Fellow Friday | The Sky’s Not the Limit

To introduce you to our newest grant recipients, we’ve started Fellow Friday. Last week, we highlighted fellowships focused on Holocaust studies. Seeing the first picture of our Milky Way’s black hole this week made us think of the following Fellows who are looking up this summer with their Fund for Teachers grants…

Click here for a complete list of grant recipients.

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Tun Bhothinard | The Virtual Academy – Chicago
Jennifer Campagna | James G. Blaine Elementary School – Chicago
Morgan Park Academy – Chicago, IL
Experience separately different dark skies communities in the Southwest United States and Northeast United States, documenting the positions of cosmic beings in relation to the Earth, the sun and moon and how Native Americans depended on astronomy in their daily lives, to create libraries of cosmic images that help students connect to theories read in books.

“We, as teachers, find astronomy fascinating, having taken both undergraduate and summer graduate courses in the subject matter. Both have also volunteered at the city’s planetarium education department. A gap that we both have, however, is actually being in the field to dedicate time to study the constellations above. We believe astronomy is one of the most accessible units of study for fifth graders. Whether the student is from a middle class neighborhood school (James G. Blaine Elementary School) on the North Side of Chicago, or part of the very ethnically and socioeconomically diverse Virtual Academy, the wonder of space is available to all: just look up!”

Jennifer Kennedy | College Park High School – Pleasant Hill, CA
Photograph the Southwest landscape (day & night) and also ancient cliff dwellings to document the relationship of First Peoples to the land and demonstrate for career & technical education students how migration & relationship to the land is a common theme in humanity.

“The pandemic has caused many of my students to relocate -I want students to see the patterns of relocation and what drives it in human history. I also want to photograph, both in daylight and astrophotography, how the landscape & the ruins work together. Then, I can use my CTE budget to bring in the Mt. Diablo Astronomical Society to do an evening of star gazing & astrophotography on campus at night.”

Haven Daniels | Perkins Elementary – Boston
Kristen Fitzpatrick | Blackstone Elementary – Boston
Research at observatories and sites across Scotland and Northern England the phenomenon of dark skies to inform a student project that assesses how light pollution affects our city and how they can take action to preserve local dark skies.

“Space science lessons are abstract and disconnected from students’ lived experiences. There is, in general, not much personal experiences for students to draw on. The upshot of this is that students don’t understand why they should
care about what we are trying to teach them. Our learning goal is to move our instruction from research and report style learning about Earth and Space Science to more hands-on, active and empowered lessons that directly address students’
need for non-traditional learning experiences.”

“Now more than ever, it is imperative that we invest in the most important component of any classroom — the teacher,” said Karen Eckhoff, Executive Director of FFT. “Educators are facing countless challenges every day, and Fund for Teachers is dedicated to further diversifying the ways that we can support them. Our grants represent trust in teachers’ professionalism, creativity, and vision, offering flexibility to meet the unique needs of each classroom, with the students remaining the ultimate beneficiaries as they continue to grow and learn in today’s ever-changing world.”

We look forward to introducing you to more 2022 FFT Fellows next Friday!