The Vigo County Education Foundation on Thursday received $4,000 from a fundraiser conducted by Terre Haute McDonald's restaurants.
In September, all five Terre Haute McDonald’s restaurants hosted a city-wide fundraiser for VCEF. A percentage of purchases in the restaurant and on the McDonald’s app were calculated for the donation to support the Education Foundation’s mission of enriching education of Vigo County School Corp. students. The funds will be used to help teachers infuse their classrooms with creativity, innovation and hands-on learning opportunities, through classroom and school wide grants and district wide programs. All of these local McDonald’s are owned by Nick and Jami Kasprzyk, who are continuing supporters of local schools and teachers. “The Vigo County Education Foundation is immensely grateful to the Kasprzyks and their McDonald’s patrons for their generosity and kindness," said Jane Nichols, executive director of the Education Foundation. "This gift is truly an investment — an investment in our community’s most valuable resource, the education of our children." Sue Loughlin can be reached at 812-231-4235 or at [email protected]. Follow Sue on X at @TribStarSue. Tribune Star/Joseph C. Garza Sugar Creek Consolidated Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Kathryn Rademacher-Smith’s classroom is the rare one that boasts a kitchen with a fridge and oven adjacent to the desks, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that on this Friday its air is aromatic with the scent of cinnamon.
Students have baked themselves apple turnovers and created butter by shaking buttermilk in little jars. It’s all for a little snack they’ll enjoy later in the afternoon. Welcome to Colonial Day, which has become an annual Consolidated tradition allowing students to set aside their textbooks for a day and make not just pastries but candles, ink, Native American rattles and write with old-fashioned quill pens. The event comes courtesy of a $750 grant from the Vigo County Education Foundation. Foundation Executive Director Jane Nichols explained, “We raise funds to empower teachers to bring more creative, hands-on learning to their classrooms. These are the things kids remember. This is what’s important — the experiences, the extra things. Are they going to remember the tests they take? No. But they’re going to remember making butter.” Principal Suzanne Marrs agreed. “It’s just a way to connect with the past and really bring the history of Thanksgiving to life for our kids,” she said. “They’re really starting to learn what life was like at that time. It gives them real-world experience. “Any time in education when you can actually use your hands and have real-life experiences helps you to connect to what you’re really learning,” she added, noting that the turnover aroma was wafting up to the classroom above them, no doubt making students there pretty jealous. “They’re getting an authentic experience that they wouldn’t have gotten otherwise.” In Kelsie Rhoads’ classroom, students are making candles, as well as ink from blueberries. Pupils melted wax in slow cookers and added essential oils like eucalyptus and lemon. They dipped a wick into the melted wax and then doused them in water repeatedly, then hung their creations to dry. “When they get home, they can light it like a real candle,” she said. Sarah Pigg and her husband Daniel, owners of Sycamore Winery, are in Rhoads’ classroom helping the students there — including their son Elliot — create the candles. If winemaking and candle dipping were to appear in a Venn diagram, their circles would overlap at no point whatsoever. “I just learned how to make candles this morning,” Sarah said, adding wryly, “I consider myself definitely an expert after about an hour. We didn’t know what we were doing, but it’s fun just to help.” Upstairs in Jennifer Price’s classroom, students created Native American rattles — at a powwow earlier in the day, they learned what the rattles were used for, and now they were making them themselves. Price said Colonial Day is quite the departure from an average day in the classroom. “Typically, we’re learning our math or reading at our seats, not a whole lot of movement,” she said. “And this is learning the typical day in the life of someone from Colonial times, so they get to move around and get to do a lot of hands-on [work] which is really important for learning. Having fun in a different classroom environment — they physically get to make apple [turnovers] and butter.” Fifth grader Connor Trout proudly showed off his rattle, a stick wrapped in yarn and accented with beads. He called Colonial Day “mostly excitement and fun” and said he learned about “the games they played, like marble rolling. They wrote with a feather, which was really cool.” Almost as cool as doing the exact same thing 400 to 500 years later. David Kronke can be reached at 812-231-4232 or at [email protected]. The Leadership Giving Award was presented to Indiana State University President Mike Godard on behalf of the university Friday during the Vigo County Education Foundation Business and Bagels event. Shown here are Jennifer Kirsch, Alex Allen-Hodge, Godard, Chris Himsel and Jane Nichols. The Vigo County Education Foundation awarded $40,061 in school-wide grants to 17 schools Friday during its semiannual Business and Bagels event. Sponsored by Labor Link, the event celebrated educational excellence and highlighted VCEF’s commitment to enriching educational opportunities for Vigo County students The grants will fund a range of initiatives, including author visits, theater productions, literacy programs, enriching field trips, and academic and attendance incentives. Each program is designed to enhance learning experiences and foster a love of education among students across the district, according to a VCEF news release. During the event, the Leadership Giving Award was presented to Indiana State University President Mike Godard on behalf of the university. Godard spoke about the meaningful collaborations between ISU, the Vigo County School Corp. and the foundation. “ISU’s unwavering commitment to the growth and development of our educational community is a shining example of what it means to be a true leader in giving and service,” said Alex Allen-Hodge, VCEF board president. Several notable projects received special recognition during the event:
“This incredible milestone reflects the generosity of our community’s businesses and individuals and their shared belief in providing the best educational opportunities for our students,” said Jane Templeton Nichols, VCEF executive director. “The VCEF is grateful and proud of this support.” The Vigo County Education Foundation (VCEF) received a transformative gift from the Gibson Family Foundation for new technology at the Allen Memorial Planetarium. This new, state-of-the-art technology will not only allow the Vigo County School Corporation (VCSC) to enrich STEM education for students, but it will benefit the entire community.
The VCEF exists to help the Vigo County School Corporation bridge the gaps in funding to provide enriching, experiential programs and projects for its students. The VCEF works to build partnerships between businesses and individuals and our schools. This is an excellent example of a family stepping up, in a most significant way, to provide exceptional, innovative educational programming. More succinctly, the planetarium would not be operational anymore, and our students would be deprived of this educational enrichment opportunity without their support. The Board of Directors of the Vigo County Education Foundation made a formal proposal to the Board of Directors of the VCSC to request that the Allen Memorial Planetarium be renamed the "Gibson Allen Memorial Planetarium," due not only to the Gibson family's rescue of this incredible community resource, but in honor of the late Max Gibson, who was a strong proponent of the value of a quality public education for every child, and his belief that providing an enriching education is the key to success. The VCEF also received a gift from Judy Brett and the late William Brett, and grants from the Wabash Valley Community Foundation and Duke Energy Foundation for the planetarium project. The Allen Memorial Planetarium first opened its doors in1974, and with the grand opening came the unveiling of the star ball. This new-at-the-time technology was officially named the Spitz Laboratories, Inc. Model A4 Planetarium Instrument, but was conversationally known as “Stella.” Its abilities included showing the star field, the Milky Way, several Messier objects, 2 constellation outlines, the Sun, the Moon, several planets, and the motion of these celestial bodies both in daily rotation and in annual movement. |
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December 2024
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