Free Money I: Grants

Many of you know I came from a classroom with one desktop computer that was there when I started teaching and one laptop that took a full hour to start after shutting down with a Smartboard that never calibrated due to the train shaking it multiple times a day (which I did get to stop shaking so much by wedging a coke bottle between it and the ceiling). I remember hearing about grants and I thought I could try to get some technology for my classroom, but when I broached the subject with an administrator, I was met with "Did you take grant-writing classes in college? Grants aren't easy to get and take a lot of work and lots of writing. You should look into taking the courses at SELU before attempted to write one."

Yeah... ain't nobody got time for that. So I never thought about writing grants again, UNTIL I met one Ms. Sandy Morgan who told me that grants weren't hard at all. She then sent me some links to a few easy to get grants and changed my life.

The first one I tried was the Walmart grant- it asked 3 questions, took 5 minutes, and in a matter of a few months, I had $500 in the STEAM Express account. She sent me the Eduporium grant info; I was at PowerSchool University and filled it out while taking a class- BOOM $500 worth of Eduporium products for the STEAM Express.

It really opened my eyes to easy, local grants. Two of our libraries have won the Dollar General Grant for $20,000 (shout-out DSJH and SPHS)! Imagine what that money could do for your library! After learning how easy this free money was to get, we started doing a grant-writing segment in our Learning Spaces cohort with Ms. Sandy as a guest presenter. After she finished, we spent about 90 minutes applying for these grants. Since then, we've gotten e-mail after e-mail of teachers telling us that they were awarded a grant they applied for in the class- one person was even able to replace her desks with furniture she wanted (shout-out LOJH). If you are reading this and you were one of those in our cohort to win a grant (or two or three), do me a favor and share this blog post and give a little testimony to how easy it was to apply for them!

If you are interested in learning more, Ms. Sandra Morgan has a website on our staff page called LPPS Grant Writing that has a quarterly newsletter on it with upcoming grants, short descriptions, and due dates (she really is amazing, ya'll) . We are also offering this same grant writing workshop to everyone this summer, Ms. Morgan will be there to give all the amazing, current information she has, AND we will spend time applying for grants before we leave! It's only half a day and at the beginning of the summer so you might even get some money before school starts! To sign up for the class, click on this link, sign in, and search for the section number 10419.

Unfortunately for me, I got this information after I was out of the classroom. I keep thinking of all the amazing things I could have done had I known this information, or had not been so discouraged from the get-go. Don't be me, learn about how a little time investment can have a big payoff. Literally.

Stay tuned for Free Money II: How work you've already done can work for you. ;-)