Grant recipients
Susan Morrison, Kirsten Legac and Julie Smith of East Hamilton Middle/High -- Vietnam James Carpenter of Ooltewah High -- tour of London, Paris and Rome Kristin Burrus and Janie Fossett of Chattanooga School for the Arts & Sciences -- San Francisco James David and Michael Stone of STEM School of Chattanooga -- Shanghai and Beijing, China Stacy Hill of STEM School of Chattanooga -- Nepal, India, Singapore and China Margaret Hudgins of Center for Creative Arts -- London Michelle Collins and Tracy Renfro of Soddy-Daisy Middle -- Greece and Italy Thais Campbell and Kelli Solock of Ooltewah Middle -- Alaska Emeri Gordon of Hixson Middle and Monica Gordon of Brown Middle -- Athens and Rome Anthony Henderson of Soddy-Daisy Middle -- Ireland Laura Ellis, Sharon DeVaney, Julie Thomas, Lauren Fisher and Cynthia Connor of Apison Elementary -- Guatemala Lisa Eulo of Walker Valley High and Carol Dale of Cleveland High -- Burghausen, Germany Athena Davis of Cleveland High -- Yad Vashem museum, Jerusalem Stacey Wielfaert of Walker Valley High -- France and Spain
Nearly two dozen Hamilton County teachers and four from Bradley County, Tenn., have earned tens of thousands of dollars in grant money to study in the United States and abroad this summer.
The national nonprofit Fund for Teachers provides the funding in partnership with the Public Education Foundation.
The teachers, who will visit more than 12 countries, applied for the grants intended to send them across the globe for learning so they could return and share their knowledge with students.
Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences teachers Kristin Burrus and Janie Fossett earned funding to explore the engineering and architecture of earthquake-resistant buildings in San Francisco.
"This is an adventure," said Burrus. "It's going to make a huge difference."
Burrus will use the firsthand information she learns from scientists to teach her seventh-grade science class about earthquakes, and Fossett will discuss with her geometry class how different shapes make buildings more sturdy.
Instead of teaching merely with textbooks, the teachers will have firsthand accounts, video and pictures, to illustrate their lessons. Some teachers start blogs about their trips before they leave and encourage students to research places they should visit, said Leslie Graitcer, PEF's senior advisor on teaching quality and coordinator of the Fund for Teachers program.
Teachers could apply for $5,000 as an individual or $10,000 as a team. This is the fourth consecutive year that Hamilton County public school teachers have earned the grants.
It's the largest grant Burrus has earned as a teacher, she said. People have been asking about her plans for summer all winter, and she had no answer. Now she can tell them that she's going to study earthquakes in California, she said.
Contact Yolanda Putman at yputman@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6431.