Strong showing in Bright Ideas grant competition earns 57 LCPS teachers more than $46,000 in awards
Fifty-seven Lenoir County Public Schools educators from eight schools won $46,061 in Bright Ideas grant awards presented last week by Tri-County EMC.
LCPS’s winnings represent 44 percent of the $103,768 awarded by the Dudley EMC for the 2026-2027 school year. In all, Tri-County funded 130 grants, with LCPS teachers winning 43 percent of that total. In a competition limited to schools within Tri-County’s service area, nine in Lenoir County are eligible, compared to all schools in Wayne and Duplin counties.
Teachers from Pink Hill Elementary School paced the competition with 12 grant awards and the school received an additional $500 from Tri-County at the Nov. 4 presentation event. Grant awards also went to teachers from Banks Elementary, EB Frink Middle, La Grange Elementary, Moss Hill Elementary, North Lenoir High, South Lenoir High and Woodington Middle.
Tri-County’s Bright Ideas grants are capped at $1,000 and are available to teachers in grades kindergarten through 12th at all schools in the Dudley EMC’s service area. N.C. Electric Cooperatives also sponsors a statewide Bright Ideas grant program and the eight LCPS schools outside Tri-County’s service area are eligible to compete for those awards, capped at $1,500. The state awards are scheduled to be presented later this month.
Superintendent Brent Williams congratulated the LCPS’s Bright Ideas winners for their “dominant performance.” Throughout the district, “our teachers set a new standard for instructional excellence and innovation,” he said.
“I want to thank Tri-County EMC General Manager, J. Michael Davis, his leadership team and the entire Tri-County board for their strong positive leadership and for continuing to invest in our school system, our staff members and our children,” Williams said.
Twenty-seven of the district’s 57 winning grants involved science and math projects, while the remaining winners showed wide-ranging areas of emphasis in LCPS classrooms, from literacy to art to physical education to horticulture and agriculture.
One of Pink Hill’s winning applications belonged to second-grade teacher Ashleigh Bostic. She plans to use her $950 award to “transform our classroom into a hands-on learning laboratory where students can watch their learning and their plants grow,” she said.
“This project will integrate science, reading, writing, mathematics and art into one meaningful experience. Instead of simply reading about how plants grow, students will have the opportunity to experience the process firsthand,” Bostic said.
The grant award will help in funding supplies for the project.
Shavonda Brutus, a fourth-grade teacher at La Grange Elementary School, won a $1,000 grant award to fund “Math in Motion,” a project she described as an effort to unite math and science. “The grant will allow me to purchase reusable STEM materials that will give approximately 50 fourth-grade students opportunities to design, build, measure, test, collect data and solve problems while applying the concepts they learn in the classroom,” Brutus said.
“My goal is to help students see that math and science are more than just numbers, formulas and vocabulary words.”
Karen Sheppard, an English teacher at South Lenoir High School, has found that escape rooms – where players are challenged to find clues, solve puzzles and complete a mission -- engage her students as they review the skills needed for end-of-course tests. “The students seem to really enjoy them. It gets them moving around and working as a team to solve the code,” she said.
Her $936 Bright Ideas grant will allow her to buy two escape room kits and add to the fun factor. “These kits will give me actual lock boxes for clues and special glasses with disappearing ink to make the experience even more engaging.”
Tri-County Bright Ideas grant winners by school are:
Banks Elementary: Victoria Smith, Jenifer Oliver and Melissa Southerland.
EB Frink Middle: Anna Hull, Lily Hartsell and Nicole Perkins.
La Grange Elementary: Alicia Davis, Angela Pate, Darlene Pelletier, Delia Kimberlin, Jenny N. Daughety, Jessica Stanley, Katie Wooten, Shantil Walston, Shavonda Brutus and Tammy M. Boyette.
Moss Hill Elementary: Rachel Braswell and Allyson Heath, Glenda Kennedy, Connor Potter, Jordan Gray, Diane Smith and Millicent Sanderson.
North Lenoir High: Elizabeth Espino, Mackenzie J. Jones, Kady Long, Katie Bain-Herring, Samantha Ewell Newcomb and Caroline Congleton.
Pink Hill Elementary: Allison Whitfield, Ashleigh Bostic, Amanda Wuestman, Beverly McLawhorn, Breanna Nicole Tyndall, Carly Jarman, Jami Finch, Jennifer McLawhorn, Maggie Lanier, Michaela Dixon Hinkle, Selina Gray and Stephanie Kollock.
South Lenoir High: Ashlynn Holloman, Courtney Hill, Courtney L. Strickland, Jessica Hill, Jodi Maxey, Karen A. Sheppard, Melanie Smith, Sheree Casias and Traci Howard.
Woodington Middle: Jessica Lima Jones, Mari Turner, Monica Johnson, Robert W. Houston, Scott Cole, Steven Loftin and Wendy Williams.
The 12 Bright Ideas grants won by teachers at Pink Hill Elementary School were the most awarded any single school in the competition sponsored by Tri-County EMC. Pink Hill grant winners, from left, are Jennifer McLawhorn, Carly Jarman, Ashleigh Bostic, Michaela Dixon Hinkle, Beverly McLawhorn, Maggie Lanier, Amanda Wuestman, Stephanie Kollock, Breanna Nicole Tyndall, Selina Gray, Allison Whitfield, and Jami Finch
