Fund for Teachers - The Podcast

Hosted by Carrie Caton

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Jun 2026

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Fund for Teachers is a national nonprofit that awards grants for self-designed fellowships to America's most innovative preK-12 teachers. This is a podcast to elevate these public/private/charter school educators as inspiring architects of their careers, classrooms and school communities.

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June 12, 2026Episode 126 min

Removing Barriers to Learning Through Language

Reidsville, Georgia, is a small town covering just 7.7 square miles, about an hour west of Savannah. According to Local Observer Daily, it is best known as a quintessential Southern farming community and as home to the Georgia State Prison. Agriculture—especially the cultivation of Vidalia onions—drives the local economy, and many of Sarah Jacques’ students and their families are part of that workforce.But not many of those students speak English. Which makes Sarah’s task of teaching them sixth grade science a challenge – to say the least. But Sarah’s main priority is to make these young people, and their families, feel seen and safe. And to do that, she needed to learn Spanish so they could be heard. Today, we kick off our seventh season with one of the first 2026 grant recipients to begin their fellowships. Just one week after school ended, Sarah embarked on a 7-week Spanish immersion program and homestay in San Pedro, Guatemala to strengthen linguistic skills, better support ELL students and foster a greater sense of interconnectedness throughout the school community.Early posts on her Instagram, suggested that Sarah’s one-on-one language lessons were every bit as demanding as the classroom overlooking Lake Atitlán was breathtaking. We invited her to tell us about the experience so far; she agreed; and, thankfully, her Wi-Fi cooperated… for the most part.Follow Sarah's fellowship on Instagram @science.sin.barreras.Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

April 21, 2026Episode 527 min

Tackling Textile Waste with Creativity

The theme of Earth Day 2026 is “Our Power. Our Planet.” According to earthday.org, this theme is “not a political statement, but a commitment to stewardship, resilience, and shared accountability — a call for every individual, community, and sector to use their power in service of the planet we all depend on.”For Krissy Ponden, a teacher at The Unquowa School in Fairfield, Connecticut, that sector is middle school students — and that power is art. Last summer, with a $5,000 Fund for Teachers grant, Krissy, participated in the Kokrobitey Institute’s Textile Waste Driven Design Workshop in Accra, Ghana. There, she explored how fast fashion waste impacts the environment — and how art and design can transform discarded textiles into meaningful, sustainable creations. She’s since brought those insights back to her classroom, crafting lessons that inspire students to see both art and environmental responsibility in new ways. And, as with all of our fellows, that journey was just the beginning.Following are links mentioned in the podcast:Krissy's post-fellowship reportingArtist Bubu OgisiOgisi's global brand IAMISIGOConnecticut artist Carlos Bautista BiernnayKrissy's class Instagram - @theartpondLearn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

January 25, 2026Episode 434 min

Remembering the Holocaust through Power of Place

Eighty-one years ago, on January 27, 1945, the Soviet Red Army liberated the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in occupied Poland—a place where more than one million people were murdered as part of the Nazis’ so-called “Final Solution.” In November 2005, the United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, a time to honor the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the millions of others targeted by Nazi persecution.According to the United Nations, the word remembrance was chosen deliberately—to dignify victims and survivors and to keep alive the memory of the communities, traditions, loved ones, and lives the Nazis sought to erase.But remembrance is impossible without knowledge. We cannot remember what happened if we are never taught about it or taught factually.Last summer, two Fund for Teachers Fellows—educators from different states—found themselves standing side by side at Auschwitz and at multiple sites across the European theater of World War II. Their purpose was not only to deepen their own understanding of history, but to lead inquiry that fosters critical thinking, awareness, and action—both now and in the future.Today, we’re learning from Jody Rohweller-Kocur, a teacher at Highland Park High School in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and Jenai Sheffels, a teacher at Tesla STEM High School in Redmond, Washington. Independently, both were awarded Fund for Teachers grants to participate in a program co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas’ and the Humanus Network titled The Power of Place: 2025 European Summer Institute for Holocaust Educators, which took them to Austria, Poland, and Italy.As Jody and I waited for Jenai to join our Zoom call, I asked how she was doing in Saint Paul—where earlier that day, in neighboring Minneapolis, ICE detained a five-year-old boy and his father while they were walking home from preschool. Hearing about the lengths to which Jody and her colleagues go to teach, protect, and care for their students opened the door to a larger conversation about perpetrators, bystanders, and upstanders—a conversation that feels, tragically, more urgent than ever.Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

