The deadline for applications and donations to the Kernersville Chamber of Commerce’s teacher grant program is Saturday. For more than two decades, these grants have funded special projects, up to $1,000, in the local public school system.

“The teacher grants are an opportunity to support the folks that are training our future leaders,” Chamber President Chris Comer told Scope News. “We all know there are specific things that kids have to be taught in schools, but these additional teaching opportunities can spark an interest, a love that we may never be able to to put into words for a child.”

Your opinion counts — Vote today in our Local Favorites 2025 survey!

Teachers interested in applying for the grant fill out a brief application explaining what they want to purchase, its purpose, the budget, how it will benefit their classroom, and whether it’s been done before. 

Catherine Gant, a third grade teacher at Piney Grove Elementary, has received the grant three times. 

“It is actually one of the easier grants that I have ever gotten,” she told Scope News. “It’s really easy to take care of and get the money situated and the receipts and everything turned in.”

Gant’s first two grants came in 2016 and 2018 for the then maximum amount of $500. She used the money to add nonfiction texts to her classroom library. Then in 2022, when the maximum amount increased to $1,000, she implemented a program she’d seen work successfully in other classrooms at the school. 

“I wanted to set up different bins so the kids could work on different activities when they were coming in instead of doing morning work,” said Gant. 

Examples include STEM-themed bins with blocks and puzzles, how-to-draw books, and “roll-a-story” where students roll a die that tells them story elements like a setting or a character and they write based around what they rolled. 

“It’s things I could have the kids do in the morning that engaged them, but it was also working on creativity,” Gant said. “It was working on enrichment activities and higher order thinking, but also for some of my multilingual students it was helping to work on language skills, like just speaking and communicating or some of my other students who needed to work on social skills. That gives them something if they’re having a rough morning, they come in and it kind of helps turn the day around, opposed to coming in and seeing work that’s on your desk.”

The bulk of the funding for teacher grants comes from the chamber’s Eating for Education initiative, along with business and private donations. Last year, the program raised $20,000. 

Since its inception in 2003, 613 grants have been awarded for a total of nearly $322,000. 

A few examples that have stood out to Comer involved sensory tables, ukuleles, a natural outdoor classroom, and Bring a Poet to Life Day, which allowed kids to read and act out poems.

If application budgets are higher than the amount raised for the grants, some teachers are denied. Comer identified what criteria carry the most weight in the decision-making process.

“A couple of the big ones are the sustainability of the teaching, how many students is it going to reach, and the creativity of the project,” she said.

Anyone interested in donating to the grant program may do so by calling the Chamber of Commerce at 336-993-4521. Teachers can find more information about the application process here. 

Send news tips, letters to the editor, or hot takes to editor@scopenewsonline.com! 

Copyright 2025 Informed Media Group LLC. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without express written consent.