LEEF awards 36 new grants, totaling $120,000

Date: 10/13/2009

By Courtney Llewellyn

Reminder Assistant Editor



LONGMEADOW Recession? What recession?

The Longmeadow Education Excellence Foundation (LEEF) awarded a total of $120,121 in 36 new grants to teachers throughout the district last week. The foundation has awarded more than $681,000 since its inception in 2002.

The goal of LEEF is to enrich, enhance and support the quality of education in the six Longmeadow public schools. LEEF is committed to underwriting grants to provide students from kindergarten through twelfth grade with extraordinary opportunities beyond the scope of our tax supported budgets.

Thirty-six grants were awarded this year, including unique learning opportunities like "Visualizing Chemical Principles Through Molecular Modeling and Microscale Animations," "Band Day 2010," "Robotics Lab," "Youth Voices of Glenbrook," "Books on CD for Kindergarten Learners" and "Extreme Weather: A Day with Thunderstorms and Tornados."

Pam Novak, who received a grant last year for "Book Building," said that in middle school, teachers try to diversify learning as much as possible. She said integrating art and bookmaking into the curriculum made a variety of subjects more interesting and more involving for her students.

Kathleen Epaul, a French teacher at the high school, said the grant she received during the last school year had a major impact on the way she taught. High-quality video and audio from France were made available, and one student told Epaul that the new technology helped him better learn French by bringing it out of the textbook.

"Wow," Superintendent E. Jahn Hart said of the amount awarded for grants this year. She said the unique learning opportunities provided by the grants things that could not be covered with the school budget truly engaged students in the rigors and relevance of education.

"These are not just funds for innovation," Hart added. "This puts a positive spotlight on our public schools ... Wherever I go in Longmeadow, people bring up LEEF."

A majority of the funds raised for the grants comes from an annual event, the LEEF Gala, which this year will be taking place at Longmeadow Country Club on Nov. 14. Tickets for the event will be available soon.

For more information on the foundation or the gala, visit www.longmeadowleef.org.