Hoover schools foundation starts SeedLAB grant program for innovative ideas

The Hoover City Schools Foundation has launched a new grant program for teachers and administrators in Hoover City Schools to encourage innovative teaching methods.

But the foundation isn’t looking for teachers who already know exactly what they want. The new grant program, called SeedLAB, is designed more to help groups of educators find innovative solutions to challenges for which they don’t have answers, said Janet Turner, executive director of the foundation.

For example, Turner said she recently talked to someone about challenges helping special needs students transition from high school to life afterward. So, perhaps a SeedLAB grant could help teachers and/or administrators brainstorm to find solutions to that.

The foundation will pay for groups of teachers to attend a two-day design-thinking workshop on July 18-19 and then give the teachers time during the school year to work on and develop their idea, Turner said. The foundation will pay for substitutes for the selected groups of teachers on at least two days during the school year to free them up for collaborative work focused on their idea and give them up to $3,000 to develop and implement the idea, she said.

Applications for the SeedLAB grants are due by Friday, June 30. By July 7, the foundation will pick up to 12 teams of educators to participate in “shark tank”-style pitches on Aug. 31, Turner said.

The SeedLAB advisory board and selection committee will pick up to five teams to receive the $3,000 grants and notify them by Sept. 7, she said.

Between September and May, the teams will have monthly workshop opportunities at businesses and the school system’s central office, working their way to a final showcase and presentation in May 2018, Turner said.

The foundation has budgeted up to $41,000 for this year’s SeedLAB program, she said. Some of the money was left over from the foundation’s regular spring grant program for teachers, and other money came from donations, she said. The foundation is applying for grants to help make up the difference, she said.

The SeedLAB program is based on a similar program in the Richland County School District 2 outside Columbia, South Carolina, Turner said. Two leaders of the Hoover school system’s technology department, Bryan Phillips and Kelli Lane, learned about the program at a Google conference and thought it would be good to implement in Hoover, she said.

The Richland County School District 2’s program, called R2 Innovates!, has been going for a few years and had good success, Turner said.

One outgrowth of Richland’s innovation incubator was a Latino student achievement program called Si Se Puede (Yes, We Can). Teachers wanted to find ways to boost faltering achievement among Latino students and developed a Spanish class that taught teachers elements of Spanish culture, according to the R2 Innovates! website.

They also worked with Latino parents to find out what they wanted their children to accomplish and worked with office staff members to implement a welcome wagon program to more effectively connect Latino families with schools and their programs.

As a result, more Latino families are signing up their children for district magnet programs, according to a video on the website.

Another R2 Innovates! program taught students how to become entrepreneurs by bringing in mentors from the community to work with them on projects. Teachers reported the best part of the innovation program was the gift of time to collaborate and brainstorm, away from the everyday demands of the classroom.

Turner said teams of educators applying for the Hoover foundation’s SeedLAB grants don’t all have to come from the same grade level or even be in the same school. Applications first started being accepted on June 9, and so far two have been submitted, she said.

For more information, contact Turner at 251-591-6806 or jturner@hoovercsf.org.