Winning a grant!

 No risk no reward!  This is something I tell my photography students all the time.  How can they expect to get that wonderful, once in a lifetime moment captured if they don't go out and take that risk?  

So this past summer, as I was cleaning up my emails after the school year had ended, I came upon one that mentioned applying for a grant.  My initial thought was - "Why not try it, I got time to kill."  The task was simple enough, explain why your program or class would benefit from extra money.  As the chair of Topeka High's Art department, it was not a hard task to talk about how our students would benefit from access to more funds.  A few passionate paragraphs later I was done and sent it off, and that was my last thought on the matter for the rest of the summer!

Fast forward to October and I am getting a call from the Mr. Dick's secretary informing me that I needed to be down on the first floor in 15 minutes.  Granted this is also the day that parent teacher conferences are starting, so I am scrambling trying to clean up my classroom after the end of the day, get ready for conferences, and going, man...what is going on?

Once I made it downstairs, I quickly found out that the grant I had applied for and forgotten about, I was a recipient of!  California Casualty had decided to award Topeka High one of four grant that were available through their Music and Arts grants.  Of course I am ecstatic about it all, art students always need new supplies, new paint, new brushes, pencils, etc...It's a program that requires you to invest in if you want quality.  But also it just goes to show our students, you miss out on all the opportunities you never take, and I don't want them just to believe they can do it, but believe that can succeed at whatever they put their mind to.