Two Poplar Bluff educators received $100 classroom project awards to fund student-centered materials earlier this month through the Southeast Region Teachers Association, a division of the Missouri State Teachers Association. 

Heather Mustain, Lake Road speech/language pathologist, will purchase three different decks of cards that teach about complex sentence structure for reading comprehension. She will also buy a lesson book to help improve students’ auditory processing with assignments designed to target 20 areas of listening development, according to her grant proposal.

“These students will benefit from the ability to have many trials and opportunities to practice these skills in a hierarchy of levels to support their growth and academic gains with minimal frustration and failures,” Mustain wrote. 

Carlos Arnold, a Junior High mathematics teacher, plans to purchase for his math foundations class a ‘Bingo’ game for differentiating equations, a ‘Prime Climb’ board game, a math ‘Splat’ card game and dry erase ‘Triangle' flashcards for reviewing multiplication and division. 

Arnold said he researched the products after he used a regular deck of cards to teach times tables, and witnessed his students “take off with it” more quickly than a worksheet assignment due to the “visual and physical” nature of the group activity. 

A total of 30 MSTA members out of 62 applicants from the Southeast Region received $100 awards, according to Middle School teacher Karmen Carson, Poplar Bluff president of the grassroots organization. 

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Cutline: Accompanied by her daughter Macy of the first grade, Heather Mustain (left) is presented her grant on Thursday, Oct. 10, by Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum Patty Robertson.