Before he became a program director with the West Virginia Public Education Collaborative, Canyon Lohnas taught kindergarten and first grade back home in Maryland.
Which is why last week he posed a question, paused for the slightest of seconds, laughed — and then answered it himself.
“Do you know how much a teacher can do with an extra $4,000?”
(Insert pause and laugh here).
“Plenty!”
Lohnas is talking about the money that went out to 23 educators across the state who are recipients in the collaborative’s inaugural Teacher Innovation mini-grant program.
Teachers will use the offering to front lesson plans and projects they may not have the resources for, otherwise.
Here’s a sampling of the work to come this fall: Michelle Farley’s students at South Middle School in Morgantown will fly drones — but only after building them and coding the high-tech, lighter-than-air machines first.
At Stratton Elementary in Beckley, Raleigh County, special-needs students under the direction of teacher Melissa Brammer will use augmented and virtual reality technology to help build their communication and adaptivity skills for their day-to-day lives.
Next door to Monongalia County, students at Preston High School will also use technology to take on flood protection. Teacher Samantha Haught will lead students through a range of projects including the design of dams and other prevention measures through the use of 3-D printing.
Getting the word out will be the order of Brittany Porter’s students at Guyan Valley Middle School in Branchland, Lincoln County: Students will create their own media outlet and deliver a daily newscast to their school and community.
The projects are funded by the Claude Worthington Benedum Foundation and administered through the WVU Foundation, the nonprofit, fundraising arm of the university.
Visit https://wvpec.wvu.edu/events-and-initiatives/teacher-innovation-mini-grants-summer-2023 for more information on the grants and a complete rundown of all 23 projects, including the corporate partners involved.
Donna Hoylman Peduto, the collaborative’s executive director, likes that the projects are going from STEM to stern, as it were.
There are the science, technology, engineering and math-minded endeavors, she said, which are right in line with the state Department of Education’s current emphasis in those arenas of study.
Using 3-D modeling and other measures to protect communities in flood-prone West Virginia in the 21st century could have positive, reaching implications, the director said.
Like Lohnas, Peduto also logged time in front of classrooms. She began her career as an elementary school teacher and reading specialist in Marion County.
Peduto and Lohnas got to be teachers all over again as they worked through the particulars of the new project.
They were part of a “listening tour” undertaken by the collaborative. It was about student engagement, they said, but it wasn’t about data and numbers and the “inside baseball” jargon that can predominate such sessions.
Like Lohnas’ question earlier, the whole thing launched with an open-ended query of its own: “What would you guys really want to do in your classes this fall, if you could, and if you had some money to help?”
Hands shot up.
“We received 200 applications,” Lohnas said. “That was amazing.”
In the end, it was winnowed down to the 23 going forth this fall that will range from STEM and Career and Technical Education — to matters of family engagement, language arts and special education.
Call it homework with heart, Peduto said.
Students — their teachers, too, she said — doing relevant projects that might spark careers down the road.
Either way, she said, students are engaged and teachers are rejuvenated.
“And that’s what you want in any classroom.”
