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Megan Yager, a teacher at Red Hill High School, received a New Teacher Mini Grant during the spring. She shares, "I used the money from this grant to start a dissection lab for my 8th grade students. I purchased 30 preserved grass frogs. Frog organs appear very similar to human organs, so teaching the anatomy of the human body system prior to performing the frog dissection helped the students relate the task to their lives and their well-being."
Kody Czerwonka, a teacher at Buckeye Friends School, received a New Teacher Mini Grant in the spring. He used the grant to purchase art supplies and canvases for his students.
Proposed: Classroom Supplies: Drumsticks
Proposed: Classroom Supplies: Alternative Seating
Proposed: Classroom Supplies: Hands-on Activities for Math
"This first quarter alone, over 120 books were checked out from my classroom library. Now, with even more books on my shelves thanks to the gift generously provided by the Central Illinois Rural Teacher Corporation, I am hopeful that my classroom library will continue to captivate these impressionable 7th graders of mine!"
Ashley Drake, a teacher at St. John's Lutheran School purchased tools to enhance her students' spelling skills. She shares, “I will probably use the boxes again next year and just change them up and ask the students what they like most and stick with it. I am happy that they can learn different ways and have fun while learning. I thank you and the team for picking me and helping support my class and my first year.”
Rylee Watson, a teacher at Hutsonville Grade School, shares, "The money I received from this grant went toward a book study. The book I chose for my students was The Chocolate Touch. I ordered 10 books and got a book study packet. The students followed along as I read aloud the book. The students loved having their own copy to examine the pictures and words as I read!"
Proposed: Classroom Supplies
I used the grant to purchase a class set of headphones. Our initiative in math 1 this year is to meet students where they are and allow some flexibility in their pace. The headphones have been a huge help for students. Some students use them to listen to supplemental lesson videos while others use them to listen to background music to keep them focused while there are small group direct lessons happening around the room.
"Thanks to our grant funding, I was able to purchase a bouncy band for each student desk in my classroom. With movement being restricted due to COVID, students have been seeking movement and activity. The bouncy bands have been a great, and noiseless, tool to help them stay stimulated and focused during class. We were also able to purchase 10 graphic novels for the classroom library. As a spread-out district, and once again due to COVID, our students are restricted to my classroom library until we are able to have library time with the district librarian. As a result, many students had read all of the graphic novels in the classroom, and they are thrilled to have 10 new ones to choose from."
My name is Megan Yager. I’ve always been a small town girl and, except for a brief rebellious period in college, I’ve always wanted to stay a small town girl. I’m married to a farmer, Levi, and we have two young sons, Barrett and Dallas. We do not have livestock, but we do have dogs, cats, a rabbit, and fish. I completed my bachelor’s degree in environmental biology from Eastern Illinois University in 2012. While there I worked as a research assistant in the fisheries laboratory. After graduation I briefly worked for the Crawford County Health Department in the environmental health office, which means I inspected restaurants for sanitary conditions. Then I landed a job at the local ethanol plant working in the laboratory doing quality control tests. I put my scientific background to work there for six years. Laboratory work is very monotonous and it is almost always the same every day. After doing the same tasks every day for so long, I decided I needed a change and I wanted to do something that was always different, exciting, and would actually make a difference in the world. So I sat down and asked myself what I really wanted to be when I “grew up.” As a kid I never had a set answer to that question, but I knew I loved science. My favorite place in the whole world was my Grandma Jude’s junior high science classroom at Oblong Grade School. It was the coolest place with pickled everything in jars, and hornets’ nests, and plants, and skulls, and bones, and snake skins and all sorts of other stuff that I was fascinated by! So as I was contemplating what I really wanted to do, I considered teaching. It would definitely be exciting, and it would never be boring. I could make it my own every day and make decisions for my classroom that could really impact the lives of my students. So I decided to make the jump and become a junior high teacher myself, just like my grandma.
I recently completed the Post-Baccalaureate Accelerated Secondary Teaching Licensure program at EIU. It was the perfect program for someone like me who already had a bachelor’s degree, but wanted to get those extra requirements in order to become a teacher! The program allowed me to earn an income as a long-term substitute while doing my student teaching and online classes, which was necessary for my family. I plan to advocate for this program in the future in order to help more people become teachers!
When I was introduced to the Grow Your Own program, it was a perfect fit as well because the local areas for the program were already my home town areas! The school where I am doing my student teaching is a junior/senior high school with only about 400 kids total. It is in a small town and I love the community feel that the school has! I currently do not teach all of the kids in the junior high hallway, but over the course of this school year I feel like I know everyone who walks by my classroom. Next year, when I am a fully licensed teacher in my classroom, I will be teaching 7th grade Earth Science and 8th grade Life and Physical Science classes at Red Hill Junior Senior High School.
My family has been a huge support of my radical career change at the age of 30. Everyone tells me that I seem so much happier as a teacher than I ever was a laboratory technician, and they are absolutely right! Anytime I need a babysitter because I have to have grades submitted by 8:00am tomorrow, someone is always willing to help out! Maintaining the work and family balance can be difficult sometimes, but some days everything just comes together and it always works out in the end. My 4 year old loves to ask me “what did you do at school today Mommy?” and I am always ready to tell him what we are learning in hopes that he will love learning and science the same way I do!
"With the mini-grant I received, we purchased a class pet. The students researched, presented, and debated the possibilities of a good class pet. Now that we have our leopard gecko, Littlefoot, we are writing stories from his perspective to publish into a book. We also track his habits and share the responsibility of owning a pet. We also share him with the rest of the community in a "Can you find Littlefoot?" on the school's social media. In just the small amount of time he has been a part of our room, we have learned so much!"
Central Illinois Rural Teacher Corps grant winner, Devanne Lawson, teaches first grade at Carl Sandburg Elementary School. “The grant provided a class set of whisper phones to the students so that they can safely use them during this time of having personal supplies,” Devanne said. “The grant provided a set of social emotional books as well as books to support learning about the rural area we live in. The grant also provided a hundreds chart to help provide a visual for math.”
"First grade students are 6 and 7 year old children who are full of energy with developing motor abilities. As a teacher, I want to have the tools that will best engage my students will supporting their development. Flexible seating options beyond the traditional desk and chair help my young scholars embrace movement while learning. With the finances provided from this grant, I will expand my flexible seating options to provide my students with better choice in their learning environment. Like all adults, students are more motivated and better focused in environments they are comfortable in. This grant will help me to further cultivate a safe, inclusive, comfortable and adaptable learning environment within my classroom."
