2023 Impact Grant Recipient Spotlight: Cornn & Casteel
The Cherokee County Educational Foundation was pleased to award 29 teachers in the Cherokee County School District with Classroom Impact Grants, which ended up totaling over $66,000 for the 2022-2023 school year!
Judges this year included Brian Albrecht of Credit Union of Georgia, Whitney Spears of Kennesaw State University, Lori Burton, Cherokee County Council President of PTA, Jenny Spain, retired CCSD School Teacher, and Jason Dickerson of the Jason T. Dickerson Family Foundation. The number of grants awarded each year depends on fundraising efforts at the Annual Celebration of Education Gala.
LEGO Robots – RM Moore Elementary School
Having taught as a STEM teacher for the last ten years, CCSD teacher David Cornn has learned what gets students most excited about learning to code – LEGO Robots. Students are able to put their knowledge of whole numbers, fractions, decimals, and more to the test, coding robotic movements and functions. RM Moore Elementary students are no strangers when it comes to robotics, their STEM Academy FLL team were named the 2022 Cherokee County Champions and the 2023 Cherokee County Core Values Champions. The RM Moore Robotics Team was also the only team in Cherokee County to advance to the Super Regional Tournament in for the 2022-2023 school year.
With his Classroom Impact Grant, Mr. Cornn will be able to upgrade the nearly decade-old LEGO Robotics equipment and hardware to continue impacting students at RM Moore. When talking about the impacts these LEGO Robotics Kits will have on students, Mr. Cornn says that the "kits take that learning a step further by encouraging students to use lines of code embedded with numeric variables including fractions, decimals, and degrees to facilitate movement in their creations."
CCEF is amazed by the work that RM Moore students are doing with coding and robotics, and we can't wait to see how the new LEGO Robotics Kits make an impact on them going forward!
HVAC Career Training – Etowah High School
At Etowah High School, construction teacher Ty Casteel is continuing to bring real-life career experience to students inside the classroom. Mr. Casteel cites that the state of Georgia is the top 9th state for career growth for HVAC technicians. This inspired him to begin preparing his students for a growing workforce, all right inside the classroom.
An HVAC unit has already been donated for the school's department to use for instruction, and Mr. Casteel's goal is to develop a training protocol for his students to learn and understand the proper approach to maintenance and repairs on HVAC units.
With his Classroom Impact Grant, 2nd & 3rd level construction students will be able to utilize newly purchased toolkits and other required parts to learn how to perform maintenance and repair the unit. To keep up with their progress, check out Etowah's social media pages for the latest updates, and the soon-to-come Etowah Construction website!
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