Funds flow to Howell for cultural programs

The Howell Road School community is diverse and full of different cultures. Its hundreds of students represent a variety of different countries from around the world, and Howell Road teachers look to instruct students on as many cultures as possible.

With this in mind, four educators — Paula Barnick, an ESL teacher, Patricia Hopkins and Elizabeth Sweeny, reading specialists, and Matthew Stashin, a sixth-grade teacher — applied for a grant from the New York State English Council last year, and in June, received word that they had won. Their project, “Hispanic Heritage Month: A Celebration of our Heritages Amongst the Howell Road Community,” teaches students about the Hispanic culture while they read texts and make iMovies about their family’s culture.

“We have a diverse student-body here,” Barnick said. “So we just wanted to start with one group to enhance our resources, literature-wise, of having tales from other cultures.”

Barnick added that the project is a nice lead-in for teachers and students to start talking about cultures and families because in the beginning of the school year, teachers especially like to learn about their students. Hispanic Heritage Month took place from Sept. 15 to Oct. 15, but students are still working on their projects.

“The objective is that students will realize we have more in common than sets us apart,” Barnick said.

The four Howell Road teachers are part of District 13’s grant committee, which is chaired by Meredith Brosnan, assistant superintendent for business. Last year, Brosnan suggested applying for the NYSEC grant, and work began in October 2012. “It was an area of need,” Stashin said of the project, “something we wanted to explore a little bit more.”

The grant application took several months to complete and was submitted, after a few rounds of review, in March. Hopkins said she felt confident their application would win the grant because each of the four teachers brought their own expertise to the process.

“I had a good feeling about it because it was something that was really going to benefit the children,” Stashin said, “but it’s always nice to hear that your expectations came true.”