- Acadia Parish - Christy Higginbotham and Angie Lavergne, Mire Elementary, Picture This, $1,000.
- Evangeline Parish - Nina David, Ville Platte Elementary, Book Chat, $500; Renée R. Frugé, Ville Platte Elementary, Hands On Science, $500; Christine Richard, Mamou Elementary, Hands On Reading, $500; and Caroline Hamlin, Vidrine Elementary, Literacy Center, $500.
- Iberia Parish - Francine Broussard and Jenny Gary, Delcambre High, St. Charles Elementary and Jeanerette Elementary, Animation Across Curricula, $1,000; Kelli Broussard and Sondra Boudreaux, Westgate High, Read Banned Books, $1,000; Danielle Tab and Julie Watts, Westgate High, Crime Scene Osteology, $1,000; and Charlee Halphen, Rodney Tillman and Deiondra Brown, Anderson Middle, African American History, $500.
- Lafayette Parish - Joel Hilbun and Richard McClendon, Carencro High, Grid-Based Supercomputer, $1,000; and Joel Hilbun and Kit Becnel, Carencro High, Digital and Animation Festival, $1,000.
- St. Landry Parish - Analea Brauburger and Stephanie Stevens, Northwest High, Spanish and French Mini-Recorders, $500; and Monica Durapau, Eunice Elementary, School House Rock, $100.
- St. Martin Parish - Adrienne Landry, Breaux Bridge Primary, Home Grown Entrepreneurs $1,000; Adrienne Landry and Kim Vavasseur, Breaux Bridge Primary, Garden Goodies, $500; Annette Cuneo and Donna Hebert, Parks Middle, Young Scientists, $1,000; Carol Miller, Breaux Bridge High, Adobe Photoshop, $500; Cheryl Friberg, Breaux Bridge Jr. High, Remembering World War II, $500; Tina Leger, St. Martinville Primary, Cajun Library, $500; Rebecca Clark and Shelly Thibodeaux, Parks Middle, School Newsletter, $1,000; and Shelly Dupré, Teche Elementary, Hands On Science, $500.
- St. Mary Parish - Christine Henry and Mary Borkowski, Berwick High, Books and Brunch, $1,000; Shelbra Drexler-Cross and Kim Perry, Franklin Jr. High and Boudreaux Elementary, Empowering Young Women, $1,000; Mary Macklin and Joe Russo, Berwick High, Greenhouse for Knowledge, $1,000; and Christine McGehee, Berwick High, Calendar Projects, $614.
- Vermilion Parish - Shauna LeBlanc and Kevin Delcambre, Williams Middle, Experiments, $1,000; and Pamela Broussard and Leah Guillot, Eaton Park Elementary, Arboretum, $1,000.
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Several area classrooms now will be filled with students working with the latest technology, improving their literacy skills and exploring history, thanks to
mini-grants from the Acadiana Educational Endowment.
Joe Abraham, president of the Acadiana Educational Endowment, said more than $20,000 worth of grants were given to more than 40 area teachers who showed that they were willing to try new approaches to helping students learn.
"What we're looking for is something exciting," Abraham said. "Obviously, it affects each teacher differently because each person uses it in their own way, but we want to see that teachers are willing to get people and students enthused and to make education fun."
Caroline Hamlin, a teacher at Vidrine Elementary, said she will use the $500 grant she received to develop a literacy center for her kindergarten students.
"It's a lot of visuals and aesthetics, but it's also about building their vocabularies and teaching them how to read in a hands-on way," Hamlin said.
Nina David, librarian for Ville Platte Elementary's kindergarten through fourth-grade students, said she will use her $500 grant to help operate her Book Chat program, which is a model of talk show host Oprah Winfrey's popular book club.
"It's geared toward students in third and fourth grades, and it's geared toward motivating them to read chapter books," David said. "They're in that stage where they're moving from picture books to ones with chapters, and this helps because we do story maps, we all celebrate at the end of the book and we visit author sites on the Internet to learn more about who is actually writing these books."
One of the grants awarded to Joel Hilbun, a teacher at Carencro High, was for a digital and animation festival. Hilbun said students have learned some video editing techniques, but with the grant, the school hopes to pursue that avenue even further.
"We're trying to get other teachers to incorporate video projects as part of their normal assignments," Hilbun said. "It's really open, whether students want to do commercials, documentaries, music videos, or whatever else they would like. The skills they use to do the videos are the same ones that an English teacher might use to teach them how to write a paper, so we're really hoping that we can teach skills that go across different subjects and programs."
Originally published December 8, 2006
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