December 9, 2025Episode 335 min

Performing with Play

As the fall semester speeds into winter break, Amanda Hinrichs’ fifth graders at Hebron Avenue School in Glastonbury, CT, are pretty worked up. They’re stamping their feet and making bold hand gestures with eyes bulging and tongues out. And Amanda is loving every second. Her music students are writing and performing their own “haka,” a Maori tradition that Amanda observed all across New Zealand on her Fund for Teachers grant this summer.Amanda is a 25-year veteran teacher of music but recently faced an instrumental issue. The state of Connecticut started mandating play at the kindergarten level and permitting teachers to utilize play-based learning in grades 1-5. This change coincided with a personal shift – the decision to intentionally interject more world cultures into her curriculum. After reprising her initial Fund for Teachers proposal that was not awarded, this past summer she used a $5,000 grant to research New Zealand's Maori culture through museums, cultural performances, and living villages, while also consulting experts in play-based learning.Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

November 10, 2025Episode 228 min

Tilling the Soil - A Thanksgiving Episode

In the midst of the Dust Bowl—an agricultural catastrophe that decimated crops and devastated the livelihoods of thousands of Oklahomans—President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned, “The nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”Fueled by a lack of understanding about sustainable land management and the heightened demand for food during World War I, once-fertile plains were transformed into barren deserts—a tragedy immortalized in Dorothea Lange’s iconic “Migrant Mother” photograph and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath.Nearly a century later, educators Darci and Seth Reeves are working to ensure history doesn’t repeat itself. At Latta High School in Ada, OK– approximately an hour and a half southeast of Oklahoma City, they’re teaching students how to care for both their land and their health through agricultural science, Family and Consumer Sciences, and the Future Farmers of America program. This summer, their mission gained new momentum through a Fund for Teachers fellowship—becoming part of the ongoing solution to sustainable agriculture and community well-being.(Learn more about Seth and Darci's learning from their post-fellowship reports...)This fellowship was generously funded by the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, which supports innovative people working in field-based science, art and craft, teaching and protection of the natural world.Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

October 3, 2025Episode 133 min

Returning to Retrieve What Was Forgotten

Rudyard Kipling penned the words, “East is east and west is west and never the twain shall meet.” Except in the case of Fund for Teachers Fellows Natasha Alston and Denise Carter-Mataboge. Natasha teaches at Mountain Pointe High School in Phoenix, AZ, and Denise teaches at the Neighborhood Charter School: Harlem, NY. They didn’t even know each other a year ago. But they DID know they wanted to teach African American History in a way neither of them experienced as students.Today, we are learning from “Team Sankofa,” the name Denise and Natasha gave their Fund for Teachers partnership that used a $10,000 grant to explore the life of William Tucker, tracing his origin story from the first slave ship landing in North America back to the colonized country of Angola. Sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana that means “to go back and get;” but Natasha and Denise prefer the interpretation used by the Akan people of Ghana which is "it is not wrong to go back for that which has been forgotten.” Toni Morrison writes in the preface of Beloved, "To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must get out of the way." Denise and Natasha took Morrison’s words to heart, using their grant to push beyond cursory narratives in textbooks and bear witness to enslavement from its starting point in Africa. The following conversation with Team Sankofa centered around their experiences and deepened motivation to reclaim forgotten chapters of history often omitted from American education and ensure that these crucial early stories of our nation are preserved and shared with students.(Click here for more information on The William Tucker 1624 Society and here for the USA Today article Natasha references on the podcast.)Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

July 28, 2025Episode 429 min

Making the Path by Walking

The Way of St. James, perhaps more commonly known as the Camino de Santiago, has been since the 9th century an ambulatory avenue for reflection. The ancient path that stretches from the French Pyrenees to Spain’s Santiago de Compestela, was first traversed by Roman tradesmen, then Christians seeking “indulgences” from the Medieval Church. Today, various paths associated with the Camino are walked by more than 200,000 people a year as a form of spiritual, emotional and/or physical exercise.The Camino de Santiago has been a topic in Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises,” James Michener’s “Iberia,” Ken Follet’s “Pillars of the Earth,” and the 2010 film “The Way,” written and directed by Emilio Estevez and starring his father, Martin Sheen. This summer, it was also the subject of Chandler Wilson’s Fund for Teachers fellowship. In her fourth year of teaching, Chandler also teaches evening art classes to all ages across the greater Oklahoma City area. She previously worked in the child welfare continuum and that work continues to inform how she teaches the power of art in social emotional development and community building. We caught up with Chandler in Santiago de Compestela the day after completing her 406 mile fellowship…Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

