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Taking You To Our Leaders

After our 2020 grant recipients’ plans stalled due to the global pandemic, our organization faced an interesting situation. No Fellows pursing learning beyond the classroom or applying their experiences inside them. And we didn’t know if 2021 grants would even happen. Entering our twentieth year of supporting teachers, what did that look like when teachers…

A Watershed Experience

Four years ago, the land behind Daphne High School lay fallow and Betsy Anderton’s kids lay on the sofa looking at their phones. This combination did not sit well with Betsy, who held a Master’s and Ph.D. in Instructional Design but had not been at the head of a classroom for more than 25 years….

Fellow Voices: What is Teacher Leadership? with Tracey-Ann Lafayette

When thinking about teacher leaders, who comes to mind? Union reps? Data team leaders? Committee chairs? Leadership is about more than labels. There are countless individuals in classrooms around the world who do not fit into any of these categories, but are creating impactful change in their school communities. What does it really mean to…

Notes from Oprah’s Opening SxSWEdu Keynote

This morning, SxSWEdu kicked off virtually with a keynote by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry on the topic of how childhood experiences change the biology of our bodies and brains. The discussion was based on research comprising a book they co-authored called “What Happened to You?” which will be available April 27th. Because teachers were…

Making Math Matter – Teaching About the Gender Pay Gap

Happy International Women’s Day! This year’s theme is “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world” and pay equity is certainly a large part of that equation. After his 2019 fellowship attending Stanford University’s Mindset Mathematics workshop to create a positive math culture that encourages problem solving, Nate Moore (Santa Fe School…

Empowering Women by Educating Students

In celebration of International Women’s Day, we share the teaching of Neha Singhal (Montgomery County Public Schools, MD). In one of our more unique fellowships, Neha conducted mini-ethnographic research on the experiences of doulas and other birth workers in New Delhi, India, to increase IB Anthropology students’ understanding of fieldwork and data analysis, and to…

The Unlikely Path to a Fulfilling Career

As Naima Hall tells it, she had a hard time finding her way in the world of work. For a while she did construction work, then bartended. Only after a few more minutes into our conversation did she mention that this phase of her career came after she worked for the International Trade Division of Tiffany & Co. and…

New Grants for FFT Fellows

For two decades, Fund for Teachers has respected the power of teachers to determine their own learning and, subsequently that of their students. For each of those twenty years, that respect came in the form of grants – more than $30 million – to fuel fellowships in the United States and around the world. As…

The Mandate Behind a Fund for Teachers Fellowship

Nataliya Braginsky is a high school teacher at Metropolitan Business Academy in New Haven, CT, where she teaches African American and Latinx History, Contemporary Law, and Journalism, and co-advises the school’s Gender & Sexuality Alliance (GSA) and Youth Justice Panel. Nataliya is also a 2020 Fund for Teachers Fellow, member of New Haven Educators’ Collective,…

Q&A with Teachers of D/HH

Fund for Teachers Fellows teach every subject and language, including American Sign Language (ASL). At FFT Fellow Mick Posner‘s school in West Hartford, CT, ASL is one of the world languages offered and he used his grant to learn from deaf Inuits in Nuuk, Greenland, basic conversational skills in that country’s official sign language system…

Let’s Take This Outside

Laura Irace and Lisa Lambert (West Side STEM Magnet Middle School – Groton, CT) used their Fund for Teachers grant to attend the 2019 International Conference on Mathematics Science Teaching Technology & Learning conference in Sydney, Australia, then volunteer with a New Zealand nonprofit that constructs outdoor classrooms, to develop skills and apply math concepts…

Teaching With Equity and Justice

This fall, Fund for Teachers introduced a new Circles program bringing Fellows together around various topics. This effort coincided with teachers’ return to school in the midst of a pandemic, so we were uncertain about interest and participation level. What we discovered, however, is that our grant recipients remain life-long learners despite the circumstances and…

Human Rights Day Every Day

Human Rights Day is observed every year on 10 December — the day the United Nations General Assembly adopted, in 1948, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The UDHR is a milestone document that proclaims the inalienable rights which everyone is entitled to as a human being – regardless of race, color, religion, sex,…

Teaching The Day That Lives in Infamy

In 2015, Elizabeth Hoelperl used a Fund for Teachers grant to study the historical implications of the acquisition of Hawaii, as well as the strategic role of Pearl Harbor in WWII, to instill in high school students an appreciation of the unique circumstances that bind the 50 separate United States. In recognition of Pearl Harbor…

An Inside Guide to Starting Your Proposal

In the spring of 2020, Fund for Teachers set out to refine its description of the impact it wants to have on the world. We started by identifying our best fellowships over the past 20 years, and synthesized common elements into the following framework: Our programming, including our Fellowship, ignites teachers to refine and reimagine…

A Thanksgiving Tale, Written by…?

My Fund for Teachers fellowship immersed me in the actual world of the Pilgrims and allowed me to reflect on the myths that have been produced over the years about this iconic group of people. For me, the Pilgrims have always been one of the most compelling stories in American history and the reality of…

How Fellows Are Leveraging Learning

This fall, Fund for Teachers introduced a new Circles program bringing Fellows together around various topics. This effort coincided with teachers’ return to school in the midst of a pandemic, so we were uncertain about interest and participation level. What we discovered, however, is that our grant recipients remain life-long learners despite the circumstances and…

Voting on History

On this Election Day, we’re focusing on a different type of vote, one conducted by students at the Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies. Inspired by their teachers’ fellowship in Mexico, seventh graders explore colonialism, feminism and the indigenous history of Mexico to vote on whether the female translator and daughter of an Aztec chief was…