HELENA — Nine Helena educators have been awarded up to $500 through the Karen Cox Memorial Grant.
This grant is given out by the Montana Professional Teaching Foundation.
The teaching foundation works to enhance the teaching profession and promote quality education in Montana.
The grant is not intended to replace school funds but to support teachers who dig into their own pockets to help their students succeed.
Kari Smoot is a special education teacher at Central Elementary.
Her grant will help her purchase tools to provide trauma-informed social skills for her students.
“I found this curriculum, it’s called everydayspeech.com, and it’s a social emotional learning curriculum and a social communication curriculum and I’ve just found it really helpful teaching self-regulation skills, coping strategies, friendship building and those kinds of things,” Smoot said.
In Montana, a total of 34 educators in 27 schools received grants from the MPTF this year.
