Jeannie Wallace (MLIS, ’09) recently received a grant for the literacy program at Dixie Hollins High School in Pinellas County.

Wallace has been sponsoring the literacy club for about seven and a half years, and added a spoken word poetry team in 2010 when she became a media specialist at Dixie Hollins High. This led her to begin attending district literacy conferences, where her passion for the media programs at the school burgeoned.

This is the fourth time that Wallace has received a grant for the program. She applies for the grants through the Pinellas Education Foundation, which gives out several grants annually through their Fund A Classroom initiative. A few of the recipients are then asked to apply for an incubator grant This grant is sponsored and financed by the TransAmerica Corporation and helps participants expand their program so that it can be replicated.

Wallace received $7,525 from the Fund A Classroom Grant. Her grant involves getting seven high schools within the Pinellas County school district to either launch or strengthen their own literacy clubs. It will also help pay for club T-shirts, books for book clubs, a literacy magazine and incentives and supplies for activities to promote literacy, as well as transportation for Dixie Hollins High to travel to other schools in the community to promote literacy. Additional funds will allow for a literary conference that all middle and high schools in the district may attend.

An additional incubator grant of $4,775 will fund the district slam, a chapbook for all schools’ poems and stipends for the workshops. This comes after a $9,000 special incubator grant that Wallace was granted last year to get spoken word poetry teams at five schools.

To learn more about the MLIS program at FSU, click here.