3 Franklin teachers to receive grants

From staff reports

Three Franklin Area School District teachers will receive grants to enhance their classrooms.

The grants were announced at the district’s school board meeting on Monday, according to Diana Fesenmyer, president of the Pennsylvania Association of School Retirees Venango County (PASR).

Three grants of $250 each will be presented to Maggie Woods, Eva Hollidge, and Amanda Heller.

Woods teaches kindergarten and first-grade learning support at Central Elementary School. She will use the grant to stock up on sensory items, “to better support the sensory and emotional needs of her students,” according to Fesenmyer.

Lost instruction time in the classroom due to behaviors not meeting expectations, Woods said in her application, is what she’s hoping to reduce. She’ll obtain kinetic sand, squeeze stress balls, sensory foam and tube, and other sensory-related tools, and will use them to facilitate classroom discussion and modeling of positive behaviors.

Hollidge, a fifth- and sixth-grade learning support teacher at Sandycreek Elementary School, will use her grant to develop a sensory area for students to transition, self-regulate and take sensory breaks.

The goal, Hollidge said in her application, will be to improve attention and focus and, like Woods, reduce behaviors that take away from learning time. Among items she will buy include weighted blankets, color mixing tubes, and tactile gel pads.

Heller, who teaches seventh through 12th-grade life skills, will use her grant to update her sensory room. She wants to provide an “immersive sensory experience” to help students process what they see and hear in class.

She also sees the room benefiting students’ fine and gross motor skills, self-regulation, and focus. The room helps students with issues like physical disabilities, learning delays, behavioral and developmental delays — among other things — and learn to independently self-regulate, and process in a calm environment.