You make this possible! Thank you to our generous donors: parents, students, teachers, staff and administrators, and people just like you who value innovation in education. Your support will make it possible to fund more grants and special projects for students in the West Windsor-Plainsboro Regional Schools.
Our Excellence in Education grants are highlighted below. These grants are intended to fund innovative ideas in classroom teaching and are approved in conjunction with district administrators and supervisors. In addition, we have made many large, district-wide special grants over the past few years to fund hands-on science and engineering. They can be found on our Special Grants page. Note: Only the main applicant is named in the grant descriptions below.

Excellence in Education Program Grants

Spring 2022 Grants
 
STEAM Creative Carts
 
Lizbeth Reil, Village Elementary School, Grades 4-5 – The STEAM carts are creative, innovative, engaging as well as calming! STEAM prepares children for successful futures by exposing them to different activities to develop their critical thinking. With the carts, students can create, think, connect and inspire as they build and design items. This cart can also be used when students need a break. While many ask for computer time as a break, this cart would allow teachers an opportunity to offer a break which provides students time to explore and create in a hands-on and engaging way. When engaged in using the cart, students will think, plan, design, draw conclusions, take risks, modify, productively struggle, and more as they use problem-solving skills that are vital to solving real-life problems. Students will use their collaboration skills when working with others and engaging in a growth mindset as they boost confidence and self-esteem.
 
Planting for Pollinators Project
 
Heidi Wachtin, Thomas Grover Middle School, Grade 6 – The “Planting for Pollinators Project” is a three phase project and will be one that will have a lasting impact on many students and the environment over the next two years and beyond. During Phase 1, 6th grade science students identified the need for improved biodiversity at Grover, and attempted to remediate this through designing and creating pollinator gardens. During Phase 2 and 3 they learned about the process that their predecessors engaged in. They continued to gather data on the efficacy of their peers’ work. In the spring, they went back to the gardens to measure growth in biodiversity and create their own plans to continue to make positive changes moving forward. It puts into practice key ideas they have learned during their life science unit about plant growth and development, as well as the interdependent roles of plants and insects in a balanced and diverse ecosystem. It invites students to exercise skills from Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math.
 
Bucket Brigade
 
Trish Conover, Community Middle School, Grades 6-8 – This grant provides students with bucket drums. Bucket drums are a wonderful instrument due to its affordability, portability and accessibility. Using these students learned and reinforced music reading skills, explored improvisation and composition. All grades and all students had access to the bucket drums and drumsticks to further enhance their music experience.

 
Maurice Hawk’s Calm Corner
 

Michelle Patrone & Rachel Harold, Maurice Hawk School, Preschool – 3 – This grant provides a comforting environment for students to move through the stages of de-escalation in a safe and supportive manner while staff use various behavior management strategies combining with the use of the CALM CORNER with the Zones of Regulation Program, taught by our school Guidance Counselors. It will engage students in the appropriate self-regulation activities. The mission of the CALM CORNER is to create a safe, calm down area designed to help our students to develop and build intrinsic self-regulation skills as they learn to recognize and advocate for their own emotional and self-regulation needs. The Calm Corner will also help in coping skills, promote improved focus and attention, while fostering healthy learning.

 
Creative Design Students – Hands on projects
 
Telma Juarez Stucker, High School North, Grades 9-12 – The idea of this project was to introduce several designs and creative hands-on projects where students will work only with their hands. Students were set in groups of two for the design, choosing materials and resources phase. They worked individually on several hands-on projects such as hand sew masks, small bags, crochet a border in a face towel, knitting hat or kitchen “hot-pot”. Cross stitch was used in several levels, students had at least 3 opportunities during the school year to learn and improve their skills.

 
Fall 2021 Grants
STEM Supply Station
 
Anne Marie Hughes & Rachel Redelico, Dutch Neck School, Maurice Hawk School & Wicoff Elementary School, Grades K-3 – This grant will provide the students an opportunity to design and build using different materials. This will encourage students to work creatively, critically and collaboratively to create unique and innovative designs. Students will be introduced to real world problems and build solutions using these materials.
Line Spectra for the Identification of Elements
 
Karel Marshall & Cindy Jaworsky, High School South, Grades 10-12 – This grant will allow students to compare spectra of elements and compare it to electron configurations and quantum theory. This program will address accurate acquisition of data related to emission and absorption spectroscopy. Students will prove atomic theory through various activities that require accurate collection of data and analyzing data outputs using modern technology.
 
Authentic Input to Support Instruction and Increase Global Competencies
 
Ellen Blejwas, High School North, Grades 9-12 – This grant provides access to an online platform that offers dynamic and authentic activities far beyond textbooks. It provides richer, more interactive learning opportunities that will increase student motivation and engagement. The variety of resources lend themselves to offering students choice. Providing student choice allows us to implement “tools and structures to appropriately challenge and enable students to realize their full potential”. Access to authentic materials and realia further supports teachers in simulating a real-life immersive experience in order to enhance students’ language proficiency and develop global competency.  
 
