SMS Teacher One of 60 in U.S. and Canada to win Grant

A teacher at Seneca Middle School (SMS) is one of 60 teachers in the United States and Canada to win a grant, according to the School District of Oconee County (SDOC). Cassie Moore loves reading. More than that, she loves inspiring young people to enjoy reading as much as she does. Luckily for SMS students, she focuses that passion on them. As a seventh grade ELA teacher, she could limit her outreach to those students assigned to her classes but that is not enough for her. Last year, in her first year at the school, she organized and led a school-wide book club, “Books and Biscuits”, each Tuesday morning before school started. Approximately 25 students across all grade levels joined her in the Media Center each week to talk about the current selection. She also blogged about books and invited students to participate in that forum as well. Also, those students fortunate enough to have her as a teacher benefited on a daily basis from her gift of teaching and inspiring students to develop their own appreciation of reading. Stocking her classroom with books and providing the book club with reading material costs money, however. While Moore has taken on a part-time job to fund her passion, the cost of books adds up quickly and there never seems to be enough to satisfy the insatiable readers she has helped develop. Thus, she applied for a grant to the Book Love Foundation, a group “dedicated to teachers who inspire a love of reading.” Recently, Moore learned she had been awarded a $2,000 classroom library grant from the foundation. Moore said of the grant, “I am so excited and appreciative of this grant. I am already eagerly awaiting a shipment of books funded by the grant and can’t wait to put them in my students’ hands and spread the joy of reading.”