2023 Westfield Teacher Grant Winners

Community First Bank has partnered with the Westfield Education Foundation to offer two teacher mini-grants for the 2023-24 school year. Each mini-grant will provide a teacher with $500 for their classroom’s needs. The winners were presented with their awarded grants in October: 

Marlo Pilicher – Oak Trace Elementary School

High Noon Help: “We have many students who are in the bottom 20% school wide struggling with their decoding and encoding skills. We have very few decodable books school wide. I would like those bottom 20% of students to have books available to them to work on the same skills they are working on during interventions and word study. Students also need these books for different units they are studying in each grade level. For example, habitats, mysteries, historical fiction, etc. Students need high interest/low readability books.

I would like to purchase an assortment of high interest/low readability and phonics based books from High Noon. With this grant, I would be able to purchase approximately 143 books for our below grade level readers. What an opportunity for them to have a library of books at their level to choose from! If students are loving reading and making improvements in their fluency and comprehension, we will know the objective was successful.”

Westfield Washington Public Schools winner of teacher grant funded by Community First Bank of Indiana

Westfield Middle School

Happy Teachers, Happy Students: “The teacher shortage is becoming a huge problem that even a great district like Westfield is not immune to the effects. Our goal with this money is to help support and encourage teachers on great, normal and especially during tough days. 

Many times the main investor in our students’ lives are the teachers they encounter here at Westfield. Our teachers not only educate but they also support and invest in our students to help them feel valued… This project is focused on improving our teachers’ mental health by showing appreciation and investing in them through small acts of kindness and opportunities to build relationships while leveraging knowledge… Our hope is to spread kindness around the school to our teachers so they can continue pouring out into our students.”

Westfield Washington Public Schools winner of teacher grant funded by Community First Bank of Indiana