Jackson Electric Membership Corporation (EMC) employees delivered big checks into 34 middle school classrooms in 21 schools with $50,000 in grant money from the Bright Ideas program throughout the month of October. Winning entries represented a variety of disciplines, including engineering, computer technology, language arts, math, music, science and social studies.

The 2017 grants represent the diversity of learning options for the 21st century student, including live theater production lighting and sound engineering, kinetic sculptures and animatronics, and agriculture technology. In addition, the grant provides teaching options for today’s educators, such as quadratics through catapult building, history through a student-written play, and earth science through wind turbine construction.

The Bright Ideas grant program, now in its fourth year at Jackson EMC, funds innovative classroom projects developed by state-certified public middle school educators within the counties served by Jackson EMC. Educators for grades six through eight are awarded up to $2,000 in grant funds for classroom projects that are not funded through general education dollars.

A complete list of our 2017 Bright Ideas grant recipients is available here.