By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
The St. Joseph School Foundation is providing Appleseed Grant to teachers to help be more innovative in the classroom.
This year the school district foundation gave out around 12 thousand dollars in grants to teachers throughout the district.
Executive Director Julie Cobb says for the upcoming school year, the foundation will be expanding the program slightly, calling it Appleseed 2.0
"That is going to be, I would call a little bit of a Shark Tank version, we are going to invite teachers to apply, and then a few finalists will be invited to present in front of a panel, a community panel," Cobb tells KFEQ Hotline host Barry Birr. "Some community leaders, some educators, and just see who comes out on top."
Cobb says as technology becomes more expensive many of the grants applied for are around that.
"New technology comes out and it's a little pricy, it hasn't come down yet to where it's in a reasonable price range, so sometimes we have things like that," Cobb explains.
Cobb says one of her favorite grants the group saw this year was from a teacher at Robidoux Middle School that wanted to take her students to the Nelson Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City.
"Many of them, perhaps, in the Robidoux area haven't made to far off of St. Joseph Avenue, a few have, but one of the things in education is access, we want all students to have equal access to education regardless of their lifestyle or where they live," Cobb says.
Cobb says the Appleseed grants are one of the key programs, calling it the founding premise of the St. Joseph School District Foundation.
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