D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
November
2008
Here Comes the Sun
Silver City first-grade teacher — and first-time grant writer — Fiona Bailey is one of four area winners of $10,000 BP grants for solar-energy education.
Story and photos by Donna Clayton Lawder
The tadpoles are coming! The tadpoles are coming! And Silver City first-grade teacher Fiona Bailey couldn't be happier. After all, she invited them — paved the way for them, in fact, by winning a $10,000 "A+ for Energy" grant from BP, the global oil giant cultivating a greener image.
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Teacher Fiona Bailey instructs students
to fill their cups just half full with water. |
"It's the first grant I've ever written," Bailey says, bright eyes flashing. Her blonde bob swings as she animatedly describes the process of her labors and what the solar-energy-education grant money is buying for her G.W. Stout Elementary School classroom. With her enthusiastic gestures, frequent laughter and ready smile, she is just the kind of teacher every parent would want teaching their child.
"I went for the big money, too," Bailey continues. "We (teachers) get a lot of things coming across our desks from local companies. They're smaller awards and, yeah, that'll help you buy your kids some of the paper and books they need. But I thought, if I'm going to spend the time writing this, I'm going to shoot for some big money! And I won!"
Though she admits to being surprised by her first-time out-of-the-gate success, Bailey says her school principal, Gail Collins-Garcia, had an inkling. "She was thrilled, of course, but actually she was less surprised than I was. She knew I had a good proposal," Bailey says with a satisfied smile.
BP awarded funds to 45 schools out of 200 applications for the A+ for Energy Grant. Locally, teachers at three other schools each also won $10,000 awards: Susan Swope at Red Mountain Middle School in Deming, for "SEE: Students Experience Energy"; David Wibe at Sierra Middle School in Las Cruces, for "E-Labs Energy Engineering"; and David Eason at Mayfield High School in Las Cruces, for "Alternative Fuels Basics."
The winners were feted with a banquet and three-day conference at a Bernalillo resort, Bailey says, calling the experience both inspirational and educational.
"One thing I noticed was the great differences among the recipients, the various schools," she says. "Some of the schools already had these great greenhouses and things. They were already doing a lot surrounding solar energy. Their grant money, this time, was to help them continue the work and do more. Some of them already had a lot in place. For us, it was a huge leg up, going from not much to suddenly having all these resources."
This is Bailey's second year teaching first grade at Stout Elementary School in Silver City. She moved here with her daughter, Margaret, in 2006 from the suburbs of Chicago, and initially taught fifth grade for a year.
One thing grant-neophyte Fiona Bailey discovered about the proposal process is that, heck, it's not as hard as you might think. Having never taken a grant-writing class, Bailey admits she was intimidated at first at the prospect and what might be involved, how much time it would take, the proverbial hoops she'd have to jump through.
"I'm sure this is the thing, the stumbling block for a lot of educators, and why they don't look into grants. For one thing, we're certainly busy enough!" she says with an outburst of laughter. "Then you see that the award is for $10,000 and think, 'Oh, this is going to be a lot of work!'" She flips through some papers in a manila file folder. "This was only five pages! There was an online tutorial and I followed this checklist. It's just not as hard and overwhelming as it seems at first."
Her own success with her proposal for "The Sun: Energy for Us All" has put her on something of a mission, she admits, and made her something of a shining example, as well.
"My first-grade colleagues have all been real happy for me," she says. "They're inspired, too. Right away, they started coming to me, saying, 'Okay, tell us what to do.'
"I want to get other teachers excited about these opportunities. The money is out there and they can do this!" Bailey says. "Yeah, schools are stretched and teachers fret and complain about the things they don't have for their students. But this kind of opportunity is out there."
She points out that the BP grant will buy her students around $900 in books, and that she's procured four laptop computers through the funds — items that will last for years.
"That's a lot of cookie dough to sell," she says with a wry laugh, referencing one of the common fundraising methods used by schools these days.
Bailey flips through the stack of binders, catalogs and files she's received from BP, paging through the long list of items the award has enabled her to purchase for her classroom — terrariums, educational puzzles, rubber stamps, a deluxe solar educational kit with ready-made experiments, a load of books and, yes, tadpoles. Butterflies, too! There are also long-lasting infrastructure items in the mix, like those four laptops with special software programs. All, she says, will enrich her lesson planning and, consequently, her students' experiences with science, math and learning.
