Morrisville Rotary Club Receives Grant for Schools

Morrisville, NC — A 2014 District Grant has been awarded to the Morrisville Rotary Club to help students and teachers at Morrisville and Cedar Fork Elementary Schools.

Service Above Self

The grant provides school supplies to the schools’ teachers and helps to improve the reading and writing of their fifth grade students. To accomplish this, fifth graders from Morrisville and Cedar Fork schools will participate in a photography contest where they take a picture that demonstrates “service above self.” They will then write a paragraph on the meaning of their picture, titled “A Picture Says a Thousand Words.”

To accomplish this project, each school has received ten Nikon L30 digital cameras complete with 4GB memory cards and cases.

Principal Che-Von Stone (center) receives the cameras for Cedar Fork Elementary School alongside Rotary Club Grant Coordinator Ed Shearin (left) and Rotary Club President Srini Kolarthur (right).

Project Leaders

Several teachers from each school were elected to coordinate all Rotary grant activities and to be official contacts for the grant.

Principal Stone recommended Ms. Marisa Cashin, NBCT, M.A.Ed. as Cedar Fork’s contact for the Rotary grant. Ms. Cashin, a fifth grade ELA and Social Studies teacher, will supervise all grant activities at the school and submit a monthly report on implementation to Ed Shearin, the Grant Coordinator.

Principal Robin Swaim of Morrisville Elementary recommended fifth grade teacher Kristin McCain NBCT, M.Ed. as her school’s contact for the grant.

Morrisville Elementary faculty members. shown here with Rotary Club officials, are excited to watch their students complete their projects.

Implementation

Morrisville Elementary has six fifth grade classrooms, and Cedar Fork has five. That’s a lot of fifth graders! Each of the 11 classrooms will hold a contest to select the best picture and story by voting with pennies.

Each school will then display the winning projects in their library, where the students can again place their “penny votes” to nominate their favorite of the selections. The winning three projects will represent their school in the final selection. The Rotary Club of Morrisville Grant Committee and professional photographer Marlana Semenza will select the best projects from these.

Supplies for Schools

The winning students (and their teachers) will receive debit cards to purchase school supplies, and each coordinating teacher and technology teacher at the schools will receive an additional card for their help with the grant project.

Ed Shearin, Rotary Grant Coordinator, conducted a workshop at Cedar Fork to teach students how to take photographs using the digital cameras. “[The students] are excited about the project and want to start immediately,” he notes.

Ed Shearin poses with Ms. Cashin (Cedar Fork grant coordinating teacher) and Ms. Shrode (Cedar Fork’s technology teacher) at the workshop.

Students and teachers from both schools are currently in the midst of completing their projects. The project’s completion is estimated for mid-December.

The Morrisville Rotary Club is a nonprofit organization of business and professional people. They meet weekly to interact with community and business leaders and to plan and organize service projects with local, regional, and international organizations.

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Story by Jessica Patrick. Photos from the Morrisville Rotary Club.