RECENT AWARDS
2010 Grants:
The Academy for Social Action in Harlem, New York City
As we have in several past years, we supported programs designed by Valerie Johnson, an inspiring math and science teacher who works in New York City. Valerie formerly taught at P.S. 241 in Harlem, but this past year she moved to a new position as the Math Coach at The Academy of Social Action (www.harlemasa.org), which is also in Harlem. We funded three programs at her new school:
An architecture and building design program:
Valerie runs a club at The Academy for middle-school girls that focuses on the math and science inherent in buildings (for example, scale and proportions, precision, and angles). She also emphasizes the connections between math and science with other subjects, promotes careers that impact the built environment, and tries to get the girls to connect with the world beyond their immediate community. This year, Foundation funds purchased 3-D puzzles of the White House and the Capitol Building, 3-D home planner sets, and card-stock paper. We are also funding field trips to the Empire State Building and the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum. Finally, we are paying for pizza for lunch discussions with representatives from the Society of Women Engineers.
Materials for a robotics elective:
Foundation funds are supplying robotics-related materials for an existing robotics elective, including two sets of Recycled Robots kits; and three LEGO Mindstorms NXT kits, plus related accessories.
Promoting math and science in a girls advisory group:
Students at The Academy take part in gender-specific advisory groups. Valerie leads a group of 50 10th-grade girls, and she wants to promote math and science with that group. To help her, Foundation funds are paying for field trips to the famous "Bodies" exhibit and to the Hall of Science.
The Young Women’s Leadership School in Astoria, New York City
As you know, we have supported programs at The Young Women’s Leadership Network (www.tywls.org) for several years now, and every year we have expanded that support. This year was no exception: we gave TYWLN our largest grant yet -- $10,000 -- to fund an environmental science workshop and academic field experience for the entire 7th grade (75 students) at The Young Women’s Leadership School in Astoria, Queens. The program will be conducted with Christodora, a non-profit environmental science organization. This will be the first wilderness experience for many of these girls.
There are two components to the program:
Christodora assigns an environmental educator to team-teach with the science teacher at TYWLS classroom. The students work through a Christodora-designed lesson plan that covers the basic concepts of watersheds, bio-diversity and the human impact on the natural environment, as well as additional topics selected from a Christodora menu.
Once the girls have this foundation, they will go on a three-day overnight retreat at Christodora’s Manice Education Center in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts. It’s an 85-acre preserve of natural woodlands, where environmental educators will teach the girls in small groups. They will study diverse ecosystems (woodlands, waterfall and bog), they will gather water samples and measure weather conditions. They can choose from a menu of field lessons that include:
Forest ecology
Tree/plant identification
Edible plants
Wildlife search
Geology
Soil formation/sampling
"River Ramble"
Wetlands exploration
Sensory awareness
Organic gardening
Woodland survival
Map and compass
The goal is to inspire girls through hands-on learning, and to give them a better understanding of an ecosystem’s processes. The girls will emerge better equipped to understand the impact of environmental disasters like the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and see the relevance of environmental science to our lives.
The Foundation’s grant will enable the entire 7th grade (75 girls) to attend the program.
The Girls’ Middle School in Mountain View, California
Last year, we told you that we had found a promising new grantee: The Girls Middle School in Mountain View, California (www.girlsms.org). In 2010, we gave two grants to GMS.
"The Shaping S.T.E.M. Initiative":
This was a school-wide program to promote the girls’ engagement with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics and careers. It was based on recent research that proposed four pedagogical principles for engaging girls in STEM fields: tinkering, collaboration, focus on meaningful objectives, and giving girls role models.
Foundation funds provided:
- The building materials for cars and solar panels for a "Solar Sprint" course taught during the GMS week-long "intersession" period. Students built and raced solar-powered cars.
- The start-up costs for a F.I.R.S.T. Lego League Robotics team.
- Spatial reasoning materials, including puzzles, a set of tangrams, wind-up cars, and complex mechanical devices to disassemble (e.g. a cuckoo clock).
- For National Engineers Week, building materials for a school-wide engineering project involving kinetic sculptures, and a speaker panel.
- Field trips and science excursions for 8th graders to visit two Stanford University Nano-Science Centers, the Exploratorium in San Francisco, the Lawrence Hall of Science at UC Berkeley, and the Biomedical Engineering labs at Stanford.