"Solar makes sense for first graders, and in this part of the country in particular," she says. "I can tie this into things my students have enjoyed, like lessons on animal habitat. Working backward, it's all tied to the sun — through plants, the food chain — so it was an easy connection to make."
Now that the materials have arrived, Bailey says her classroom is ready for the grant's solar-related lesson plans to get traction. First up will be planting seeds in special window-frame kits for the plants to grow in. She excitedly points out pictures of the terrariums on wheels, with two glass panels close together, that will enable the students to watch their plants' root systems as they grow.
"Some of the expenditures — like the sometimes exorbitant shipping to get the stuff! — seemed decadent at first," she concedes. "But then I realized that, hey, I've got the money now to buy some things I wouldn't normally be able to buy for our classroom. And these are things that will last!"
As part of the lesson plan, Bailey's first-graders will measure the plants and learn how to keep and organize data on their experiments. To demonstrate their learning, the students will be videotaped explaining their understanding of the material, the experiments and their results and conclusions.
"This is where the computers come in," Bailey explains. In the grant proposal, she made her case for buying four laptops so the students could display their data and view their videos.
"That was a big score," she adds with an especially big smile. "Yes, we have a computer lab for the kids to use, but it's so busy. We have to sign up to use it and sometimes you just can't get in.
"The laptops are a good example of how you have to work backward, in the grant-writing process," she says. "You think, 'What do we need?' and then you think about how you can tie that to the specifics of the grant."
Getting back to her precious terrariums and growing plants, Bailey talks about how other components and subject areas come into play.
"I'll ask them questions based on what they can see," she says. "Why are the plants growing? The sun. The plants are converting energy; they're good for food."
Students will acquire knowledge about science from observing the experiments, she says. They'll have to use their math skills to record and interpret the data — the measurements they have been collecting. They'll develop and use written and verbal skills to describe their findings and detail what they are learning. They also will employ "Kid Pix," a special drawing software package, to illustrate their findings — again, on those laptop computers, Bailey points out.
"As we go on into the school year with these lessons, we'll start adding some animals, like some grasshoppers and a tortoise we already have," she says, gesturing toward the shelled critter residing in a glass terrarium nearby.
This leads into learning modules on life cycles as various critters grow, die and get eaten, as well as about the food chain.
"Do we add snakes? Mice?" Bailey asks. "What comes next? There are a lot of ways to go, and the kids get to have some say in that."
Demonstrating to the students how humans use solar energy is one of the grant's "accountability" requirements, Bailey notes, a validation procedure and "reporting" responsibility that is part of almost any grant award.
"This is my first grant, and I want to be sure to give them what they need to prove I used their money wisely," she says. She plans to have the students experiment — and play! — with solar-powered toys, a fun way to bring humans into the lesson plan's equation and meet that reporting requirement.
"I was surprised at how flexible they are with the accountability and reporting process," she says. "I have to write two reports, one at mid-year and one at the end of the project. I have to prove that I spent the money, and on what I said I would, and send them the DVDs of the kids' presentations to show that learning took place."
Having just returned from Fall Break, now getting ready to set up those sparkling new terrariums, Bailey reflects and admits she was hit by some trepidation — perhaps some sort of "winner's remorse," she suggests with a laugh — after it started to sink in that she'd actually won the grant.
"First thing I thought of, naturally, was how great it was going to be. I could get all this stuff, all this help, to make my classroom better and excite my students. But then it hits me," she says, humorously taking on an expression of dread and great weight upon her shoulders. "I thought, 'What have I done? Have I just made a ton of work for myself?'"
She lets out an animated breath of relief, then laughs.
"Then I came back to myself and realized that, hey, this just enables me to do more. Life becomes richer!" she says, her face brightening. "This makes it all more fun, for the kids and for me!"
To bring her point home about how special materials — like the ones her grant has helped her procure — can enhance learning, Bailey gives the example of a student she had in her class last term.
"I had this one student who had not written one sentence all year. I mean it, not one sentence," she says. "There are a lot of reasons for that, but the main reason was that he just wasn't excited about school, about learning, about anything."
Things changed for the disengaged student when the class made a foray into frogs, she says.
"That little tadpole changed everything. With that tadpole on his desk, he came alive! Learning came alive for him," she says. "It was wonderful to see. He was a different child, a different student — involved, curious."
She smiles at the happy memory, then adds, "That's what it's all about."
To learn more about the A+ for Energy program, including the complete list of 2008 winners and 2009 application information, see www.aplusforenergy.net
Donna Clayton Lawder is senior editor of Desert Exposure.