Teachers at Crockett Middle School were awarded three different grants from the Education Foundation for book trailers, podcasts and a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Dallas.
Awardees were Juliette Farris, for Content Creation through Book Trailers for $1,561; Bria Maxey and Farris for Student Voices Podcast, $310.92; and Farris, Frances Varela, Cherry Trstenjak and Maxey for Never Forget.
They have two Scholastic Book Fairs every year and part of the marketing is a disc of book trailers.
“I put those book trailers on to our school news. We have a video announcement YouTube page, and the kids just get so excited. They always come in to the book fair, and they’re like that video that we saw about that book and they want all of those books on those videos. So I thought … that’d be kind of cool to have … kids make their own book trailers to get each other excited bout going to check out a book. So that’s the motivation,” said Farris, the Crockett media specialist.
She’s hoping the book trailers will draw more students to the library and prompt book recommendations from peers.
Farris said the school took a group to the Holocaust Museum six or seven years ago.
“I used to be an English teacher, and I was on that team, the eighth grade team. We took a group of about 32 kids, and we just did it through raising money throughout the year. Ever since we went on that trip, the teachers are always saying we need to do it again, because it was just an amazing experience. Well, that was before they completely renovated the museum, and so it looks completely different now. It’s bigger, better. I haven’t been to it yet, but from what I hear, it’s better. So we tried for it, and we got it,” Farris said.
She added that she would encourage other people in the district to write grant requests to the Education Foundation.
“In our district, I think that there are people on each campus, if not every campus, at least in each department that would know how to give tips and pointers on what to say to get awarded. A lot of people who got them this year didn’t know that you could write multiples, because I actually wrote four this year, and I got three,” Farris said.
“I would say write as many as you want, as many as you can because even if you get one out of three that would be amazing,” she added.
The fourth grant request was for a set of books for social-emotional learning like what to do when you feel anxious or overwhelmed.
“I’m still looking at getting those books some other way,” Farris said.
The trip to the Holocaust Museum is a one-day trip planned for October.
The trip Farris went on years ago was “amazing.” The students attending that first trip had prepared for the topic and were raring to go to the museum.
“We got to the museum, and they were just respectful; just in awe. And most of the kids we took had never even been to Dallas, had never event taken a trip much less go to a museum,” Farris said.
They saw a video of the survivors.
“We didn’t get to see a live survivor’s speech, but we did get to see the videos, and they had a one of the train (cars) out in back so they kind of squeezed in there … It was pretty eye-opening. They were just into it, and they had the background knowledge so they knew what was going on and what the guide was talking about. Then we took them to a semi-fancy dinner at the Spaghetti Warehouse. They got to order for themselves and pick out what they wanted to eat. It was a lot of fun. We got back that night, and they talked about it for the rest of the year,” Farris said.
On the Student Voices Podcasts, Farris said one of the AVID teachers is starting those.
“The kids basically run it. She’s showing them now how to edit, how to post, write because they have to give her kind of a little rough draft of what they want to talk about. And of course, they have to submit their topics of what they’re going to talk about to her before they can. But basically, it’s topics that are important to them only. So no teachers are going to have a say in it … It’s solely kid led, and of course, they want to talk about cell phones and they want to talk about dress code; stuff like that, but it’s important to them, so she wanted to give them a platform for doing that. … The grant was actually for the equipment,” Farris said.
Crockett Principal Maribel Aranda said grants like this are very beneficial.
“Grants give our students the opportunity to develop their inquisitive and imaginary skills as they travel to experience historical events. It also helps them create mental images as they read and explore many more events through books and manipulatives acquired through the grants,” Aranda said.
>> On the net: www.ectorcountyisd.org/domain/146
