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© 2025 Fund for Teachers - The Podcast
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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.
53 Episodes
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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 ...
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...
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. Th...
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 Fell...
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...
Welcome to our fifth season of Fund for Teachers: The Podcast. We launched this platform (after buying and annotating the book “Podcasts for Dummies”) when Covid shut down schools (and everything else) because we wanted to stay in touch with our grant recipients and support the stalwart work they were undertaking as our students first responders. Forty-seven episodes later, we continue to welcome Fellows as our special guests to learn about their fellowships and how they are leveraging ...
Teaching is a family business for this mother and daughter. When Daneé Pinckney was a student, her mom, Gail Bowers-Craig, enrolled in night school to earn a degree in education. In fact, Daneé says much of what she learned about teaching was from watching and listening to her mother in those years of study. It was Daneé, however, who blazed the Fund for Teachers trail. Last summer, Daneé used her $5,000 grant to research the ancestry of Black America through Benin, Ghana, and the Togo...
Virigina Hall studied at Radcliffe College and Barnard College (the women’s colleges of Harvard and Columbia) and spoke three languages. She served as a consular clerk in Poland and Turkey, where a hunting accident required an amputation below the knee. Noor Inayat Kahn studied child psychology at the Sorbonne and music at the Paris Conservatory. The daughter of Sufi Muslims, she was described as quiet, shy, sensitive, and dreamy. Josephine Baker was an American-born French dancer, singer and...
Spotify annually sends out its wrap up of your listening habits for the year and Fund for Teachers received a similar one for our podcast. The most downloaded podcast of our year was with today's guest. Stephanie Ascherl is our chief of staff and has been a program officer, as well. Because that episode was SO popular, we're bringing Stephanie back for another edition of "Tips you need to know when completing your grant application." We wanted to produce this podcast at this time as teachers ...
Lhisa Almashy has amassed many accomplishments in her 28-year career teaching English as a Second Language (or ESOL): a master’s degree in education from the University of San Francisco; a doctorate in Leadership and Learning In Organizations from Vanderbilt; award member from and board member of Learning for Justice, the Governor’s Award for Excellence in Education for the State of Florida and Hispanic Teacher of the Year Award for Palm Beach County among them. But an accomplishment on...
When preparing to interview Fellows for this podcast, I’ll do a little research to provide listeners with some context. Usually, that Google search yields LinkedIn accounts, local media coverage, and sometimes statistics from high school glory days. With today’s guest, I ended up on IMDB -- an online database of information related to films, television series, and streaming content online. My curiosity was piqued. Today we’re learning from Gabe Staino – who has taught for 12 years, both inter...
Iceland is known as the Land of Fire and Ice, the most peaceful country in the world 15 years running, and – unfortunately for Big Mac fans – has zero McDonald’s. And, this year, it’s the fellowship destination for seven Fund for Teachers Fellows. Ranging in topic from sustainability and geothermal energy to yoga and elves, grant recipients from Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, and Virginia will learn within the Arctic Circle this summer. Before Fellows begin embarking on their experient...
While Fund for Teachers has invested $30 million in teacher grants for summer fellowships since 2001, this marks only the second year that we’ve awarded Innovation Circle Grants. To extend the value of our traditional summer fellowships, we created this space for FFT Fellows to connect and collaborate around key priorities in education. Fellows propose innovative inquiries into a predetermined set of topics and, through a selective process, receive up to $1,500 to individually pursue summer l...
We’re winding down the month of February -- designated as Black History Month, first celebrated as Negro History Week in 1926 and expanded to a month in 1986 by the United States Congress. According to the Association for the Study of African American Life & History, the designation began in 1915 when University of Chicago alumnae Carter G. Woodson traveled from Washington, D.C. to Chicago to participate in a national celebration of the 50th anniversary of emancipation. And according to F...
Hey, you over there…yeah you…the teacher sitting in front of the computer staring at your 2023 Fund for Teachers grant application – the one you’ve labored over for months – the one containing the aspirations you have for yourself, your students, your school and your community. I’ve got some valuable insider information that can help you more confidently push “SUBMIT” by January 19th. You’re going to want to hear this. Fund for Teachers’ Chief of Staff Stephanie Ascherl wants to share s...
Here at Fund for Teachers, we’ve spent the summer following our 2022 Fellows, as well as those from 2020 and 2021 whose fellowships were deferred, as they pursued learning around the country and five continents. It’s now September and most of our grant recipients are back in the classroom, so we’re bringing back Fund for Teachers – The Podcast for our fourth season. We are already in contact with Fellows who experienced lifechanging fellowships this summer – they are eager to share their le...
According to a recent Wall Street Journal article, more than 900,000 people quit jobs in state and local education last year, while private schools lost an additional 600,000 people. So what would make an overworked, underpaid teacher want to increase their workload and add to their schedules a monthly, two-hour meeting after school? The answer? An Innovation Circles Grant from Fund for Teachers. Last year, Fund for Teachers offered a new opportunity specifically for teachers who alread...
Forbes, CNN, Fast Company, The New York Post and even Town & Country claim that MasterClass is one of this year’s top holiday gifts. The streaming platform offers lessons from the best in their fields, delivering – according to its website -- a world class online learning experience. We decided to follow suit and offer a Fund for Teachers MasterClass on crafting a successful grant proposal. Our expert: Four-time Fellow Chris Dolgos. Today, we’re learning from Chris Dolgos, a sixth grade...
Today’s podcast airs on Black Friday, when millions of shoppers flock to malls to begin and finish holiday shopping. This scene stands in stark contrast to those witnessed by fifth-grade teacher Janelle Rei this summer. Between meeting with Sudanese refugee students and teachers and observing families living and working in cities built of garbage, Janelle witnessed joy and gratitude for the little things, including school supplies she delivered from her own students at Great Neck Elementary S...
“The teachers are not alright.” News accounts and social media pages attest to the fatigue – both mental and physical – America’s teachers are experiencing this fall as they continue to adjust to the new normal after the past year of pandemic classrooms. It seems our teachers could use some of the social emotional learning strategies they are sharing with students trying to cope. Hyam Elsaharty knows a lot about that. She used her FFT grant to research in Malaysia how collectivist communities...
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