June 20, 202523 min

The Magna Carta and Fund for Teachers

Winston Churchill said, “We must never cease to proclaim in fearless tones the great principles of freedom and the rights of man which through the Magna Carta, the Bill of Rights, the Habeus Corpus, Trial by Jury and the English Common Law find their most famous expression in the American Declaration of Independence.”Agreed to by King John on June 15, 1215, the Magna Carta attests that the king is subject to the rule of law and documents the liberties held by “free men.” Eight hundred and ten years later – to the day – Fund for Teachers Fellow John Fehr was in the United Kingdom hunting down the four extant, original copies of the Magna Carta. The same time that multiple “No Kings” protests were held across America. Pretty timely, I’d say. Welcome to this July 4th edition of Fund for Teachers – The Podcast. I’m Carrie Caton Smith and the goal of each episode is to elevate teachers as the inspiring architects of their careers, classrooms and school communities. Today, we’re kicking off the 2025 “Fellow Season” as I like to call it, by learning from Jeff Fehr, teacher at Humboldt Middle / High School in Humboldt, Kansas. Jeff teaches Geography, Kansas History and American History and encourages his students to find personal connections to history to find their path forward IN history.But how does one help students find personal connections to an 810-year-old document? For Jeff, the answer was a Fund for Teachers fellowship.We caught up with Jeff in Salisbury, England, after seeing two copies of the Magna Carta in Salisbury and Lincoln, but before seeing the final two copies at the British Library in London. He shared with us his experiences (which includes goosebumps and a few tears) which he plans to incorporate into the development of project-based learning in social studies, with a focus on making historical concepts meaningful and relatable for students by linking the past to current issues around rights, governance, and justice.Learn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

February 28, 2025Episode 327 min

Tackling Hard History with Eighth Graders

We’re publishing this podcast on the final day of Black History Month. The 2025 theme was "African Americans and Labor," focusing on the significant role Black people have played in the workforce – of their own accord or at the mercy and for the benefit of others. The economic aspect of Black history also inspired a Fund for Teachers experience of today’s guest and now informs the perspectives and research projects of Chicago seventh graders. Today we’re learning from Fund for Teachers Fellow Sandra Burgess. After conducting training sessions in Corporate America, then teaching at the collegiate level for 15 years, Sandra took a chance and a job teaching middle schoolers—whom she claims have a lot in common with first-year college students. Sandra is actually a two-time Fellow: first partnering with a colleague at Morgan Park Academy in 2022 to gather materials, impressions and insights pertaining to the Holocaust across eight European countries to facilitate a student-led podcast series. Then last summer, with the same colleague but this time a Fund for Teachers’ Innovation Circle grant, Sandra researched the growth of the slave trade through civil rights resistance in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Washington DC. Her learning, access to primary resources on the road, and artifacts gathered, catalyzed a research project requiring students to focus on mapping how slavery contributed to the economy of the US, which caused those who benefited to oppose its demise.Sandra says both fellowships are rooted in hard history, elevate narratives of those involved, and changed her life…Show Notes:City Project 8th Grade Organization Outline.pdfPrimary and Secondary SourcesCity Project 8th Grade.pdfMS The Economic Impact of Slavery on New Orleans Montgomery and Washington DC.pdfSample Works Cited City Project.pdfFinal In Class EssayCity Project 8th Grade.pdfLearn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress

October 31, 2024Episode 236 min

Making a Difference For & With Teachers

Internationally renowned environmentalist Jane Goodall said, "What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make."In 2015, Barbara Dalio decided she wanted to make a difference for teachers. Connecticut teachers, specifically. Based on the formative role teachers played in the lives of her three sons, Barbara chose to invest in her home state’s educators as a means of also impacting its students. The vehicle she chose to make this happen was Fund for Teachers.Six years later, more than 1,125 preK-12 teachers have leveraged $4.7 million in Fund for Teachers grants, provided through Dalio Education, to transform the educational landscape of Connecticut.One week ago, Fund for Teachers hosted a dinner that convened many of Connecticut’s 2024 grant recipients, or FFT Fellows, for an evening of inspiration and encouragement provided by 10 teachers who presented about their fellowships last summer.We couldn’t resist the opportunity to pull a few away from the cohort for brief visits about their learning — and their advice for teachers pursuing 2025 Fund for Teachers grants.Show notes:National Webinar - November 20 RegistrationTeachers of Color Workshop RegistrationRural Teachers Workshop RegistrationLearn more about Fund for Teachers on our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn pages and apply for YOUR self-designed fellowship at fundforteachers.org.Music on podcast: Scott Harris: Clear Progress