Since 1986, the EXCEL Foundation has gifted more than $1.5 million to support teaching and learning in the Coeur d’Alene School District. I love the EXCEL Foundation. Without this group of philanthropists, the schools I work in might never reach their full potential. Below is a speech I shared with this group this weekend:

The first week of August for the past three years, the teachers and I gather at our school to write grants — the last two years at Fernan STEM Academy and this year at my new school, Northwest Expedition Academy (NExA). Sheri Bullock, a grant writer offers, suggestions, thoughts, ideas and encouragement; then we start. We brainstorm, we think, we laugh and we write. As you know in early August, a teacher’s brain is relaxed and in summer mode while she reflects on the past year and looks forward to the coming year. By the first of August, a teacher is beginning to miss her teaching family, which makes this collaborative work fun.

Fernan STEM Academy and NExA both have a learning focus that requires out-of-the box thinking and financial support to accomplish our mission — a school budget only goes so far. I am proud to say this work pays off. In the past two years at Fernan and this year at NExA, the amazingly dedicated teachers received more than 30 EXCEL grants, and this year NExA received more than $33,000 in EXCEL grants — tripling our yearly school budget.

I can honestly say, without the support of EXCEL and donors like you, Northwest Expedition Academy will not be able to accomplish our mission — to offer students a learning environment based on Project Based Learning that truly makes a positive difference in the world we live. EXCEL offers the gift of hope for the students of the Coeur d’Alene School District. These grants make learning fun, exciting, rigorous and purposeful.

Let me share with you a few of the grants we’ve received and the importance they have played in student lives.

Julie Meredith wrote a grant for an aquaponics system. Our staff debated the benefit of a greenhouse for about a year — short growing season, everything ripens in the summer, who will tend the garden in the summer? We decided to write a grant for an indoor growing system rather than a greenhouse.

We compared the growth of plants in the outdoor garden to the growth of the indoor aquaponics system. The aquaponics system grows plants four times faster than the outside garden.

One student, after eating a strawberry from the aquaponics system commented that she has never had a real strawberry before.

Shelby Randklev wrote a grant for author visits to Fernan STEM Academy. Kenn Nesbitt (poetry), Gary Hogg (writing process) and Kelly Milner Halls (nonfiction) joined the students.

For students, authors are superheroes — they have never met a real author before and think of authors as supernatural.

Shelby shares the story of why she writes this grant — “My ‘ah-ha’ moment occurred when I realized many of our students have never met an author. I often say, ‘What does the author want us to know?’ or ‘Why would the author write that way?’ Through dialogue, I learned many students struggle to comprehend who an author really is or how they became an author. This inspired me to write a grant inviting local authors into our school. Through these visits, students have had the opportunities to make these connections, developing a deeper understanding of books, gaining a new excitement for writing, discovering a desire to publish their own stories and learning to think from the author’s point of view as they read. Parents shared that students who hated to write, now have a love for writing.”

At NExA, we believe that every child deserves a rich learning environment and that poverty disappears as a child walks through our doors. We also believe that the longer we can keep a child in this rich learning environment, the longer the child feels emotionally and physically wealthy. For this reason, we have before and after school clubs. These clubs will not be possible without EXCEL support. Let me share a few of the clubs with you.

EXCEL granted $5,787.58 for a Lego Robotics Club. Students learn the fundamentals of how robots work and use coding for their operation.

A grant of $560 for a Poetry Cafe where students memorize and recite poetry, then write their own poetry to recite at a local restaurant.

A Garden Bed Building grant of $1,368 will allow students to learn about growing plants, composting, soil sampling and will work with the Egg Production club to supplement the soil for growing using the by-products of the chickens.

A $4,255 grant for Expanding Library Learning Time to allow the library to be available for students before school, during lunch recess and after school — so students can play games, work on projects, create movies and do research using iPads.

I cannot express how important these grants are to the work we do. Watching teachers excited to write grants that enhance their teaching, watching students giggle with excitement as they create computer code which actually makes their robot do the robot dance, and having parents share with me that their reluctant learner is now excited to come to school fills my soul. The EXCEL Foundation is my superhero. Thank you EXCEL!

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Send comments or other suggestions to William Rutherford at bprutherford@hotmail.com or visit pensiveparenting.com.