Community First Bank has partnered with the Kokomo Public Schools Education Foundation to offer three teacher mini-grants for the 2023-24 school year, with at least one designated to the Kokomo Area Career Center to support students throughout Howard County. Each mini-grant will provide a teacher with $500 for their classroom’s needs. The winners were presented with their awarded grants in September:
Exercise Science Lab Equipment: “In the Exercise Science Program of Kokomo Area Career Center we are fortunate enough to have an attached lab to our classroom. Originally it was created to serve the career path at the time, Physical Therapy. However, due to the evolution of the courses by the IDOE, this career pathway has changed to Exercise Science… With this change in the pathway, unfortunately we have outgrown the need for a lab designed solely as a Physical Therapy Clinic. With my role as an educator, I feel as though it is my responsibility to give these students the best hands-on experience with each profession we learn about. While the lab is only set up to focus on Physical Therapy, this is very difficult to do. My goal is to expand and gather equipment from as many different professions as possible. I want students to have the ability to learn from hands-on experiences in the lab, rather than just from a book or online. The first piece of equipment that would highly benefit our lab would be a treadmill, specifically one that has a digital display, heart rate calculator, and automatic incline and decline feature.”
Video Podcasting 101: “The purpose of the project would be to allow my students the opportunity to express their creativity in a video and audio project. We could use the RODEcaster Pro II to allow my students to discover how to mix audio on a device designed for all levels of production. The phone cages (with side handles) will allow students to use any phone camera as a professional production camera. The external video microphone provides better audio quality than the phone itself provides. Having multiple will allow more students to work at the same time. A better mixer will improve the quality of the projects. Looking over their rough drafts/outlines, listening to their presentations/ideas, and seeing their final projects produced will be the evidence to document their learning. We will introduce the R00Ecaster during our podcasting unit. Each student will play vital roles such as camera operator, editor, writer, and audio. I look forward to providing more experiences for students through expanding our production equipment.”
Engineering, Design, and Building STEM: “Students will work 8-10 weeks with the IDOE standards of Math, Science and Engineering to study, design, build and compete with a piece of furniture (table) at the end of the project where students will be able to write an essay and make a presentation of their results. Working in teams, and small groups, students look at the methods of brainstorming and researching ideas, designing a diagram, and building a table. This project is learning the process of design and building something of solid wood. It’s about education, communication, careers and service to the public. Students will best experience tomorrow’s career opportunities by working with industry professionals to apply technical applications of today’s problems.”
