Core Plus Grants
Core Plus funds support one big idea that is on the leading edge of teaching and learning that supports all content areas.
2023-2024 - Literacy Pilots across the District: Core Plus funds targeted the ongoing work of the Literacy Leadership Committee over the 2023-2024 school year to further support the committee and teachers engaged in the literacy pilot. On-going professional development and training started in the fall and will continue through February. It will focus on research-based instructional literacy practices and training for pilot materials.
2022-2023 - Professional Development: Provided further professional development for the Summer Institute topics throughout the school year. See the Summer Institute section for information.
2021-2022 - Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) Professional Learning and Implementation: The District is engaging in the important work to build system-wide support for students in the important area of SEL. The main goal of the work is to equip the SEL team with the tools needed to work effectively with one another and to identify and implement changes that students will feel in the classroom as quickly as possible. The inaugural workshop, “Search Inside Yourself (SIY),” is a neuroscience-based emotional intelligence program developed at Google. This training was offered to staff and parents in the fall of 2021 and focused on Mindfulness-Based Practices for developing emotional intelligence. District 36 is honored to be the first school district in the country committing all staff to the SIY training, with the goal of increasing the skills of mindfulness, empathy, compassion, and overall emotional intelligence to create the conditions for individual and collective thriving in our schools.
2020-2021 - Funds this year were reallocated due to the pandemic school closures.
2019-2020 - Technology: Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) including Google Expeditions, Merge Cube, 360 Cameras, and the HTC Vive.