NEF Awards $46K in Spring Grants

Continuing its tradition of helping to fund educational enrichment programs in the Needham Public Schools, the Needham Education Foundation has awarded more than $46,000 in small grant money for the spring 2012 cycle.

Programs reach children in every school building in the district, from elementary up to high school, and include a variety of events from visiting artists and authors to a Revolutionary War encampment at Hillside Elementary School.

"These are definitely thinking outside the box and have a lot to give to students," School Committee member Kim Marie Nicols said of the 15 grants announced on Tuesday, March 20.

Fourteen of the 15 grant applications were submitted online via the Needham Education Foundation's new Web form at nefneedham.org. Thirteen programs received funding.

Below is a list of the grants approved in the spring 2012 small grant cycle and a summary of the programs provided by the Needham Education Foundation:

1. Author-in-Residence: Building a Strong Foundation for Literacy (, $3,600)—This funding will bring an author, Leo Landry, to work with kindergarten students for 12 visits during the 2012-13 school year. It will enable children to regularly interact with and learn from a real author with the hope of enhancing the current literacy curriculum at the school as well as provide an opportunity for further professional development of the kindergarten teachers.

2. Read and Succeed: Ignite What You Write (, $5,000)—This grant will fund visits from three authors: Mark Peter Hughes for grades 4 and 5; Suzy Becker for grades 2 and 3; and Suzanne Bloom for kindergarten and first grade. The authors will present to each grade and hold individual classroom workshops.

3. Mitchell Mosaic Mural Mania (Mitchell, $5,000)—The funding is for an artist-in-residence to work with the students to design and create a mosaic mural that will be mounted at the school as a public art piece. The mural will be mounted on moveable boards that could be transferred to a new location as Mitchell is slated for renovation in the next five years. The project will involve students, parents and teachers to design, create and execute the mural.

4. Stand Up For Learning (, $5,000)—The Stand Up Desk allows students to work while standing, leaning, stretching, wiggling and generally doing everything but sitting still. For the students, who need reminders to focus and stop fidgeting, instead of making them sit down, they learn standing up on their feet. This grant will fund 15 desks, with one in each classroom in grades 3-5.

5. Grace Lin (, $4,000)—This grant will fund an author visit by Grace Lin, a Geisel Honor and Newbery Honor recipient. Grades K-2 will hear "The Ugly Vegetables" as a read-aloud and plant "ugly Chinese vegetables" in the school garden. The harvested vegetables will be used to enhance the science curriculum as students write their observations of the vegetables. At her author visit, Lin will use "The Ugly Vegetables" to illustrate the writing genre of personal narrative.  Grades 3-5 will read "The Year of the Dog," about a first generation American. It is currently used in the fifth grade immigration unit as a literature circle selection. At her author visit, Lin will conduct an interactive demonstration of how this book illustrates the genre of realistic fiction.

6. Needham Community Farm's Pollard Bridges Program (, $2,000)—The will collaborate with the Pollard Middle School to create a farm-based special education program for seventh and eighth graders participating in the Bridges Program. These students will make regular visits to the farm for the purpose of engaging in hands-on, curriculum-based and social and emotional learning opportunities. The funding will provide for the development of curriculum.

7. The 5th Quarter (, $4,500.56)—The 5th Quarter events provide a safe, substance-free place for teens to go where they can socialize with their friends after evening sporting events. The funding will help provide food and beverages at these events.

8. Fine and Performing Arts Critique Theater and Presentation Space (Needham High School, $4,992)—This grant will provide funding for the Fine and Performing Arts Department to obtain 40 6-by-4-foot self-healing tack boards. This will allow the 900 hallway at the high school to be transformed into a critique theater and presentation space that will create a collegial resource for art classes to learn about methods of critique, problem solving using visual language, and provide a public space that will offer opportunities to educate the student body and faculty about the process of art making.

9. Community Week: Inclusion Night and (dis)Ability Awareness Night ( and Pollard, $1,115)—The High Rock and Pollard Middle School PTC is organizing its first ever Community Week. This Community Week, April 23-28, 2012, is designed as five nights of events comprising speakers, book discussion groups, presentation of a relevant film, or a combination of these. This grant is for the funding for the bookend events of Community Week, featuring an Emmy-nominated film, Including Samuel, and a motivational speaker, Travis Roy, lauded by Boston-area college, sports and disability communities.

10. Bringing History to Hillside: Revolutionary War Encampment (Hillside, $1,156)—This grant will bring the Rehoboth Minute Company 13th Continental Regiment to Hillside in order to set up a Revolutionary War camp on the school field. Grades 3, 4 and 5 will tour the encampment, joining costumed revolutionary re-enactors as they live and teach history. Students will interact directly with experts on the Revolutionary War, discussing, asking questions and experiencing life of a Revolutionary War soldier.

11. Bill Harley Program and Concert ( and Broadmeadow, $5,000)—This grant will bring Grammy-award winning storyteller/songwriter Bill Harley to Newman and Broadmeadow. He will have two one-hour assemblies at each school in addition to an evening family concert at both schools.

12. 2012-13 Disability Awareness School-wide Speaker: Travis Roy (Newman, Mitchell and Broadmeadow, $5,000)—This grant provides the funding for Travis Roy as the kick-off speaker for the disability awareness programs at Newman, Mitchell and Broadmeadow. Roy has previously spoken at Hillside and Eliot as part of their disability awareness programs with much success.

13. One Meeting, Full of Friendship: Japanese Tea Ceremony (Hillside, $450.85)—This grant is to bring Kate Finnegan, a teacher at the Kaji Aso Studios and practitioner of the tea ceremony, to Hillside to demonstrate the tea ceremony for the entire second grade. The Kaji Aso Studios Tea Ceremony demonstration brings the tradition of tea ceremony into the classroom and highlights the principles of the ceremony, focusing particularly on the connection with the coming season and the importance of friendship. It is an activity that will connect the students to the social studies curriculum, with each other and with the idea that other cultures hold relevance to their lives.