AEF Innovative Teaching Grants have been funding great ideas and creating excitement in classrooms since 2010.  Each year, AEF accepts innovative teaching grant applications from teachers at every campus.  These grants reflect ideas that teachers would love to make happen but lack the funding to execute. AEF steps in with the funding that brings many of these ideas to life.

Grants are for any amount of money up to $1,500 and are awarded to innovative teaching ideas that provide new resources for the classroom, impact students in specific and measurable ways, and do this in an innovative way.  Many new technology-based resources have been brought into the district from the Teacher Grants. Examples include the Kindergarten Augmented Reality Letters Alive program and the Elementary Library of e-books from TumbleBooks available to all elementary students.

 The AEF Teacher Grant program has fostered a new spirit of teaching excellence. Teachers have been generating more great ideas than the AEF can fund, and PTOs have stepped in on occasion to take care of grants that could not receive funding.

At the end of each year, we travel across the district surprising teachers with their grants.  Grant give-away day is full of excitement. Join us in supporting teachers and providing them with funding to make their teaching ideas come to life in the classroom!

Teachers should remember the following when applying for a teacher grant:

• AEF wants these grants to impact as many children in the classroom as possible within a campus. Grants that affect grade levels and campuses are given greater consideration.

• Requests always exceed funding, and we want the funding to go as far as possible. Larger funding requests undergo a more rigorous review than smaller requests.  Worthy grant requests under $500 have almost always been awarded.

• Part of the goal of the grant program is to involve other resources in this effort. Partnering with community and school resources for funding or involvement is beneficial during grant review.

• If the grant involves asking for a subscription, the application will need to explain how that will be paid for in the future.  We are not very interested in grants for technology that only last one year.

• If you are asking for a product, please include the website for more information on the product. All product requests are researched.

• The more exact a grant’s research on cost, the better the chance it will be funded.  Please do not ask for grant money without providing a breakdown of how that funding would be used. It is detrimental to a request if research finds the grant is asking for more money than needed.  We typically revise worthy grant awards down to the actual cost. If we cannot find actual costs, a grant may not be awarded.

• $36,600+ in Innovative Teaching Grants

• $10,000 in Campus Grants

• $42,400+ in Innovative Teaching Grants

• $10,000 in Campus Grants

• $42,000+ in Innovative Teaching Grants

• $10,000 in Campus Grants