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Invest in Teachers Award: Application tips

This page provides helpful strategies for applying for the Invest in Teachers Award, a program to provide funding for online professional development for North Carolina public schools.

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The LEARN NC Invest in Teachers Award provides grants ranging from $2,500 to $50,000 to North Carolina public schools for online professional development. For specific instructions on how to apply, please see the Invest in Teachers Award page.

Never written an award proposal before? Here is some advice on what the Invest in Teachers selection committee will be looking for when they make award decisions.

Planning

The most important step of the process begins before you fill out the application. The professional development plan that each applicant submits will be a major factor in deciding whether make an award. Take the time to put together a specific plan that will help meet the need areas in your school or LEA. When putting together your plan and application, make sure to consider the following factors.

Be specific

Applications that go into the detail about how many teachers will take courses, which courses they will take, and the reasons behind taking the courses are more likely to be accepted.

Don’t:

  • “This award will help improve teaching at our school.”

How? Tell us exactly how the award will improve teaching. If your plan doesn’t go into specific detail, it will probably get rejected.

Do:

  • “To better serve ESL students in our district, we want to have five teachers take ‘A Crash Course in ESL.’” Or,
  • “Many of our teachers are new to online courses. With this award, we will first have ten teachers take “Introduction to Online Learning” to acclimate them to the online classroom.” Or,
  • “We want to send all of our elementary teachers through “Scientific Inquiry for Elementary Teachers” to try to help some of our struggling students.

These examples tell the selection committee exactly how award funds will be used. Make sure you’ve thoroughly planned out what you’ll do with the award before applying, then tell us about it.

Show your work

How did you decide on your requested award amount? How did you decide which teachers would take these professional development courses? How did you decide which courses you want your teachers to take? Some schools use surveys, while others research which teachers are up for license renewal. There are many ways to conduct a needs assessment, meaning you’ve got lots of opportunities to show the selection committee that awarded funds will be put to good use.

Spread the word

If you win an Invest in Teachers Award, how do you plan to find teachers who are interested in taking LEARN NC online courses? Having a strong communication plan is essential to successfully applying for and implementing an Invest in Teachers Award.

The selection committee will want to know how you’ll get teachers to enroll in courses. Getting the word out through staff meetings, system-wide emails, and newsletter updates are just a few means to recruiting participants for the Invest in Teachers Award. What are your ideas?

Case Study #1: Granville County

In Granville County, Coordinator Angela Cogdill sat down with the instructional facilitator to write the application together.

Needs assessment and promotion played vital parts in their process. Cogdill researched which teachers’ licenses were up for renewal and sent them information for pertinent LEARN NC courses. Further, they did a needs assessment for Title II requirements, listing several key topics. As a district they discussed which content areas needed professional development.

To further increase interest, Granville County Schools got an announcement about the Invest in Teachers Award in the local newspaper, as well as their internal newsletter. They circulated news items from LEARN NC to principals, professional development coordinators, and staff. They also discussed the award at each leadership team meeting so teachers could think about how best to take advantage of the professional development. Cogdill also reminded teachers that they would fill Invest in Teachers professional development slots on a first-come, first-served basis, motivating teachers to enroll early.

Granville County is putting LEARN NC courses to use in a variety of ways, including virtual field trips. For example, for the holidays they took virtual field trips to learn how other countries celebrate Christmas. They made passports, ate snacks from around the world, and learned words from other languages.

Case Study #2: Johnston County

Johnston County saw the Invest in Teachers award as a way to shore up weaknesses while saving lots of money. They determined that online teaching was a need area—Johnston County Schools had just installed a Moodle platform, but teachers were still learning how to take full advantage of its possibilities. They applied for funds to put teachers through courses in the Carolina OnLine Teacher Program.

When Johnston County won an Invest in Teachers Award, Coordinator Diana Freeman first contacted teachers who had already taken LEARN NC online professional development courses. She offered them spots in courses funded by Invest in Teachers as a reward for taking initiative in their own professional development. The one condition was that they had to take two courses per semester.

Now that Johnston teachers are completing COLT courses, Freeman reports that they have put their coursework to use by overhauling the online courses they were teaching. They are now able to offer a much greater variety of online courses for both students and teachers.