Every one of the 152 girls at GMS benefited in some way from this grant. As Melissa Johns, Director of Development at GMS said, "Simply put, the support we received from the JAK Foundation was instrumental to our efforts to promote and improve the education of young women in math and science."
The Jasper Ridge environmental program:
We are also sponsoring a new 6th-grade earth science program at GMS. In this program, the GMS 6th-graders are participating in a year-long plot study at Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve. Sixteen groups of three to four girls, each led by a Stanford graduate student, will conduct a plot study within the preserve four times during the 2010-2011 academic year. The grant also included funds for a two-week stipend for one faculty member to develop the Program during this past summer.
2009 Grants:
Rippowam Middle School in Stamford, Connecticut
The Foundation continued its support for the Rippowam Middle School in Stamford, Connecticut. This year, our $1,500 grant paid for classes at "The Animal Embassy" at the Stamford Nature Center. Twelve girls, aged 11 and 12 years old, attended eight one-hour classes between January and March. They interacted with live exotic animals, and studied topics such as "Classification," "Ecosystem Dynamics," "Keystone Species," "Endangered Species" and "Amazing Adaptations." Alan Hayes, of the Rippowam School, reports that the girls "were fascinated with the effect that each animal has on the environment" and that "many of the girls want to volunteer at Animal Embassy to join the cause of protecting animals and the environment."
The Young Women’s Leadership Network in Harlem, New York City
We have renewed and expanded our support of the Young Women’s Leadership Network. We gave a grant of $6,000, which funded part or all of three separate programs at the Young Women’s School in East Harlem:
Young Science Achievers: This is a science competition that the school has competed in for the past five years. The students create projects, formulate budgets, write formal proposals, follow the projects through to completion, write a report and make a presentation at the final competition. This year the school will have six teams with a total of 16 participants from the 9th, 10th and 11th grades. The Foundation’s funds are paying for three team mentors, who will meet with the teams every Tuesday after school until the final paper is due in May. The mentors will then work with the students through May, and will help them present their final presentations at the symposium in the first week of June. The team projects are:
- Ocean acidification: how acidification affects growth and survival of marine animals
- Color perception in rats and how color affects cognitive ability
- Kudzu: methods of eradication of an invasive plant
- Beach trash: how non-biodegradable plastics impact marine animals
- Piermont marsh: a study of water chemistry in interior pools
- “Worms Ate My Lunch”: how worms can be used to degrade food waste and produce compost for community gardens
Robotics team: As we have for the past two years (see http://www.jakfoundation.org/awards.html), we are supporting an after- school robotics club that participates in a city-wide "BotBall" tournament, a competition where students build robots and compete against schools throughout the city. Approximately 10-15 girls will be in the club. Our grant paid the $2,500 team registration cost, which includes materials for the girls to build their robots.
Seeds to Trees: The Seeds to Trees program helps students and teachers connect with the natural environment that exists within city parks. It provides 6th and 7th grade students with six in-class lessons, transportation for three field experiences, as well as training and on- site support for educators to teach dynamic science lessons. Seeds to Trees includes lessons on topics relating to the natural environment and environmental stewardship, such as learning about the forest ecosystem and the effects of pollution on the health of a forest and the water supply. The Foundation contributed $1,500 toward the $4,480 cost.
2008 Grants:
Big Sister/Little Sister Math and Science Club at P.S. 241 in HarlemLast year we told you about Valerie Johnson, a math teacher at P.S. 241, a public school in central Harlem in New York City. She wanted to start a club that would provide young women with math and science tutoring, test prep training, and math- and science-related enrichment activities. Last year's Foundation grant made this a reality: Foundation funds bought balance-beam scales, microscopes and educational software, and funded a science-related field trip. The club met two days a week after school last Spring, and activities included homework help, math games, using laptops to explore the "Geometer's Sketchpad" software, and learning how to use the balances and microscopes.
This sort of club--especially with its cooperative structure--is an excellent match for the Foundation's goals. For this reason, we're happy to be supporting Valerie's club again this year.
Robotics Club at The Young Women's Leadership School in the BronxOur 2007 grant to The Young Women's Leadership School to support a robotics club on their Bronx campus was a great success. The girls did will enough in their local Bronx competition to advance to the city-wide competition, an even did well enough there to place in the top third of the contestants. We're glad to see Foundation funds going toward making math and science accessible and fun to young women. The Board has decided to continue our support of the TYWLS robotics club for another year.
