What Can Teachers Do with $500?

What Can Teachers Do with $500?

by Dina Portnoy

What can public and charter elementary school teachers do with $500? As it turns out, in every context and situation teachers can make magic with and for students using just such small grants. Marci Resnick understood that, reminding us regularly that teachers, even in the most difficult circumstances, have within them great powers of creativity. Marci, PhilWP director who later worked for the National Writing Project, died, too young, in 2007. The Marci Resnick Teacher Fund celebrates and supports these efforts in her memory.

This year, the celebration of these grants honored Joanne Donahue, Miram Zuzga, Angela Fazio, and Orissa Adams, teachers at Masterman School and Kelley Elementary. All of these projects reminded us of the many ways these grants maintain Marci's deeply held beliefs about the power of teacher collaboration and the development of students as active participants in literacy practices that cover all areas of the curriculum. From engaging reading groups at Masterman to the connections between gardening and writing at Kelley elementary, we saw this in action.

...reminding us regularly that teachers,

even in the most difficult circumstances,

have within them great powers of creativity.

The principal at Kelley Elementary (Amelia Coleman Brown, pictured below in the opening of the school library), is a PhilWP TC who characterizes Marci as her "mentor." Students at Kelley wrote many things about planting their garden outside the school.

Principal of the Kelley School, Amelia Coleman Brown

A poem about Marci Resnick by students at the Kelley School

A poem/song about planting by students at the Kelley School

Our new grantees for the coming year will be Becky Horner and Sam Reed. Becky, at Solis-Cohen, will work with her school to build a library of books for foreign language speakers whose voices are not often heard in school; she will purchase books in Arabic, Chinese, and Vietnamese among other languages. Sam, at Beeber Middle School, will purchase Livescribe Eco-Smart pens to use in his literacy classes as digital literacy tools. In particular, he is eager to engage his young male students in literacy practices.

Dina Portnoy taught in the School District for 24 years at Kelly Elementary School, Olney High School, University City High School, and Northeast High School. She worked with the Philadelphia Schools Collaborative for three years, developing small learning communities in comprehensive high schools. Dina was the director of the GSE/TFA program at the University of Pennsylvania for 6 years from 2005-2011. She joined the Philadelphia Writing Project as a teacher consultant in 1987 and was the PhilWP Scholar in 1991. Dina is currently the director of alumni programs at the Knowles Science Teaching Foundation.