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Eighty-one years ago, on January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied Poland—a place where more than one million people were murdered as part of the Nazis’ so-called “Final Solution.” In November 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a time to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the millions of others targeted by Nazi persecution. According to the United Nations, the word remembrance was chosen deliberately—to dignify victims and survivors and to keep alive the memory of the communities, traditions, loved ones, and lives the Nazis sought to erase. But remembrance is impossible without knowledge. We cannot remember what happened if we are never taught about it or taught factually. Last summer, two Fund for Teachers Fellows—educators from different states—found themselves standing side by side at Auschwitz and at multiple sites across the European theater of World War II. Their purpose was not only to deepen their own understanding of history, but to lead inquiry that fosters critical thinking, awareness, and action—both now and in the future. Today, we’re learning from Jody Rohweller-Kocur, a teacher at Highland Park High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Jenai Sheffels, a teacher at Tesla STEM High School in Redmond, Washington. Independently, both were awarded Fund for Teachers grants to participate in a program co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas’ and the Humanus Network titled The Power of Place: 2025 European Summer Institute for Holocaust Educators, which took them to Austria, Poland, and Italy. As Jody and I waited for Jenai to join our Zoom call, I asked how she was doing in Saint Paul—where earlier that day, in neighboring Minneapolis, ICE detained a five-year-old boy and his father while they were walking home from preschool. Hearing about the lengths to which Jody and her colleagues go to teach, protect, and care for their students opened the door to a larger conversation about perpetrators, bystanders, and upstanders—a conversation that feels, tragically, more urgent than ever. Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

As the fall semester speeds into winter break, Amanda Hinrichs’ fifth graders at Hebron Avenue School in Glastonbury, CT, are pretty worked up. They’re stamping their feet and making bold hand gestures with eyes bulging and tongues out. And Amanda is loving every second. Her music students are writing and performing their own “haka,” a Maori tradition that Amanda observed all across New Zealand on her Fund for Teachers grant this summer. Amanda is a 25-year veteran teacher of music but recently faced an instrumental issue. The state of Connecticut started mandating play at the kindergarten level and permitting teachers to utilize play-based learning in grades 1-5. This change coincided with a personal shift – the decision to intentionally interject more world cultures into her curriculum. After reprising her initial Fund for Teachers proposal that was not awarded, this past summer she used a $5,000 grant to research New Zealand's Maori culture through museums, cultural performances, and living villages, while also consulting experts in play-based learning. Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

In the midst of the Dust Bowl—an agricultural catastrophe that decimated crops and devastated the livelihoods of thousands of Oklahomans—President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.” Fueled by a lack of understanding about sustainable land management and the heightened demand for food during World War I, once-fertile plains were transformed into barren deserts—a tragedy immortalized in Dorothea Lange’s iconic “Migrant Mother” photograph and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. Nearly a century later, educators Darci and Seth Reeves are working to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself. At Latta High School in Ada, OK– approximately an hour and a half southeast of Oklahoma City, they’re teaching students how to care for both their land and their health through agricultural science, Family and Consumer Sciences, and the Future Farmers of America program. This summer, their mission gained new momentum through a Fund for Teachers fellowship—becoming part of the ongoing solution to sustainable agriculture and community well-being. (Learn more about Seth and Darci's learning from their post-fellowship reports...) This fellowship was generously funded by the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, which supports innovative people working in field-based science, art and craft, teaching and protection of the natural world. Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

Rudyard Kipling penned the words, “East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” Except in the case of Fund for Teachers Fellows Natasha Alston and Denise Carter-Mataboge.  Natasha teaches at Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, AZ, and Denise teaches at the Neighborhood Charter School: Harlem, NY. They didn’t even know each other a year ago. But they DID know they wanted to teach African American History in a way neither of them experienced as students. Today, we are learning from “Team Sankofa,” the name Denise and Natasha gave their Fund for Teachers partnership that used a $10,000 grant to explore the life of William Tucker, tracing his origin story from the first slave ship landing in North America back to the colonized country of Angola. Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana that means “to go back and get;” but Natasha and Denise prefer the interpretation used by the Akan people of Ghana which is "it is not wrong to go back for that which has been forgotten.”  Toni Morrison writes in the preface of Beloved, "To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must get out of the way." Denise and Natasha took Morrison’s words to heart, using their grant to push beyond cursory narratives in textbooks and bear witness to enslavement from its starting point in Africa. The following conversation with Team Sankofa centered around their experiences and deepened motivation to reclaim forgotten chapters of history often omitted from American education and ensure that these crucial early stories of our nation are preserved and shared with students. (Click here for more information on The William Tucker 1624 Society and here for the USA Today article Natasha references on the podcast.) Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