New Grant to the Stamford, Connecticut Public School SystemThe Foundation plans to make a significant commitment to the Stamford, Connecticut public school system. So far, we've decided to support two programs, and we're considering others. The first program is an educational program related to climate change, which will consist of up to 15 girls taking six classes, once a week after school. Secondly, we are trying to sponsor Stamford students' participation in a three-day-long program called Women in Science, a program held during the February and April school breaks that gives students the opportunity to meet women scientists and become educated about their field of science.
2007 Grants:
Big Sister/Little Sister Math and Science Club at P.S. 241 in HarlemValerie Johnson and Jeanna Marinelli are two inspiring math teachers at P.S. 241, a public school in central Harlem in New York City. With funding from the Foundation, they've started a club that will provide young women with math and science tutoring, test prep training, and math- and science-related enrichment activities. Valerie reports that the Foundation's contribution of $2,000 in 2007 "went a long way toward promoting the interest and appreciation of math and science on the part of the young women of P.S. 241." Foundation funds bought two balance-beam scales, two microscopes, and copies of the educational software "Geometer's Sketchpad." Between 15 and 30 girls at a time participated in Valerie's "Big Sister/Little Sister Math and Science Club," which met two days a week after school last Spring. Activities included homework help, math games, using laptops to explore the Geometer's Sketchpad software, and learning how to use the balances and microscopes. Finally, the club went on a field trip to see the exhibit "Bodies" at the South Street Seaport
Robotics Club at The Young Women's Leadership School in the BronxThe Young Women's Leadership school is a grade 7 to 12, single-sex, college prep public charter school. It was opened in East Harlem in 1996, and since that time it has opened sister schools in the Bronx, Jamaica and Astoria. It's an inspiring success story in the field of education of urban girls; please take a moment to look at all the exciting things they're doing at www.tywls.org. This Foundation grant provided some of the funds necessary to establish a robotics club at the Bronx TYWLS campus. Robotics was taught by a teacher in the classroom, then nine girls from each of the 7th, 8th and 9th grades were selected, based on interest and merit, to form a robotics club and competitive team. The team met once a week during the school day and after school as well. TYWLS chose to participate in the First Lego League robotics competition. The Foundation's $2,500 grant was used to pay registration fees for two competitions, and to buy the 1,100 Lego parts, motors, sensors, gears and instructional guides needed for the teacher, coach and students. The team demonstrated a model they had made in the Bronx local competition, and did well enough to proceed to the city-wide competition on January 27th in Riverside Park. Here's how TYWLS reported the results: "Our students built a robot that reacted with movement to light and heat. At the competition, TYWLS, Bronx students placed in the top-third out of more than sixty experienced teams--not bad for their first effort!" Overall, TYWLS reported that "Your gift enabled 150 promising young science students from the 7th, 8th, and 9th grades to expand their knowledge of science outside the classroom through an exciting hands-on robotics experience."
Math Curriculum Development for The Girls' Preparatory Charter School Of New YorkGirls' Prep is an all-girls primary school on the Lower East Side. It's a charter school that started just three years ago with two grades of girls. The school sets high standards for its girls, and the administation believes the girls' test performance would be significantly improved by a new math curriculum. The teachers have been using off-the-shelf materials that are widely used, and which are good as far as they go, but what the school needed was for a math specialist to combine the best elements of those materials into a customized curriculum that serves the specific needs of the girls. Building a customized curriculum is a common practice in primary education, but many schools such as Girls' Prep don't have the resources to do it for each subject in each grade. With this grant from the Foundation, Girls' Prep was able to begin constructing a customized curriculum. In September 2008, Girls' Prep received some great news: 100% of Girls' Prep third grades scored "advanced" or "proficient" on the New York State math exam--far exceeding district and city-wide averages. As Miriam Lewis Raccah, the school's director, said, "The Jennifer A. Kay Foundation helped make this extraordinary achievement possible. Your funding allowed us to hire a Math Specialist who tailored our curriculum and helped establish a data-driven teaching program." She also said, "In trusting our dream of educational justice you have made it a reality." We're inspired by the work of Girls' Prep is doing, and are delighted by the great results they are achieving.