Lee’s Summit prize squad offered creative teachers grants to bring lessons to life

Creativity in the classroom can be tough on a budget. That’s why the Lee’s Summit Educational Foundation recently sent out its prize squad to award grants to teachers throughout the school district who have ideas for making lessons a little bit different.

The annual Promote Excellence And Knowledge (PEAK) grants started at $100 and went up to $5,922, each for a specific purpose. Although most of the grants applied to 21 specific schools, several were for district-wide initiatives. Any teacher can apply for one.

“The focus is to provide teachers with the resources they need to bring lessons to life and provide them with resources that can’t be paid for through district budget dollars,” said Sheryl Franke, executive director of the foundation.

A committee of 15 to 20 community members judged the applications blind, without knowing what teacher or school applied. Criteria included impact on students, creativity and how long the program could benefit students.

There were fewer applications this year and fewer programs funded. Franke said things have been difficult with the pandemic. Overall, 46 of the 57 applications received funding totaling just over $52,000.

The more students a program affects, the more funding the foundation is willing to give it.

Aaron Layendecker, modern language department chairman for the district, received the biggest grant for his proposal, “Bringing Authentic Language into the Classroom.” It will apply to students studying foreign languages at all three high schools.

The grant will allow the schools to subscribe to a service called This Is Language, which features videos of people all around the world talking about things in their daily lives in their native languages and dialects.

“If I had a unit on housing or health, they have a whole library of videos of people talking about how these things affect their culture in the target language. Because they’re native speakers, it’s authentic intonations. It’s up-to-date vocabulary. Some of our vocab lists can feel antiquated,” Layendecker said.

Previously the district has used the program for students in their fifth year of language instruction. This grant allows them to expand that to students in their second, third and fourth year of language studies, affecting approximately 800 students.

Layendecker said he expects it to help students score higher in the listening sections for International Baccalaureate exams and help make up ground lost during a year of virtual learning.

Over at Underwood Elementary, physical education teacher Stacey Bryant received a $2,775 grant for a program that will affect approximately 500 students at the school. She has gotten equipment for DrumFIT, also known as cardio drumming.

Basically, students stand behind an exercise ball on a stand and tap out beats to different tunes on it using drumsticks.

“We have a rhythms and dance unit where we usually do square dances and line dances, which are fun, but this just gives it a whole new level as far as rhythms go,” Bryant said.

She plans to coordinate the unit with the school’s music department. The hundreds of available tunes include genres such as hip hop and R&B. Bryant said if it’s necessary, this is an activity easily adapted for social distancing.

Not every student loves the traditional dance unit, so Bryant is hoping this will get some of the reluctant ones excited to participate.

Another district-wide program that received grant funding is the Sign Language Peer Inclusive Environment Resource Library. This library has items you won’t see in a regular library.

Materials available for checkout include a Scrabble set with pictures of American Sign Language representations of letters and dice with the ASL equivalent for each number printed on them.

The idea is to make any classroom a more social, communicative place for students who use sign language.

“I wanted to add a library of items that I can check out to interpreters or teachers or speech teachers for classrooms so that the students that use ASL to communicate don’t have a communication barrier that causes them to not have that inclusive experience,” said Darla Nelson, a district interpreter for deaf students.

Nelson plans to track what lessons and goals each teacher uses the items for so she can recommend them to other teachers who also need to meet those goals with their students.

By using these items in regular classrooms, students who didn’t previously know sign language will be able to engage more with students who do use it.

“It really helps with that child’s self-esteem. It helps them be independent because they don’t have to rely on an interpreter to communicate,” said Krystal Wygas, a hearing impaired specialist at Lee’s Summit West High School. “It makes it fun to learn ASL, to bridge that language gap, so they are able to learn that language too,” said Krystal Wygas, a hearing impaired specialist at Lee’s Summit West High School.