Blue Valley Education Foundation “Prize Patrol” visits BVNW to deliver grants to teachers
A group of people part of the Blue Valley Education Fund awarded grants to teachers at BVNW.
November 8, 2016
A camera flashes. John Holt, an anchor for Fox 4 News, begins counting to four. On his cue, a group of students shout “Thank you donors!” The room bursts into applause and Kerry Kinklaar, a math and AVID teacher at BVNW, beams.
The Prize Patrol, a division of the Blue Valley Education Fund, was the reason for the excitement in room 708. They brought Kinklaar a grant of $828 for a project she proposed called “Breakout BVNW.”
Kinklaar said Breakout BVNW is an activity for both her math and AVID classes that is centered around a group of students solving clues to ‘break out’ of a box, which contains a prize for the students.
“I’m super excited,” Kinklaar said. “This gives me a chance to try something new and exciting in all of my classes.”
Jadon Wise, a freshman in Kinklaar’s fifth hour AVID 9 class, said he has gone to Breakout KC – the activity center off of which Breakout BVNW is based.
“It’s like a mystery game,” Wise said. “You go into this one room, and there are clues and you have to find those clues in order to escape in a certain time.”
Kinklaar said she hopes Breakout BVNW will be an engaging new activity for her students, regardless of if it is mathematically based or centered around team building.
“[Breakout BVNW will teach] us cooperation, teamwork and trust,” Wise said. “If you find a clue, and it’s not the right one, it wastes time.
Kinklaar was not the only one who recieved a grant. The art department received $3,189 for “Etching Press Printmaking.”
The press will be on a rolling cart so it can easily be moved around to different classrooms and stored when not in use.
Art teacher Melanie Mikel said in the application for the grant that the goal of the etching press is to “allow students to further develop technical, compositional, drawing, and problem solving skills [and] give students the opportunity to learn numerous printmaking techniques not available without a press.”
Art teacher Chris LaValley said the new etching press will allow more techniques than simple hand pressed printmaking.
“We are so excited,” Mikel said. “This is going to open up the level of printmaking that we’ll be able to do in all of the 2D classes.”
