Grant Wrangler

So this isn't exactly a "tool" to be used in the classroom, but it may lead you to things that will improve your classroom and teaching in ways you never imagined. When I was going to school to be a teacher, someone (a professor most likely) said loftily one day in class, "If you can write a grant, you can do just about anything." Hmm. Deep. I put that sage advice in the back of my mind for a few years, until I had been in the classroom for a while. It doesn't take an economist to figure out that the money teachers put into their own classrooms doesn't make a lot of "cents" (yeah...that was corny). I was feeling limited, for lack of a better word, by what I could do in my classroom and where I was going as a teacher. So I started Googling - and I do believe that is a word now - Grants. Grants for teachers. How to write a grant. Grant writing. And somewhere, among the many pages of the Internet, I found Grant Wrangler.

Grant Wranger is a treasure trove of funding opportunities for classrooms and professional development opportunities for teachers. You can search for grants by subject, or just start at the first page and click on through. Everything is listed on this website by "first due," meaning the most upcoming events and grant deadlines (or things that are ongoing) are listed first. Grant Wrangler really shows you that there are countless ways to change your classroom and your teaching practice, if you are willing to do a little writing. I could write an entire post just on how to write grants (which I probably will in the very near future).

Before you ask, yes, Grant Wrangler has led me to some wonderful funding opportunities and professional development. The first thing I found on Grant Wrangler that really "popped" out at me was the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy. Talk about hitting a home run right from the get-go. That experience is a entire post in itself (which I will tell you all about when the application opens again). There have been many other things that I have come across on Grant Wrangler that have lead to funding and experiences that otherwise I never would have known about. I highly recommend subscribing to the e-mail bulletin to receive regular updates on new things that are added to the site. If you are interested in finding grants and professional development outside your local area, this is - in my opinion - one of, if not THE, best places on the web. Check it out, and you will probably be back regularly.

http://grantwrangler.com/