Participants at the 2nd annual Teacherpreneur Incubator
PEF, Benwood, Footprint Foundation and HCDE, in collaboration with CO.LAB, hosted the second annual Teacherpreneur 48-Hour Launch weekend and pitch event with 21 Hamilton County public school teacher teams pitching ideas to transform public education.
“Teacherpreneur is about so much more than funding," said Dr. Dan Challener, president of PEF. "It’s about building a community around our teachers, connecting Chattanooga’s start-up energy with innovation in our public schools and elevating the teaching profession."
The Teacherpreneur Incubator was designed to provide support, time and resources for educators to incubate big ideas and execute them in the best interests of their students, their profession and the Chattanooga community.
Sarah Morgan, president of the Benwood Foundation, supported the creation of Teacherprenuer at the earliest stages. “We’re creating a community of teacher leaders who, with the support of one another and local partners, are proving that they can and will launch big ideas to not only improve our schools but also strengthen our community.”
The weekend culminated at Granfalloon where all 21 teacher teams pitched for two minutes each before a panel of judges and a crowd of almost 300 community members. An additional 1,000 people watched via live-stream. The judges chose the top three projects and awarded prize money to those teachers. The top projects received full funding, while the remaining projects received proof of concept funding to get their projects off the ground. Additionally, all the projects will continue to receive support throughout the year from PEF, Causeway, CO.LAB and other community partners.
“It was such a great community event to celebrate our teachers and an amazing platform for them to share their ideas for improving education in a public way,” stated Chattanooga City Attorney Wade Hinton, who served as a judge for the pitch event. “I hope the community will continue to support these teachers and their ideas. We should all feel proud of the innovation happening in our classrooms.”
The first-place prize went to Normal Park Museum Magnet’s Sarah Clardy for her “School Rocks” project. She designed attachments to retrofit existing classroom chairs, turning them into rocking chairs in order to increase attention and stamina for kids in the classroom through movement.
The second-place prize was awarded to “Science on the Go,” a mobile science lab and curriculum for elementary school students designed by Candace Baggett from Lookout Valley Elementary and Crystal Mayer and Tiffany Welch from Spring Creek Elementary.
The third-place prize was given to “Ed Trekkin’,” which will provide educational guides to local attractions and locations. These guides, proposed by Amy Myhan, a HCDE educational technology coach, are designed to be used by kids and their families to expand the learning opportunities outside of school.
New to this year’s event were both live-streaming through City Stream and EPB and crowd-sourced feedback. Keri Randolph, vice president of Learning for PEF, explained, “We learned so much from last year’s Teacherpreneur 48-Hour Launch, and we are proud that this is becoming an event that is both unique and special to the Chattanooga community. We wanted to offer the opportunity for the community to participate in as many ways as possible both during the event and beyond.”
Kessler Cuffman’s “Dynamo Studios,” which will support a recording studio for students and the community at Chattanooga High Center for Creative Arts, and “MathCom,” a project from Apison Elementary’s Taryn Painter tied for the crowd-sourced funding award. MathCom creates a website where parents and community members can access short videos, student work examples, and other teacher-curated resources to assist elementary students with math.
In addition to the top three teams and the crowd-sourced awards, the following 16 teams won funding and support:
1) Augmented Reality: Learning of the Future, Sue Lawson and Amanda Wagner, Hixson
Elementary
2) Design Thinking Studio, Jill Blackmon, Normal Park Museum Magnet
3) Gifted on the Go!, Lisa Millard, Lakeside Academy
4) Hamilton Sings!, Charlene Cook, East Ridge Elementary and Claire Stockman, Red Bank Elementary
5) iSight, Donavan Davis, Ganns Middle Valley Elementary
6) It’s TEA Time!, Onica Monroe, Red Bank Elementary
7) Literacy Alive: Unleashing Student Creativity with Augmented Reality, Leah Cook and Michele
Dockery, Rivermont Elementary
8) Open Doors, Kayla Motes and Masey Stubblefield, Red Bank Elementary
9) Read It! Log It!, Karen West, Chattanooga School for the Liberal Arts
10) Selfies and Shelfies, Laura Dowd, Red Bank Elementary and Lindsay Melton McCarter, Snow Hill Elementary
11) Technibrary, Ginger Kirchmyer, Signal Mountain Middle High
12) The Green Machine, Jerry Webb, Tyner Academy and Bryan Phillips, Ivy Academy
13) Unwritten: Connecting Students with their Communities Through Oral Histories, Riley Bogema, Brainerd High
14) VR School, Caleb Bagby, Red Bank High
15) WOW Science Lab, Shannon Mentgen, Sequoyah High
16) We Are Chattanooga, Brian Purvis, Loftis Middle
To help mentor or support one of these teams, please contact PEF’s Keri Randolph at krandolph@pefchattanooga.org or 668-2426.