Grants, Team Work
Help Fully Fund
Cecil Intermediate’s
Maker Space Dream
Susie Lavallee works with
a student in the Maker
Space room at Cecil
Intermediate School.
anon-Mac
C A NO N- MAC S C HOO L D IS TRI C T N E WS
C
ecil Intermediate School’s project, “Dream, Design, Create…
and Dream Some More” has one goal: to encourage and
develop creatively confident, innovative thinkers. The
project is part of what’s known as the maker space movement –
which is characterized by hands-on tinkering and building with old
and new technologies.
But the kind of hands-on tinkering that inventors, mechanics,
artisans, musicians and nature/sports adventurers do takes space.
And while the school had an old mat room it could convert into a
maker space, that kind of transformation takes time and money.
When a Kickstarter campaign to raise $12,000 to fully fund the
project – money that would pay for Chromebooks, a video camera,
a digital camera, sewing machine, hand tools, craft supplies,
printers, whiteboards and more – came up short, that’s when the
Canon-Mac community came together to make sure the initiative
didn’t languish.
School counselor Craig Barzan, a gifted carpenter in his
personal time, helped lead an effort to build tables for the space,
while district Director of Facilities Matt Zewalk worked with
vendors, prompting a $3,000 donation of light
fixtures for the room. But that’s not all: Mr.
Zewalk and his staff also helped use leftover tiles
to upgrade the room’s floors, install a sink and
more.
Meanwhile, behind the scenes, district Director
of Curriculum and Instruction Grace Lani sought
out and secured several grants for the project –
receiving more than double what they had initially hoped for.
Not only did they receive a $4,000 grant from the First
Community Foundation Partnership of Pennsylvania through
EITC donations received from FTS International Service LLC, but
another $1,000 from the Sprout Fund through suppo