FISHERS — Jenifer Young teaches English Language Learners at Hamilton Southeastern High School.
She keeps her students on their toes and brings 18 years of previous experience as a music educator to the classroom.
Young is a recipient of the City of Fishers Educator Innovation Grant.
The program exists to empower educators within HSE schools with the financial resources to bring innovation to the classroom and inspire students to rethink learning.
Young received $15,100 to help with language acquisition, access to content material and creating a safe environment.
"It’s going to provide a classroom set of ukuleles to use music to help my students learn to speak English better, and also it’s going to get us Pocketalks, which are designed to translate," Young said.
Young says she’ll purchase a set of 45 Pocketalks for her classroom as well as other teachers, administrators and staff.
“We have very tough courses. In order for our students to understand what they’re learning, it’s important for them to be able to translate what they’re learning into their native language," she said.
Across the building, Jeremiah Follis is also a recipient of the Educator Innovation Grant.
“Each year we form a crew of kids and we have to write the movie, find locations, film it, edit it, write the music and everything," Follis said.
Follis is the creator of Olio Road Productions, HSE’s film club.
The production company creates completely original, student-made feature films.
This year’s film is a psychological thriller called 11:17.
HSE High School will offer a film studio course for credit starting next school year.
Follis received $16,200 in funding, which is going towards purchasing equipment like cameras, LED lights, boom mics and more.
“I was thinking we were gonna be on our iPhones, but having the grant allows us to really step out of the gate with professional-looking films," he said.
Students say Olio Road has helped them develop skills beyond filmmaking.
“Definitely teamwork. It’s so hard being on a film set. There’s nothing else like this. You’re working with 25 other people in 25 different positions doing 25 different things," senior Matthew Krohn said.
“It teaches you responsibility with being on time to shoots and being able to follow the rules and work with other people,” freshman Ellia Becker said.
This new round of grants from the City of Fishers brings the funding total to nearly $350,000 since the program launched last year.
To date, 22 educators across 12 schools have received funding for projects.
Applications are accepted on a rolling basis, and project requests have no funding cap.
