To the Birdville Foundation Board of Directors,

          I am a kindergarten teacher at the Academy at Carrie F. Thomas. Recently I was awarded a grant by your wonderful foundation. I wanted to tell you how much I appreciate this and thank you on behalf of all of the teachers and students it will have such a positive impact on.
          I would like to tell you a little bit about how the money will be used. I was visiting with several of my colleagues this summer. We were discussing the upcoming school year. We were lamenting the fact that language arts is so important in kindergarten that there is not enough time to prepare or implement meaningful activities for math and science. Since we wanted math and science to be truly hands-on as it should be to keep our young students engaged and learning, we knew we would have to do something about the time element involved in preparing top-notch lessons.
          I suggested we try teaming up and splitting up our core subjects. One of us would teach language arts, one math, and one science. We would be responsible for only one subject so we could concentrate our time and effort on creating lessons which would be truly meaningful for our students. These core subjects would be taught in the morning, and the afternoon would be spent further enriching our own students’ literacy skills. This is quite an innovative approach as it is rare for kindergartens to departmentalize in this way. However, we had been very successful the year before using this technique to present the arts to our students.
          Since I was teaching the science part, I knew I would need a lot of hands-on materials. I was able to use some school money designated for science, and thanks to your generous grant I will soon have a fully equipped science program in place for all of our students. Our program has been a tremendous success. Our students are so much more advanced in thinking skills, problem solving, and using good science practices. And they are still making really good progress in the development of their literacy skills. Since we all spend much more time with others than our regular class, a really wonderful side benefit of this approach is how we have become a much closer and more supportive school community.
          Again thank you so much for all you have done for us. I hope you realize what a tremendous difference you are making in students’ lives and learning. It is so wonderful to teach in such a supportive community where we all work together for the success of our students.

Thank you,
Diana Hillhouse
Lead Kindergarten Teacher
ACFT