The Way of St. James, perhaps more commonly known as the Camino de Santiago, has been since the 9th century an ambulatory avenue for reflection. The ancient path that stretches from the French Pyrenees to Spain’s Santiago de Compestela, was first traversed by Roman tradesmen, then Christians seeking “indulgences” from the Medieval Church. Today, various paths associated with the Camino are walked by more than 200,000 people a year as a form of spiritual, emotional and/or physical exercise. The Camino de Santiago has been a topic in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” James Michener’s “Iberia,” Ken Follet’s “Pillars of the Earth,” and the 2010 film “The Way,” written and directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father, Martin Sheen.  This summer, it was also the subject of Chandler Wilson’s Fund for Teachers fellowship.  In her fourth year of teaching, Chandler also teaches evening art classes to all ages across the greater Oklahoma City area. She previously worked in the child welfare continuum and that work continues to inform how she teaches the power of art in social emotional development and community building. We caught up with Chandler in Santiago de Compestela the day after completing her 406 mile fellowship… Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

Winston Churchill said, “We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which through the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeus Corpus, Trial by Jury and the English Common Law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.” Agreed to by King John on June 15, 1215, the Magna Carta attests that the king is subject to the rule of law and documents the liberties held by “free men.” Eight hundred and ten years later – to the day – Fund for Teachers Fellow John Fehr was in the United Kingdom hunting down the four extant, original copies of the Magna Carta. The same time that multiple “No Kings” protests were held across America.  Pretty timely, I’d say.  Welcome to this July 4th edition of Fund for Teachers – The Podcast. I’m Carrie Caton Smith and the goal of each episode is to elevate teachers as the inspiring architects of their careers, classrooms and school communities. Today, we’re kicking off the 2025 “Fellow Season” as I like to call it, by learning from Jeff Fehr, teacher at Humboldt Middle / High School in Humboldt, Kansas. Jeff teaches Geography, Kansas History and American History and encourages his students to find personal connections to history to find their path forward IN history. But how does one help students find personal connections to an 810-year-old document? For Jeff, the answer was a Fund for Teachers fellowship. We caught up with Jeff in Salisbury, England, after seeing two copies of the Magna Carta in Salisbury and Lincoln, but before seeing the final two copies at the British Library in London. He shared with us his experiences (which includes goosebumps and a few tears) which he plans to incorporate into the development of project-based learning in social studies, with a focus on making historical concepts meaningful and relatable for students by linking the past to current issues around rights, governance, and justice. Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

We’re publishing this podcast on the final day of Black History Month. The 2025 theme was "African Americans and Labor," focusing on the significant role Black people have played in the workforce – of their own accord or at the mercy and for the benefit of others. The economic aspect of Black history also inspired a Fund for Teachers experience of today’s guest and now informs the perspectives and research projects of Chicago seventh graders. Today we’re learning from Fund for Teachers Fellow Sandra Burgess. After conducting training sessions in Corporate America, then teaching at the collegiate level for 15 years, Sandra took a chance and a job teaching middle schoolers—whom she claims have a lot in common with first-year college students. Sandra is actually a two-time Fellow: first partnering with a colleague at Morgan Park Academy in 2022 to gather materials, impressions and insights pertaining to the Holocaust across eight European countries to facilitate a student-led podcast series. Then last summer, with the same colleague but this time a Fund for Teachers’ Innovation Circle grant, Sandra researched the growth of the slave trade through civil rights resistance in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Washington DC. Her learning, access to primary resources on the road, and artifacts gathered, catalyzed a research project requiring students to focus on mapping how slavery contributed to the economy of the US, which caused those who benefited to oppose its demise. Sandra says both fellowships are rooted in hard history, elevate narratives of those involved, and changed her life… Show Notes: City Project 8th Grade Organization Outline.pdf Primary and Secondary SourcesCity Project 8th Grade.pdf MS The Economic Impact of Slavery on New Orleans Montgomery and Washington DC.pdf Sample Works Cited City Project.pdf Final In Class EssayCity Project 8th Grade.pdf Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

