CCISD teacher awarded regional grant for STEM

By PAMELA GRANT
Cove Leader-Press

House Creek Elementary Digital Learning Coordinator, Jessica Bredwell, was shocked Thursday with an amazing surprise—a grant from the Education Service Center Region 12.

“I’m like high on adrenaline,” said Bredwell who was a bit overwhelmed with joy at having received the grant. “I’m just very excited. Our kids deserve this. Our teachers deserve this.”

Representatives from Region 12 presented Bredwell with a $9,055 grant which will be used for things like a 3-D printer, lightboards, Cricut, drones and more for use with their STEM program for students.

“Our campus has been on a path of high achievement for the past couple of years, so we really wanted to look into something to further accelerate our students, especially our high achievers,” said Bredwell. “We are looking to engage those students.”

Bredwell said that they will be offering it to their entire student population and plan to use it to incentivize students. She said that there will be a lot of cross-curricular learning opportunities as well.

“Getting to be in the building to see the fabulous work that our educators do with these students and seeing how excited the students are about it—that’s why we all do this work. It’s a great day,” said Jerry Maze, Executive Director of the Region 12 Educational Service Center.

Maze said that there were 35 applicants for the grant, and they were able to award a grant to 13 of those applicants. He said that he’s always very impressed with some of the ideas that the teachers come up with. Maze said that it feels like every year they see something that we think was the greatest thing we’ve ever heard, but then it happens again each year.

“The creativity and the intelligence and the drive that the teachers have for the students is amazing,” said Maze.