GRANT RESULTS

Grant Results

The winners of the 2022-2023 Innovative Teacher and School Resource Grants from the Foundation for Educational Excellence.

The winners of the 2021-2022 Innovative Teacher and School Resource Grants from the Foundation for Educational Excellence.

The winners of the 2020-2021 Innovative Teacher and School Resource Grants from the Foundation for Educational Excellence.

Teacher: Jennifer Friend-Kerr

Hilton Head Island School for the Arts

March 2020

"It's Electrifying" is a play produced by the third grade students at Hilton Head Islands School of the Arts. The show brings facts about electricity to life in a way that is engaging and memorable to the student who perform the show and the other students who will experience it. "We are able to bring learning to life. We find that kinetically the kids retain the information. It becomes part of them...they own it."

Teacher: John Quindlen

Hilton Head Island High School

“We cannot thank the Foundation enough for how they have helped us achieve as much as we have over the years. We have grown from an initial team of six students to almost fifty and many of the past and present student team members, who have gone on to or are now considering careers in engineering and science, would never have been exposed to these challenging disciplines of higher education without the Foundation’s help.”

Teacher: Jennifer Friend-Kerr

Hilton Head Island School for the Creative Arts

Third grade students develop and implement a recycling program.

Teacher: Anthony Petrucci

Battery Creek High School

The introduction of the drone into our Aviation program gives the student “hands-on” application of the theory of flight. This grant opportunity provided the students ability to fly the craft, take pictures and video school activities.

“The hands-on element supplemented the classroom instruction and added the “real world” application that only those in the field ever experience.”

Teacher: Kelsey Schuessler

Hilton Head Island IB Elementary

This grant provided a large teacher display abacus to use in my 4th grade class. It is used to accompany hands on manipulatives in numeracy fluency and comparison during math instruction. We use them regularly to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, place value and more.

"The goal was that the regular use of abacuses would help to reinforce abstract math concepts in a hands on way, and this large display abacus enabled me to effectively achieve this goal."

Lady's Island Elementary

Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth Graders wrote and produced a show entitled The Lost Isle at Lady’s Island Elementary School. The students exercised their creativity and watched their words come to life on the stage.

“I would highly recommend this activity for other schools. Students were able to see the challenges of the writing process, but they were also able to learn the editing process so that their words would make sense and be enjoyed by an audience.”

Teacher: Marysusan Williamson, NBCT

Beaufort High School

What an incredible experience for the students who competed at the International

Career Development Conference. Beaufort High School has not had a DECA Chapter in about 10 years, and for us to have five students qualify to compete at ICDC is amazing!

“It was the most fun I have ever had on a school trip. It is amazing how many friends you meet doing DECA. My trip to ICDC was unlike anything I had ever done, and I am thankful to those that aided in making this happen.”

Teacher: Dr. Nancy Ungvarsky

Beaufort High School

Dr. Nancy Ungvarsky, a science teacher at Beaufort High School, has received The Dr. Wayne Carbiener “Above and Beyond” Beaufort County Teacher of the Year Recognition Grant. She was awarded a $1,000 grant from the Foundation to utilize in her teaching goals in the classroom.

Teacher: John Quindlen

Hilton Head Island High School

The robotics team co-captains, the programmer who developed the autonomous and tele-operated controls systems, and the field human player were all female which is a clear indication of how many female students now participate in pre-engineering programs. In competition, they placed 3rd out of 64 teams in Myrtle Beach and 5th out of 61 teams in Knoxville.

"Our success this year was made possible by the grant which the team received from your organization."

Teachers: Willard Smith & Bradley Williams

Whale Branch Elementary School

The Drums Alive project makes the students move while drumming rhythms in an aerobic routine. The project did very well with the grant’s intended purpose of connecting music class with physical education and improving the understanding of rhythm concepts and improved cardiovascular endurance.

“The students will be moving and drumming for 50 minutes and come out of class sweating and very tired.”

Teachers: Irma Rameizl, Angela Oviedo, Jennifer Mungia, Aura Zuleta

Hilton Head Middle School

Purchased bi-lingual educational magazines for Spanish and French students, as well as bilingual students. The students answered a variety of questions during this guided reading. They also completed a comprehension exercise in the magazine and fun doing the extension activities in the online language lab which are part of the magazine subscription.

"Thank you for your support in the education of our youth."

Teacher: Jennifer Friend-Kerr

Hilton Head Island Elementary School for Creative Arts

Using the NEARPOD software on the NEARPOD website, students have been using their iPads to visit live volcanoes and distinguish between active and dormant volcanoes. Prior to observing Martin Luther King Junior’s birthday as a school holiday, students took a virtual fieldtrip to his monument in Washington, D.C. Studying geometry in mathematics, students went on a virtual fieldtrip to Taipei, Taiwan. Together, they identified different two-dimensional shapes and searched for them while discovering the unique skyscrapers in Taipei.

"The benefits achieved from this grant were higher level research skills (hands on-interaction and collaboration), real life connections that enhanced interest and learning as well as promoted a stronger interest in researching topics at a deeper level. "

Teacher; Jenn D’Angelo

Hilton Head Island Elementary-IB

The reading-phonics program that we purchased, is called Lively Letters from TLC (Telian-Cas Learning Concepts) which develops phonemic awareness, phonics, and sight word skills to the level of automaticity, thereby enhancing students’ progress for comprehension.

"The benefits of this program for the students are multi-sensory in that the students are able to use all senses to remember letter-sound recognition."