Internationally renowned environmentalist Jane Goodall said, "What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make." In 2015, Barbara Dalio decided she wanted to make a difference for teachers. Connecticut teachers, specifically. Based on the formative role teachers played in the lives of her three sons, Barbara chose to invest in her home state’s educators as a means of also impacting its students.  The vehicle she chose to make this happen was Fund for Teachers. Six years later, more than 1,125 preK-12 teachers have leveraged $4.7 million in Fund for Teachers grants, provided through Dalio Education, to transform the educational landscape of Connecticut. One week ago, Fund for Teachers hosted a dinner that convened many of Connecticut’s 2024 grant recipients, or FFT Fellows, for an evening of inspiration and encouragement provided by 10 teachers who presented about their fellowships last summer. We couldn’t resist the opportunity to pull a few away from the cohort for brief visits about their learning — and their advice for teachers pursuing 2025 Fund for Teachers grants. Show notes: National Webinar - November 20 Registration Teachers of Color Workshop Registration Rural Teachers Workshop Registration Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

Welcome to our fifth season of Fund for Teachers: The Podcast. We launched this platform (after buying and annotating the book “Podcasts for Dummies”) when Covid shut down schools (and everything else) because we wanted to stay in touch with our grant recipients and support the stalwart work they were undertaking as our students first responders.  Forty-seven episodes later, we continue to welcome Fellows as our special guests to learn about their fellowships and how they are leveraging these grants into growth for themselves, their students and school communities. Today’s episode kicks of our 2025 grant cycle and marks a first for us — two FFT Fellows join the conversation. This summer, by happy coincidence, Jaime Kerns (on fellowship in the Canary Islands) and Jasmine Adams (on fellowship in Johannesburg) and I (in East Texas) confused our time zones and found ourselves on the same call at the same time. The result: a conversation grounded in how their cultural heritage informed their fellowship design that now impacts their students’ education.  Along the way, they also share advice for teachers considering applying for a 2025 fellowship grant (“just do it”) and tips for writing a winning proposal (“follow your passion”). Show Notes: Jasmine Adams teaches at Drew Charter Elementary Academy in Atlanta and this summer used a $5,000 Fund for Teachers grant to conduct a comparative analysis of Civil Rights activism in both the American South and South Africa, analyzing tactics employed by communities to promote equality for marginalized groups, to empower students with a profound understanding of the progress and ongoing struggle for equity via a civic action project integrating art. You can access Jasmine's post-fellowship report here. A three-time FFT Fellow, Jaime Kerns teaches at Lookout Valley Middle/High School in Chattanooga and this summer used a $5,000 grant to embark on a cultural and linguistic journey across Morocco and the Canary Islands to deepen personal understanding of influences on Hispanic heritage shared by a growing percentage of her students. You can access Jaime's post-fellowship report here. Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

Teaching is a family business for this mother and daughter. When Daneé Pinckney was a student, her mom, Gail Bowers-Craig, enrolled in night school to earn a degree in education. In fact, Daneé says much of what she learned about teaching was from watching and listening to her mother in those years of study. It was Daneé, however, who blazed the Fund for Teachers trail.  Last summer, Daneé used her $5,000 grant to research the ancestry of Black America through Benin, Ghana, and the Togolese Republic to produce an expansion of the depth of knowledge of Western Africa that also strives to dismantle discriminatory perspectives that will deepen student connections to literature, art, culture, and self-identity. Along for the ride, and on her dime, was Gail – who used the time to do a little of her own research for her middle school science students.  Upon returning to Ohio, where they live and teach 30 minutes apart from each other, Gail decided to follow the example set by Daneé and apply for her own Fund for Teachers grant. And this summer, with Daneé as her “plus one,” Gail and two teammates from Euclid Middle School in Euclid, OH, will explore the Galapagos Islands in the tradition of Charles Darwin to tangibly demonstrate for students how science is valuable in shaping community and deepening the understanding of ourselves and the people around us. Today, we’re learning from this mother/daughter team about who inspires whom, how, and lessons they’ve learned from years together at home and at school. Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

