Rutherford Electric Membership Corporation has made 20 grants totaling $17,101 to area teachers for special projects that will enhance learning in their classrooms. One of those grants was awarded to Linda Sutton, a teacher at Polk County High School’s Early College.
Sutton received $800 for her “Observing Living Things” project.
The Bright Ideas grant program, sponsored by North Carolina’s electric cooperatives, strives to improve education in North Carolina classrooms by awarding grants to teachers for innovative, classroom-based projects in grades K-12 that would otherwise not be funded. The annual Bright Ideas awards fund creative teaching ideas to meet the needs of area students.
Since it began in 1994, the Bright Ideas program has awarded more than $7.3 million in grant money to the state’s teachers to sponsor more than 7,000 projects reaching more than 1.3 million students.
“The Bright Ideas program gives teachers a chance to be creative and develop projects specifically to meet the needs of their students,” said Dirk Burleson, Rutherford EMC’s vice president of member and corporate services. “The grants underwrite educational initiatives the schools could not otherwise afford.”
The funds go to public school teachers serving grades K-12, with awards of up to $1,200 being offered for projects in any discipline.
Rutherford EMC, headquartered in Forest City, N.C., is a rural electric cooperative that provides electricity to more than 67,000 member-owners in a 10-county area of the southwestern Piedmont, including Polk County.
– article submitted by Denise P. Gavin