle School seventh graders to work with and learn from a community organization called the Bellingham Youth Media Project to write, produce and edit their own short films. Students will work in teams to create their films, which will all share the common theme of “KMS Seventh Grade Students are…Good Humans, Powerful Communicators, Making a Positive Impact.†At the conclusion of the project, their individual films will be woven together to create one common, feature film. The film will then be screened at the Pickford Film Center. Along the way, students will accomplish what the National Association of Media Literacy Education had in mind when they wrote that the purpose of creating multimedia texts is, “to help [students] develop the habits of inquiry and skills of expression that they need to be critical thinkers, effective communicators, and active citizens in today’s world.†|
| Makerspace Mornings, Afternoons, and Evenings! | Carl Cozier Elementary | As a librarian at a Title One Elementary School, I see how essential STEAM materials are for kids who may not have access at home. I am responsible for purposefully integrating technology throughout a student’s day. This grant would provide STEAM materials to enrich before and after school programs and support two Family Engagement evenings each school year, over 5 years. By providing students as young as kindergarten with materials that ask them to solve problems, work together, construct, deconstruct, fail and try again, we are building a team of future engineers, designers, mathematicians, scientists, and artists |
| Tech X – Bellingham Makerspace Career Connected Youth Program (focus: Vulnerable Youth) | Bellingham Family Partnership Program | Bellingham School District reports 250 students who qualify as homeless. These students do not have a consistent/safe place to sleep. Many of these students have been through traumatic events. Homeless students have barriers that make it difficult to participate in enrichment activities, after school programs, and many social events. They may not have a place to do homework or a supportive environment. They frequently move and switch schools making it hard to have friends. Lack of transportation is a common barrier that limits participation. All of these can contribute to a continued cycle of poverty. Our program program provides successful experiences bolstering feelings of self efficacy. It provides a safe space and encourages collaboration creating opportunities for positive social interactions and friendship. The program teaches practical skills that are used in the well paying jobs that research has shown will be in high demand and are going unfilled due to lack of skilled workers. The success students experience will enable them to envision themselves in similar careers making it a realistic and more attainable goal. Students also get to make something physical and take it with them which can reinforce the positive experience. |
| Heart BEATS | Shuksan MIddle School | Heart BEATS will foster social-emotional health and learning, starting with a deep sense of belonging, for some of our community’s highest needs middle schoolers. Using the BIG IDEAS grant resources, the BEATS staff will provide 150+ Shuksan Middle School students opportunities to engage our community and explore their interests, build meaningful and lasting relationships via shared extracurricular experiences and develop social-emotional skills with peers, mentors, community members and adult staff. Specific areas of focus will include wellness practices related to food and exercise, collaboration with healthy boundaries, communication tools and conflict resolution using data-supported restorative restorative practices. |
