The DeWitt Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund announced last month that it has awarded a 4-year, $2.77 million grant to the Bread Loaf Rural Teacher Network.
Based at Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English in Middlebury, Vt., the network will use the grant to host summer workshops for high school teachers from six states: Alaska, Arizona, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Carolina, and Vermont.
The award will also help pay for the creation of a computer network that will help the teachers keep in touch after their return to the classroom.
The sports and fitness giant Nike Inc. and the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education announced last month that they will award $250,000 in grants to teachers during the 1993-94 school year.
The “Just Do It’’ grants are the final awards in a three-year $750,000 program.
Grants ranging from $5,000 to $25,000 will be awarded to educators who develop innovative ways of motivating students to achieve academically.
This year, the program is placing special emphasis on proposals that help “meet the needs of the growing numbers of ethnically diverse students in their classrooms,’' said Judy Hodgson, the director of development and external affairs for the N.F.I.E.
Applications for this year’s competition are due Feb. 17.
More information is available from the National Foundation for the Improvement of Education, 1201 16th St., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036; (202) 822-7840.
The Pew Charitable Trusts announced last month that it has selected five states to participate in the next phase of its $56 million Children’s Initiative.
The five states--Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Rhode Island--were chosen from a pool of 14 states invited to apply for the awards last June. (See Education Week, Aug. 5, 1992).
Each will receive a $100,000 initial grant to develop plans for reconfiguring how it provides health, social, and educational services to children.
The Miami-based Knight Foundation announced that it has changed its name, as of Jan. 1, to the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.
The change “honors the legacy of the brothers who established this foundation,’' Lee Hills, the foundation’s chairman, said in a written statement.
The foundation was created in 1950 by the two men, who built their multi-million-dollar fortune through Knight Newspapers, which merged in 1974 with Ridder Publications to form Knight-Ridder Newspapers.--M.S.
