Archive: Around Town

IPEI's Connecting Classroom Grant brings speaker and author Perry Ground to meet with the students of Ithaca elementary schools! In October, elementary schools in the Ithaca City School District will play host to Perry Ground, who will share stories of native life with the students, increasing their understanding of native cultures, and pointing out how those cultures are still with us today.

Millie Stevenson, librarian at Caroline Elementary and lead grant applicant described: "Perry is a Turtle Clan member of the Onondaga Nation of the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) Confederacy. Perry has been a storyteller and educator for over 25 years and enjoys working with students of all ages to teach about the history & culture of Native Peoples. At each school, Ground will offer both an engaging and interactive storytelling event and an in-depth, hands-on activity with fourth grade classes. Every fourth grader will have this anchor experience with the Haudenosaunee culture. At the end of the experience, students will understand and be able to articulate that Haudensaunee (Iroquois) culture lives on in our region and is not just a remnant from the past."

IPEI's Connecting Classrooms Grants are funding sources designed to support projects or programs that impact multiple classrooms, grades, and/or schools through a program which enhances education and creates common experiences for ICSD students.

This grant is being named in honor of Mary Grainger, a longtime IPEI Board member and volunteer, and a proud proponent of all things innovative in public education. Grainger will be recognized for her contributions to the community and to IPEI during Ground's visit to Fall Creek Elementary School next month.

The ICSD Librarian team previously used a Connecting Classroom grant to bring author Brian Yanish to speak with every elementary school and help kickoff recycling programs and encourage use of makerspaces, areas where students can use new and reused materials to solve open-ended problems.

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