Best in Class for April 25

Jessica Faubel, a science teacher at Forsyth Central High School in Cumming, and Karen Allsteadt, a science teacher at North Springs High School in Sandy Springs, have been selected to join 40 middle and high school teachers from across the country to participate in the Siemens Teachers as Reseachers fellowship program. The annual summer event will take place June 8-20 at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and is designed to empower teachers to bring the excitement of real-world research into their classrooms and inspire students to pursue science, technology, engineering and math education.

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Delta Community Credit Union presented the Joseph Sam School with a check for $3,000 on April 17. The donation was part of Delta Community’s Philanthropic Fund, which supports 15 non-profit organizations with investments of more than $650,000 to foster growth and prosperity in the communities it serves. Joseph Sam’s School Inc. is a private, non-profit school serving children from birth to 22-years-old who have mild to severe intellectual or physical disabilities or diagnosed developed disabilities. The grant will be used to help teach basic banking skills, budgeting, money skills and generalization of purchasing skills in stores and businesses.

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Amanda Bowles of East Coweta High School in Sharpsburg won a $3,000 classroom grant for her first-place submission in the H&R Block Dollars & Sense "How Big is a Billion" math contest. Bowles and her students won the 10th-12th grade category. Her students' submission concluded that one billion baseballs would be enough for 1,906 Major League Baseball seasons - or enough to take our national pastime back to the Roman Empire or the second century. In a partnership between WeAreTeachers and H&R Block Dollars & Sense, teachers were asked to work with their classrooms to creatively illustrate one billion dollars, which represents how much Americans are leaving on the table every year during tax time.

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Rhodes College senior Isabel Buonopane, a religious studies major and gender and sexuality studies minor from Marietta will work in Turkey during the 2014-15 school year as a recipient of a Fulbright U.S. Student Award. The Fulbright Program is an international educational exchange sponsor, and awards grants to students, scholars, administrators and professionals to study, teach, lecture or conduct research abroad.