Every month, we award an EdTech grant in the amount of $500 to a deserving educator from our community. After evaluating a bunch of applications for the month of September, we have selected Sharon Clark from East Side Intermediate School in Brownsville, TN as this month’s recipient! We’re excited to be able to provide Sharon and her students with some new alternative energy tools to use in their classroom and can’t wait to see how things shake out! Sharon submitted a great application with some wonderful background information on the work she has done to better learn how to teach STEM to her students, which we loved! Keep reading to learn more about Sharon and what she plans to do with her new technology!

For Sharon, who teaches STEM to fourth and fifth grade students, it’s important to remember the environmental implications the decisions we make every day carry with us. So, after completing an externship last summer, she knew she wanted to find a way to bring this aspect of STEM into her instruction in a more prominent way. Sharon took part in the Tennessee STEM Innovation Network’s Manufacturing and Engineering Externship Program and spent some time working with the Memphis Light, Gas, and Water municipal, which is the largest 3-service provider of its kind in the country!

As part of the program, Sharon was required to build a classroom curriculum based on what she learned and she chose to highlight the importance of solar and renewable energy. She envisions teaching the curriculum to her STEM students and having the unit culminate with them using the materials she earned from our grant to build their own “solar city,” which we think is a fantastic idea! Her students will display their solar cities for the school’s community this coming February during National Engineer’s Week. She’s even working on bringing an “energy bus” from a local college and some experts in the field to teach students even more about renewable energy!

Since we offer some great renewable energy kits on our store, Sharon was eager to apply for the grant. She plans on using the tech tools she receives to introduce her students to impactful environmental learning, build on what they know, and supplement her instruction in an engaging way. With these authentic, hands-on opportunities, Sharon hopes to help her students see how technology can empower them to creatively solve real-world problems, including some that may need to be addressed in their own communities. She’s also aiming to create a greater amount of equity in her classroom, something that these technologies can definitely help her accomplish.

So, what will Sharon be receiving from us as this month’s grant recipient? She’s getting a Snap Circuits Green Kit, a Thames & Kosmos Solar Mechanics Kit, a Thames & Kosmos Power House Kit, a Horizon Educational Renewable Energy Kit, and two Snap Circuits Basic Electricity Kits. All of these sound like great ways to create some hands-on projects that illuminate the importance and benefits of solar and renewable energy and we’re happy to help Sharon and her students bring that type of learning to their classroom! Since she works with over 400 students, Sharon is hoping to spark a great deal of collaboration using these STEM tools and help her students build a collective sense of community in the process.

Sharon’s students will create renewable energy prototypes to share with their community and demonstrate the effectiveness of renewable energy as well as its benefits on the environment. For that reason, we definitely think she chose some great STEM kits with which to work! Located in a small, rural area and part of a Title I school, Sharon is working tirelessly to bring innovative, 21st century experiences to her students and that is the type of dedication that we like to reward! Thanks to her, her students continue to demonstrate a thirst for real-world knowledge and hands-on experiences, so we hope these new technologies help drive that excitement even more!

To follow the progress of Sharon and her students, be sure to follow us on Twitter, where we will post all the updates! Check us out on Instagram and Facebook, too, to make sure you don’t miss any news from us. And, if you would like to apply for our $500 EdTech grant for the month of October, the application is now open! It will remain open until Oct. 20 and we will announce a recipient at the end of the month. Good luck to all and congratulations to Sharon and the East Side Intermediate School!