The Jonesboro Public Schools Foundation awarded $75,000 in classroom grants to 44 teachers across the district on Friday, supporting a variety of projects aimed at enhancing educational opportunities.

According to the foundation, 93 grant requests were submitted this year, and nearly half were approved. Recipients include educators from pre-K through high school.

Among them was Carmen Teague, a drama and theater teacher at Douglas MacArthur High School. Teague plans to use the grant to connect her students’ work in theater with lessons from other subjects, such as English and history.

“This grant is so exciting to me. I’ve been at Mac now for, this is my fourth year, and I keep wanting to have a project that ties in what they do in English and what they do in history to what they study in theater,” Teague said.

She hopes these interdisciplinary projects will help students improve core academic skills.

“I think it will help their scores in reading and in comprehension to be able to bring some of these books that they read to life through costume design and set design and sound design and just creating the worlds of these books,” she added.

Caroline Crawford, a biomedical teacher at Jonesboro High School, also received funding. She said the grant would help prepare students for careers in the medical field by funding certifications that students can earn during school.

“I’m very excited because in the last two or three years we started certifications from our biomedical innovation class. It’s their independent project. And there’s five to seven certifications that they can earn,” Crawford said.

These certifications, she explained, offer valuable experience for students entering medical settings.

“So my medical intervention class, it’s the third level class. So when they get to do their internships, their senior year, they use their white coats or they use them in the laboratory setting,” Crawford said.

Jenny Beth McCallum, a Jonesboro High School alumna and former president of the foundation, stressed the wide-ranging impact of the grants.

“It’s a tremendous honor. I feel so fortunate to be in a position where we can impact so many students within the school district. It reaches from the high school all the way down to the pre-K,” McCallum said.

The program aims to bring new opportunities to classrooms across the district, from pre-kindergarten through grade 12.