6 teachers receive grants to purchase fun learning tools for students

On Tuesday, some of the teachers in Collier County are getting a helping hand in helping your kids learn.

Collier County is giving 6 teachers $2,000 in grant money to help fund tools they need to bring new and exciting ways to teach in the classroom.

Teachers can always use more money, and at Poinciana Elementary that money will help one teacher be able to afford a weather station for her students to use.

She is just one of the 6 Collier County school teachers that have been awarded a grant of $2,000 thanks to the Sapakie foundation.

Tuesday they will be handing out the grants to the teachers around the county.

The teachers have been handpicked by the organization based on projects that reflect science, technology, engineering arts and mathematics — or STEM.

The Sapakie Foundation says it is important because teachers are sometimes left to dip into their own pockets to be able to afford the proper technology to teach students.

“It’s so hard for teachers and schools in general to just try to include the whole school and the kids in a concept and be able to fund it and come up with ways to fund it. The fact that they would help us get this for not only the classroom and what they work so hard for and the whole community and this school– it’s beyond words,” said Sherry Ashley, teacher at Poinciana Elementary.

This is the second year the Sapakie Foundation has donated this money to classrooms. Last year recipients use money to buy items like 3-D printers and virtual reality goggles.

They hope efforts like this will get more people to support teachers in the future.