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One Teacher’s “What I Did This Summer”

The day after Labor Day is synonymous with the official return to the classroom and the age-old prompt: “What did you do this summer?” FFT Fellow Kelsi Horner is hoping students at Shawnee Mission East High School in Prairie Village, KS, ask HER that question. With two colleagues, Kelsi engaged in an immersive experience of…

Teachers: We’re Hiring

Fund for Teachers’ fellowships are based on the belief that teachers know best what they AND their students need to succeed. We also believe that teachers know best what our organization needs to most effectively support teachers. That’s why we started our Educator Advisory Council. And that’s why we want you to apply for the…

The Art of Nature and the Nature of Art

Established in 1854, Norwich Free Academy includes in its mission: “[to] study all that is beautiful in nature and art, and [be] prepared for the highest usefulness and the purest happiness.” Fund for Teachers Fellow Sarah Lefrancois fulfilled that mission and more with her 2022 fellowship. After retracing the footsteps/work of Ansel Adams in and…

Enter to Learn, Learn to Serve

In celebration of Teacher Appreciation Week, we want to share our own appreciation for this thank you note from 2023 FFT Fellow David Cruickshank. With his grant, David plans to research the Japanese culture that has no widespread access to firearms and has built a $2.6 billion flood protection system described as a modern marvel….

Teacher Validation > Teacher Appreciation

This month, social media feeds will be flooded with memes for teacher appreciation and posts about how vital teachers are to our society. At the same time, Fund for Teachers will hand $1.7 million in checks to 396 teachers for summer fellowships they designed. The contrast between memes & money puts into sharp relief America’s…

Fund for Teachers Awards $1.7 Million in Teacher Grants

Fund for Teachers announced today the names of 396 teachers to receive $1.7 million in grants to experience learning they proposed as vital to their particular students’ success. Because the nonprofit places no limits on what is learned – or where – these teachers will pursue topics as diverse as cacao farming and Yiddish music…

“Guardian” of the Wetlands

The conservation of France’s Camargue wetlands represents the opposite of rags to riches: It’s millionaire to marshlands manager. In 1948, a young heir to the Roche pharmaceutical fortune spent a bit of it to buy an estate in a mosquito-infested, briny marshland. The region also was the second-largest delta draining into the Mediterranean Sea, behind…

Remembering the Holocaust

“To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” — Elie Wiesel, Night “It has been almost 80 years since the end of WWII and the horrors of the Holocaust. The survivors of a people’s systematic and institutional genocide are passing away, and…

Teaching Trauma Recovery by Example

“We have learned that trauma is not just an event that took place sometime in the past; it is also the imprint left by that experience on mind, brain, and body. This imprint has ongoing consequences for how the human organism manages to survive in the present.” This excerpt from New York Times bestseller The…

Saluting the Sacrifices of American Indian WW2 Veterans

For the past eight years, I have been a middle school social studies teacher in an American Indian pre-kindergarten through eighth grade magnet school. Our school was created by community elders to provide an American Indian perspective and to welcome students of all backgrounds where teaching is rooted in American Indian culture, traditions, values, history…

Día de Los Vivos

Today Hispanic communities begin Dia de Los Muertos celebrations to remember with joy — not grief — their family members who have died. A team of teachers from Chicago’s Little Village community are striving to help their elementary students remember their Latinx heritage year-round with the help of a Fund for Teachers fellowship. This summer Vanessa…

Teaching Is Scary — Especially About Murder

“Teaching” might not have made this list of scariest jobs, but teaching about Jack the Ripper might have made the cut (pun intended). With their Fund for Teachers grant, Bryce McMinn (science teacher at Orville H. Platt High School in Meriden, CT) and Rachel McMinn (English/Journalism teacher at Success Academy, also in Meriden) researched notorious…

He’d Like to Teach the World to Sing — Opera

You might not know that October 25 is the birthday of Georges Bizet (composer of the opera Carmen) and Johann Strauss II (composer of multiple operettas). Or that today is World Opera Day, the fourth year in a movement to increase awareness of access to opera. Perhaps most surprising of all, one of our grant recipients…

2023 Grant Application Opens

On October 1, Fund for Teachers launched our 22nd year of investing in educator’s self-designed experiential learning. It’s also our 22nd year of recognizing teachers as professionals worthy of respect and their students deserving of engaging curriculum. We stand by this mission and remain proud of the national cohort of 9,000 strong preK-12 teachers who…

Teaching World Peace

September 21 is International Day of Peace, declared by The UN General Assembly as “a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, through observing 24 hours of non-violence and cease-fire.” Three 2022 FFT Fellows chose to devote their fellowships to the ideals of peace on behalf of their students this summer. Christina Campbell and…

“Us” versus “Them”

In recognition of the anniversary of 9/11, today we feature an article originally shared in 2009 by a teacher who designed her Fund for Teachers fellowship as a result of the attack. Millennium High School, where I teach, is located in lower Manhattan and was founded largely in response to September 11, 2001. The Islamic…

Researching Monarchies

The death of Queen Elizabeth II evokes a wide range of emotions and much reflection on the history associated with the longest reign in the British monarchy. The global attention on royalty also brings to mind the fellowship of Stephanie McCrary, history teacher at Decatur High School in Decatur, AL. Stephanie used a Fund for…

Who gets to tell history?

Take a closer look at this image. What story does it tell? Who do you think is telling the story? Our Fellow, Stephanie Graham, embarked on an in-depth study of forced migration of the Stockbridge-Munsee tribe from New York to Wisconsin. Not only did her Fellowship lead her to deepen her understanding of the history…