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Cattaraugus-Allegany Teacher Center
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Happy summer from the Teacher Center, and thanks
for your help in making it another productive year. Please take a
look below to see a quick review. The Teacher Center can't be
everything to everybody, but we'd like to help as many teachers as
we can in some part of their professional development. Please feel
free to contact me with your grant ideas. If there is a summer
opportunity you want to take advantage of, let me know and I'll try
to help. Just remember, if it will help you improve as a teacher,
it's probably something that will work within the guidelines of our
program.
Highlights From 2007-2008
BOCES/Teacher Center Tech Connect II:
This year, we did a lot of good stuff with
technology. First of all, we developed a great Tech Connect
partnership with the trainers at BOCES. As a result of this
collaboration, we were able to distribute 90 projectors to area
teachers. Better yet, each teacher received training on how to
better use technology to enhance their teaching. We're continuing
the partnership for 2008-09, but with a twist. Teams will be able to
apply for the grant and also apply for any number of devices. If you
haven't heard of this opportunity, please contact me or your
curriculum coordinator. If you need an application, please email
Tim Clarke at BOCES. Tim's email is
tim_clarke@caboces.org.
On-line learning:
Once again, we sponsored the November Learning on-line web literacy courses, approving 65 grants in total. We give stipends to those teachers who finish one or all three of the courses. You can access the course material at any time, even after you complete them. Several teachers have also completed on-line courses from organizations such as ASCD (www.ascd.org) or PBS ThinkBright (www.thinkbright.org). We don't give stipends for these because of the cost, but we'll cover the cost for you. The people who have taken the ASCD and PBS courses are extremely happy with the quality. You should check with your administrator for local service credit.
New Thinkfinity Grant for 08-09:
We want teachers to use tools such as Thinkfinity (www.thinkfinity.org).
If you're not familiar with it, it's worth exploring the thousands
of lessons and activities, all free of charge. We're also willing to
give you a Thinkfinity mini grant to enhance your teaching. Go to
our Downloads page to view the new
Thinkfinity grant form. If you have any questions, please
call or email.
Events:
It seems like events are getting a little harder to
run because of local issues such as substitute availability, but we
still were able to pull of some quality events. Thanks go out to St.
Bonaventure. SBU allows us the use of places such as Doyle Hall for
workshops. It's a good partnership because some of their education
students come to the workshops. We would have trouble running
workshops if were not for our great relationship with BOCES. Since
I've been around, BOCES has cosponsored most of our events, allowing
the use of the sub coser for teachers to attend.
We hope to have some great events for 08-09. One
example is a few events we're planning for area speech
pathologists. I've been working with Jennifer Larson from
Cuba-Rushford to bring specific speech pathology evens down here.
This will allow a much higher attendance number from our area and
will be much more cost effective. We're also partnering with the
Buffalo Hearing and Speech Center to off CEU credits for speech
people. Isn't it nice when organizations work together?
Mini grants:
This year, we had a spike in mini grant applications,
which is a big plus for us. We approved 30 mini grants, which is a
big improvement over 2006-07. Some were individual grants and some
were for teams. Our rules are pretty simple: if you have a project
you'd like to do that will help you improve as a teacher and will
take you above and beyond your regular workday hours, you're on the
right track to getting approved.
Materials mini grants:
We approved 142 materials grants this year including
the 90 Tech Connect projectors. Many of these grants were for
individual buildings' professional development libraries, and many
were for small technology purchases. The catch on the tech purchases
is that teachers who apply are to receive individual training from
me in the use of the equipment. For example, let's say you wanted a
scanner for your room. Your grant would cover the cost of the
scanner. The training would come from me, either during or after
your school day. We plan to continue this opportunity for 2008-09,
so please let me know if you'd like more info.
Study groups:
Not a ton of activity here, but I've seen some
increased interest. If you'd like to work with others in a group in
a topic that will enhance your team's strategies, a study group
grant might be for you.
Conference grants:
One of our most popular grants is the conference
grant. We budgeted over $15,000 for these grants this year,
allowing 89 individual grants. The maximum allowable grant is $200.
You can get to the conference application on our downloads page (see
grant forms below).
Grant forms:
All of our grant forms are posted on our downloads
page here:
http://www.cateach.org/downloads.htm I'll be
putting some new and improved forms on the page this summer.
Contact me:
People always want to know what they can do with a
Teacher Center grant. Call me and I'll do my best to help you. You
can call the office at 376-8381 or my cell at
716-904-0870.
Please take a look at my grant review below. From
all of you great teachers in our membership to the administrators
who support what we stand for, I appreciate everyone's support of
the Teacher Center.
Sincerely,
Tim Houseknecht, Cattaraugus-Allegany Teacher
Center
175 N. Union Street, Suite 5; Olean, NY 14760
Phone: 716-376-8381 Fax: 716-376-8438 Website: www.cateach.org
2007-08 Grant Review:
Mini grants: 30
Online learning mini grants: 65
Materials grants: 142
Study groups: 5
Conference grants: 89
Events: 461 participants in 14 separate events.
Note on events: I'd like to get that number up
to 700 or 800 this year, and your ideas will be the catalyst that
helps us do it.
Dollars used in largest categories:
Our twenty public districts and private schools
have approximately 1900 teachers. By my count, we were able to
help almost 800 teachers in one way or the other. Not the whole
group of you, but not too shabby either. Keep those requests
coming and we'll get it over 1000 for next year.
Do you have an announcement that
you'd like to post?
Go to www.nysed.gov for the State Education Department's current news (right on their home page). The home page includes links to Regents exam schedules. If there are any other worthwhile announcements pages that we should link to from here, please let us know. The link(s) could be part of every newsletter. |
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Professional Development Opportunities: Click on our Calendar or our New Opportunities pages.
Funding:
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