Stories

Future Intended: Teachers edition

Teachers are some of the most important adults in the lives of students. As part of our ABACUS program with its focus on the middle school years, we are proud to offer funding through our Small Grants for Teachers program. The grants are designed to support teacher projects that improve students’ achievement and enhance learning experiences.

Check out the stories below for some inspiration!

Read all about it! At Ryerson Middle School, a professionally printed monthly student newspaper is one of the ways that students are staying informed. Beyond keeping up with the big issues of the day, the paper also gave students the opportunity to enhance their critical literacy skills when engaging with media – a skill that is as essential and timely as ever!

Mental health is important at all stages of life and especially so for young students. This summer at St. Patrick Catholic Elementary School, students and their parents got to experience a fair focused on mental health. Families learned together about the different aspects of mental health as well as different coping skills.

The arts are a timeless vehicle for teaching self-expression. With support from Small Grants for Teachers, an extracurricular arts program at Queen Mary allowed children with no prior experience to perform in a stage production of Beauty and the Beast. For those students less inclined to be centre-stage, the program also offered the experience to learn professional level sound and lighting for stage productions.

History buffs in the making! Two classes at Hess St. School got to visit Dundurn National Historic Site and the Military Museum last fall with the help of a small grant. Exploring what the neighbourhood was like before Confederation and discovering the role of former Hess St. School students who volunteered in the First World War is sure to pique curiosity and create some future historians!

Sparking students’ imaginations is a great way to get them engaged in learning. And what’s more exciting than building a robot?! At Mount Hope Elementary, a small grant helped with the purchase of VEX IQ robotics kits that students used to build and program their own robots. Coding and programming are increasingly sought after skills and a Robotics Club at school is an exciting way for students to work together using their imaginations and applied learning.

Future Intended is an ongoing series that spotlights some of our most recent granting in categories like music, visual art, literacy, the environment and more.