DAPHNE, Ala. — Supporting Educational Enrichment in Daphne’s Schools on Monday awarded $42,500 in grant funds to local schools and teachers. The money will help fund specific projects that aim to bring student enthusiasm to the classroom.

The Classroom Enrichment Grants — now in their sixth year — were awarded to five Daphne public schools: Daphne Elementary School, Daphne East Elementary School, Daphne Middle School, Daphne High School and W.J. Carroll Intermediate School. Christ the King Catholic School also was a recipient.

“State Sens. Marc Keahey and Trip Pittman and State Rep. Randy Davis and Joe Faust have contributed generously to this year’s grants program, making it possible for us to not only continue our $3,000 block grant to each school, but to also fund 13 different classroom projects developed by Daphne teachers,” SEEDS President Ashley Hammond said.

SEEDS did not want to comment on how much money would go toward each teacher’s proposal, but around $1,200 to $1,500 went to each school in addition to the annual $3,000 block grant the school’s received.

“We wanted to make sure every school got a part of the grant money raised,” SEEDS Executive Director Denise D’Oliveira said. “We had three times as many requests as we had funding for.”

The projects

Winning teachers spoke briefly about what their specific classroom-enrichment projects entail.

r Rose Mary Mitchell — English teacher at Christ the King — will help her sixth-graders write books; she will use the grant money to fund the books being printed.

r Eugene Fernandes — math and science teacher at Christ the King — will use the funds to teach students different techniques to learn math. “My hope always as a teacher is when they move a (grade) up and say, ‘Wow, math is easy,’” he said.

r Elizabeth Woodson and Beth Childs of Daphne Elementary hope to build reading skills and character education from their projects.

Woodson — DES’s media specialist — will have second- and third-graders come to the summer camp “Camp Read-a-lot”; check out books once a week; and take accelerated reading quizzes.

Childs — DES’s counselor — will buy the “Wumblers” DVD set for the school. The Wumblers are red, orange and green characters that do positive deeds for their village.

r Sandra Gentry — W.J. Carroll English-as-a-second-language resource teacher — will use the funds to buy books and a compact disc that depict 10 family-oriented, life-like scenes to help students.

r W.J. Carroll’s gifted-education teacher Blair Heald will use her grant for technology upgrades to develop a website that will help students perform research about Baldwin County and black history. The county’s Black Education Museum is on W.J. Carroll’s campus.

r Susan Samry and Terrie Weinacker of Daphne East Elementary proposed separate grants for the same thing. They both will use their grant money to purchase document cameras, which will project lessons onto the classroom board and allow students to see the lessons themselves.

r Stephanie Johnston — Daphne Middle’s career-technology teacher — will use her funds to have students compete in a school-wide Lego robotics competition.

“They will be learning engineering and design all while using Lego robotics,” she said.

r Michele Benefield — DMS eighth-grade science teacher — will use the funds to allow students to design and build a miniature rollercoaster. She plans to attach marble tubing to a pegboard.

“If the project is done right, the rollercoaster will keep going,” she said.

r LaDonna White — who could not attend the grant announcements — will use her grant funds to replace the science laboratory slides at DMS.

r DHS theater teacher Deborah Reid will use her funds to purchase Italian Renaissance costumes to go along with donated masks for future shows.

r DHS math teacher Evelyn Walker will buy iPads for her Algebra classes.

“We can use them to teach. We can use them to re-teach. We can use them if a student missed school one day,” she said. I think it’s going to change the way we’re doing things in the math department.”

Each teacher submitted a grant proposal outlining a project, what the funds would be used for and how the project helps “enrich” their students and the classroom.

Grant fundraising

Part of the grant funds was raised at the Nov. 13 Mamma Mia Cook-off, where 28 teams cooked Italian-based cuisine for hundreds of Baldwin County residents and competed in different divisions to win awards. The cook-off is an annual event and all proceeds benefit SEEDS’ grants.

“We’re pleased that with growing community support, our annual grants program has invested more than $180,000 in the Daphne schools since 2005,” Hammond said.

SEEDS’ Enrichment Grant Program encourages school officials and teachers to develop classroom initiatives beyond the core curriculum. The grant focuses on four criteria: innovative teaching, instructional impact, professional collaboration and community partnership.