Virigina Hall studied at Radcliffe College and Barnard College (the women’s colleges of Harvard and Columbia) and spoke three languages. She served as a consular clerk in Poland and Turkey, where a hunting accident required an amputation below the knee. Noor Inayat Kahn studied child psychology at the Sorbonne and music at the Paris Conservatory. The daughter of Sufi Muslims, she was described as quiet, shy, sensitive, and dreamy. Josephine Baker was an American-born French dancer, singer and actress and the first Black woman to star in a major motion picture. She was a school drop out who ascended to international stardom in France and befriended the likes of Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso. A studious amputee, a shy artist, and a flamboyant entertainer. Who also happened to be secret agents during World War II and integral to the Resistance movement against the Axis powers. Could these women, who confronted sexism, ableism, racism, who refused to speak under Nazi interrogation and bamboozled German officials while extracting secrets also convince West Texas high school students that history is not about “the dead, old and irrelevant.” It was a mission two teachers chose to accept when they also accepted a $10,000 Fund for Teachers grant. Today we’re learning from Renee Parson and Cory Cason, history teachers at Alpine High School in Alpine, Texas, set in the high plateau of the Chihuahuan Desert between the Glass and Davis Mountain Ranges. When not in adjoining classrooms, these women are coaching track and field, sponsoring History Club and supporting students involved in Future Farmers of America and UIL academic contests, among other activities. While the small school environment is rich with opportunities, exposure to the world beyond Brewster County – not so much. Cory and Renee leveraged their interest in female spies to craft a fellowship that researched Virginia Hall, Noor Inayat Khan and Josephine Baker throughout Europe to expand students’ mindset of what can be accomplished when ordinary people employ the courage to defy rigid societal norms in the name of humanity and justice. Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

A 2022 piece by National Public Radio cited Anne Frank as “the most famous young author of all time,” as her diary, translated into more than 65 languages, is one of the most widely read books in the world. One such reader was Nikia Garland. Now a 24-year veteran teacher at Arsenal Technical High School in Indianapolis, she was once a sixth grader at nearby Farrington Elementary Shool where she picked up the autobiography – never thinking that Anne wouldn’t survive. That surprising conclusion would inform Nikia’s future – rooted in education and social justice. Today we’re learning from Nikia Garland, a native Indianan who earned both an undergraduate and master’s degree from Indiana University and currently teaches British Literature and AP Language and Composition. She has taught a wide range of secondary and college-level classes in the U.S. and internationally. In addition to being a Fund for Teachers Fellow, Nikia is a Terry Fear Holocaust Educator in Action recipient, a Mark Schonwetter Holocaust Education Foundation grant recipient, a Lilly Endowment Teacher Creativity Fellow, and a Grosvenor Teacher Fellow. In all of her free time, she is a chair for the Indiana Teachers of Writing conference,  president-elect for the Indiana affiliate of the National Council of Teachers of English – and mother of two sons. When seeking resources to support her Holocaust unit, Nikia realized that Indiana had a Holocaust Museum, founded by Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor. She ALSO found Fund for Teachers through a Google search and, last summer, used a $5,000 grant to document historical sites in Germany and Poland related to the novels The Book Thief and My Forgiveness, My Justice to expand student comprehension of significant events in world history and inspire them as social justice advocates and global citizens. We caught up with Nikia two days before International Holocaust Remembrance Day (also commemorated in Indiana as Eva Kor Education Day), to hear about the learning she experienced and why feels it was vital for her students… After listening, read Nikia's article “A visit to Auschwitz changed how I teach about the Holocaust" published by Chalkbeat Indiana on Friday, January 26th.  Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