Inclusive Leveled Reading for the Classroom Library
 
Lauren Bower, Dutch Neck School, Grades 2-3 – This grant provides access to inclusive and diverse books in order to gain experience and develop as a reader by thinking critically. The inclusive leveled reading for the classroom library will provide students with leveled books that embrace diversity and inclusivity. This program is addressing the need for multicultural children’s literature in classroom libraries so students can see themselves in books and also see into the lives of others different from their own. These books provide stories of joy from a diverse group of characters that students can relate to and learn from.
 

Spring 2021 Grants

We have also awarded several other grants this year to teachers for innovative projects that support the curriculum.

Sensory Paths to Foster Social and Emotional Development

David Eggert & Lauren Gallagher, MRS 3rd-5th Grade students – [expand title=” Read More”] This project will be used for the upper elementary students that benefit from kinesthetic learning, movement breaks, and community building within the school. Research has shown that sensory paths have significant benefits to students, especially when students are entering the school environment after a prolonged absence from the building. The sensory paths will help meet the needs of all students of all needs and abilities. The indoor space will help with Integration of a more inclusive community to allow both general education students and students with special needs together to foster teamwork, collaboration, and celebrating everyone’s uniqueness. [/expand]

Growing Kids Growing Gardens

Megan McCormick & Kristen Weston, MHS Preschool students – [expand title=” Read More”] This project is for the preschool students to be challenged in an outdoor learning environment and throughout the Gardening Study Unit, which is part of the Creative Curriculum. The students will also be working on their gross motor and fine motor skills by using the various gardening tools and gardening techniques. Through this project the students will also be building their social skills and classroom communities by interacting with one another towards a common goal. They will need to communicate with one another and work together to share the tools, grow the garden, and use the planter bed all together. Teachers will be addressing District Strategic Goals by providing students with various tools for learning, which will challenge and enable students to realize their full potential. This will be done by recognizing that children need to balance physical and academic needs, and we will maintain a supportive culture and build structures for the health, safety, and well-being of the Whole-Child. [/expand]

Ecosystem Exploration

Kevin Lynch, CMS 6th Grade students – [expand title=” Read More”] This project has been designed to establish and develop student
fascination with the environment around them, it will bring nature into the classroom. Students will watch as their self-sustaining creations either take off and balance out with proper proportions of organisms or fail to maintain life. Both outcomes will provide a learning experience that brings fun into the science classroom. Students will design and
create their own self-sustaining ecosystem and will be able to explain how the ecosystem and its parts work together to maintain a balanced system. Students will be able to make connections between their understanding of ecosystems and the impact of human activity and conservation efforts. [/expand]

E Pluribus Unum: Inclusion of AAPI literature in the American Literature classroom

Sima Kumar, HSS -10 th Grade students – [expand title=” Read More”] The goal of the pilot program “E Pluribus Unum’is to create a more
inclusive American Literature curriculum.
Through consultation with Asian American Studies and Education professors from Princeton, Rutgers, and Fairleigh Dickinson Universities, professional development training will be designed for teachers and will provide materials and strategies for how to coherently integrate AAPI literature and history into what is already being taught in the LA II classroom. [/expand]

Fall 2020 Grants

Independent Student Learning Stations

Lizbeth Reil, Jerry Pinner : Wicoff Elementary School, Grades K-3 – [expand title=” Read More”] This grant provides folding tables to students where number of children or family members are working from home during the pandemic and students needed to find work areas in a shared setting. Having a desk which would slide up to a bed, couch or chair provided alternate learning environments, which were not previously available to families due to the cost constraints. These movable learning tables would greatly improve student’s ability to maximize their ability to work in a home setting, steady the learning device (Chromebook, iPad, laptop etc.) allowing for greater focus, attention to task and more. [/expand]

Sensory Station

Colleen Belmonte : Wicoff Elementary School, Grades K-3 – [expand title=” Read More”] The goal of this project is to create a sensory room/hallway with decals, interactive boards, sensory wall panels and flooring. This will help to focus on students’ social and emotional growth and well-being. Students will engage in mindfulness practices, deep breathing techniques which impacts overall health and academic improvement of our students. Sensory hallways will provide students with a brain break and will be used as a preventive measure by improving focus and prevent disruptive behaviors.[/expand]

Spring 2020 Grants

Science Alive!

Heidi Wachtin, Kelly Lee, Gene Buck, Shveta Bhatheja, Mary Parker, Gennifer Maggipinto, Quinn Edwards, Vincent Maggio, Kevin Mackenzie, Anthony Bartolone : Thomas Grover Middle School & Community Middle School, Grade 6 – [expand title=” Read More”] This grant provides teachers with digital microscopes that are used to project live science onto the computer screens. Teachers share their screens with students at home to see phenomena such as the weave of fiber in a regular piece of paper, teeny tiny organisms in pond water that are invisible to the naked eye, and photosynthesis occurring in leaves! Students are able to observe and study organisms through compound microscopes to better understand them, their structures and their interactions. They are able to see the objects and organisms in ways they never could have imagined. [/expand]

Weekly Update from High School North & South

Kathryn Caroll, Glenn Allison : High School North & High School South, Grades 9-12 – [expand title=” Read More”] The students will be able to create enhanced weekly school/club announcements, video production assignments and independent school-related student-directed projects. The use of this video production equipment would help students strengthen their school community, deepen their communication skills and promote a supportive school culture. [/expand]

Past Grants and Programs