Grant Application
Deadline: January 19, 2023 at 5:00PM Central

Part Two: Proposal

Consists of five sections and should articulate creative, thoughtful activities or projects that demonstrate potential for learning for the teacher, the student, and the school community.

• Create and save your proposal using a word processor, avoiding any formatting.
• 25,000 characters, including spaces, (approx. six and half, single spaced, typed pages) cumulative for all five sections.
• Avoid identifying references: Please refrain from using your name, your school or district names within your proposal to ensure a blind selection process.
• Avoid using hyperlinks and web addresses.
• Refer to the Scoring Criteria when addressing each of the five proposal sections.
• TEAMS:
  • Proposals should reflect collaboration and demonstrate your ability to work successfully as a team. Team members should be active participants in the writing process. They should also understand that they are financially responsible for their portion of the grant if awarded.
  • Only the team lead is responsible for entering the proposal.

Sections:

A response to each application question is required. However, applicants should not feel limited by these questions and should provide selection committee readers with any information they feel is helpful in articulating their fellowship goals. Additionally, we strongly encourage you to review the Scoring Criteria (found under Quick Links) to understand what criteria selection committee members are looking for in a highly scored proposal.

• Fellowship Purpose: What is your genuine problem of practice? Why is it important to address that problem of practice?
  • Describe what you know about your students, their backgrounds, assets, and learning challenges.
  • Describe the gaps that exist in your own practice, curriculum, or school culture.
  • Articulate your learning goals in a way that connects them to the opportunities and gaps identified.
• Fellowship Learning Plan: What is your plan to address your problem of practice?
  • Outline the details of your summer learning experience.
  • Describe how you plan to implement change in your classroom/school (e.g. revised units, changes in pedagogy)
  • Lay out how the proposed activities relate to your learning goals and the needs of your students.
  • Describe how you will collaborate with others to support your learning (e.g., experts in the field, your students, other teachers).
• Teacher Growth and Learning: What key actions will you take to make sure that you can maximize your fellowship learning and implementation in the classroom?
  • Describe how this fellowship represents risk taking for you.
  • Name strategies you will use to ensure you are prepared to learn, meet your fellowship goals, and solve your problem of practice.
  • Explain how the school or your classroom conditions make it possible for you to innovate.
• Student Growth and Learning: How will students benefit from your proposed fellowship, both in their content knowledge AND in the way they learn?
  • Describe the impacts you expect your fellowship to have on students (e.g. new content knowledge, changes to the way students learn)
  • Describe possible impacts you expect your fellowship to have on your community (e.g. other students, teachers, stakeholders)
  • Describe any opportunities for students to take leadership and be changemakers as a result of your fellowship
• Budget Narrative: Provide a brief narrative showing evidence of thoughtful planning and research supporting your specific itinerary.
  • The narrative should explain your rationale for the project's expenses.
  • Stipulate a time frame and approximate costs as closely as possible. 
  • Team budgets should include both costs broken down by individual and totals for the whole team.

Refer to Part Three: Itemized Budget Sheet for more detail regarding allowable expenses.