Human-anatomy drawings and skeletons greet students entering Lake Buena Vista High Science teacher Amy Jensen’s classroom.
She is one of the educators who opened the high school three years ago and wanted her students to learn more about the world of science with a little help from a Foundation for OCPS Teacher Impact Grant.
Jensen now has a chance to take a deeper dive into science projects, thanks to a nearly $5,000 Lockheed Martin STEM grant, which helped her pay for kits lab equipment and supplies for teaching her students the Project Lead the Way biomedical curriculum.
The grant has also allowed the students to conduct various biomedical design challenges and develop their innovative experiments, including learning about knee functions after a fictitious patient was involved in a bicycle accident; measuring the effects of different chemicals on behaviors such as chemotaxis in model organisms; and developing a new device or making a modification to a current apparatus that can help a family member or friend perform daily tasks with less difficulty.
Lake Buena Vista High senior Emerson Prado participated in the grant-funded activities. “The lab experiments allowed me to expand upon the knowledge and skills I learned in class,” Prado said.
“The science projects have done a great job of increasing engagement and retaining student interest,” said Jensen, who has a Bachelor of Science in biology education from St. Petersburg College. “The Lockheed Martin grant has funded experiments and labs that would not have been possible without the financial support.”
The teacher impact grants have also funded visual- and performing arts classroom projects.
Legacy Middle Art teacher Gabriel de Zayas received a $700 visual arts grant as part of the Florida Education License Plate fund. The monies were used to purchase brushes, colored pencils, markers, paint, and paper so the students could draw portraits of historical figures and create color-wheel designs and papier-mâché masks.
Megan McAleer, a music teacher at Hiawassee Elementary, received a more than $10,000 Phoenix Foundation of Central Florida Morning Glow teacher impact grant to purchase bongos, maracas, tambourines, xylophones and other instruments and stands for her classroom.
The Foundation for OCPS’ teacher impact grants have awarded more than $3 million to educators for their classroom projects. The grants range from $500 to $15,000 and provide learning resources that have had a lasting impact on thousands of students. Information on the 2024-25 teacher impact grants will be available online in late Spring 2024.
“Teachers who have received the grants are truly dedicated to highlighting learning outcomes and creating a classroom where students can explore the future,” said Margaux Pagan, senior administrator of philanthropic strategy.