Spotify annually sends out its wrap up of your listening habits for the year and Fund for Teachers received a similar one for our podcast. The most downloaded podcast of our year was with today's guest. Stephanie Ascherl is our chief of staff and has been a program officer, as well. Because that episode was SO popular, we're bringing Stephanie back for another edition of "Tips you need to know when completing your grant application." We wanted to produce this podcast at this time as teachers are winding up their chaotic end-of-semester programs and concerts and grading -- going into the winter holiday when they might have some time, after they catch their breath, to revisit their grant proposals and focus a little on themselves, what they want to learn and how they want to help their students. The deadline for submission is January 18, at 5p CT. Access the online application at fft.fundforteachers.org, as well as our Online Learning Center and the recording of a national webinar (with ASL interpreter) for more information. The 2024 FFT Fellow cohort will be announced on April 4, 2024. Good luck! Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

Lhisa Almashy has amassed many accomplishments in her 28-year career teaching English as a Second Language (or ESOL): a master’s degree in education from the University of San Francisco; a doctorate in Leadership and Learning In Organizations from Vanderbilt; award member from and board member of Learning for Justice, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education for the State of Florida and Hispanic Teacher of the Year Award for Palm Beach County among them.  But an accomplishment one won’t find on Lhisa’s LinkedIn is the fact that she’s the reason Andover High School in Bloomfield Hills, MI, instituted In School Suspension.  What changed Lhisa’s trajectory from not being permitted to graduate high school due to a 1.2 GPA to talking with me from her Fund for Teachers fellowship in Vietnam this summer? A teacher of course… Today we’re learning from Dr. Lhisa Almashy – veteran teacher at Dr. Joaquin Garcia High School in Lake Worth, FL. Her passionate and engaging teaching style has earned her local, state, and national recognition. She believes that building relationships is key to fostering success and a sense of belonging. After not receiving a Fund for Teachers grant on her first try, Lhisa became a 2023 FFT Fellow and used a $5,000 grant to complete homestays throughout Vietnam to improve linguistic awareness and cultural competency and, subsequently, support her increasing number of English Language Learners from this country. I caught up with Lhisa while on her fellowship last summer, and – frankly – it took me this long to synthesize our 90-minute conversation, filled with laughter and tales of poignant encounters, to create this episode. But throughout the editing process, I was reminded of the intrepid nature Fellows share and the vital role Fund for Teachers grants play in keeping them curious, inspired and in the classroom.  Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

When preparing to interview Fellows for this podcast, I’ll do a little research to provide listeners with some context. Usually, that Google search yields LinkedIn accounts, local media coverage, and sometimes statistics from high school glory days. With today’s guest, I ended up on IMDB -- an online database of information related to films, television series, and streaming content online. My curiosity was piqued. Today we’re learning from Gabe Staino – who has taught for 12 years, both internationally and in the States. But before that, he was childhood friends with Chris Raab,  also known as Raab Himself -- a member of CKY crew featured in the MTV series Viva La Bam and Jackass.  Gabe and Chris roomed together and graduated from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania. Afterwards, lure of Hollywood trumped law school for Gabe, who instead experienced the MTV life with his buddy, toured Europe with the CKY band, and then, with Raab, co-wrote, co-produced and starred in the film Borrowed Happiness (thus the IMDB page).  Soon after, Gabe took the advice of a college advisor and turned to teaching, for the past decade that's been at Atlantic County Institute of Technology  in Mays Landing, NJ – where he  teaches US History, an African American History elective, coaches the mock trial team he founded a decade ago, and is a member of the Global Leadership Professional Learning Community. In addition to film credits, Gabe also earned two graduate degrees – one in Secondary Education for History/Social Studies from Stockton University and a Masters in History with a Global Concentration from Arizona State.  I thoroughly enjoyed catching up with Gabe from Tanzania after just leaving Ethiopia where he researched Ethiopia's ancient and modern history and culture to more effectively teach about this only African nation never successfully colonized by a European power… Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org. Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress