Kelly in Kansas

Two more Teaching American History grants written with one submitted and the other to be submitted later this morning. The timing is never good but there's also something about the adrenaline rush that seems to lead to more increased productivity the closer the deadline gets. The actual submission deadline is today at 4pm but since I'm in office hours or meetings most of the day, I had to be done by yesterday. And I actually was. We revised two grants we submitted last year - one only missed being funded by 8 spots so we hated to mess with it too much. The agency director says these are my best work so far. Time will tell. It's amazing how much support and opportunity they have offered in regard to grant writing.

Since I am teaching at a small state regional regents university, there is little support for grant writing. As one of our administration officials said, "we tend to take grants out of the hide of the grantwriters" since there is no release time until after a grant is written. In this case, these grants will help with my almost approved year-long sabbatical on half-pay. That is the way I keep my sanity while teaching a 12-hour-load along with trying to publish and engage in service activities alongside those that have less than half that load. But these TAH grants really epitomize the reasons I left the secondary classroom to return to graduate school - to work with teachers. And it has been immensely beneficial not only to my professional growth but also to my personal growth.

Now it's time to catch up on grading and all those other things that fell by the wayside over the last two weeks. :-)