Post your solution to pressing classroom problems and become eligible for a $2,500 award.

Over the past few months, the NEA Foundation has been tapping the brains of educators to identify their most pressing classroom problems. Our Challenge to Innovate (C2i) has created an opportunity for educators to share their thinking and at the same time create a new virtual community where educator views and experiences are being shared, discussed, evaluated, and rewarded.

Based on the ideas shared in the first challenge, the C2i community has selected four classroom-based problems as the most pressing.

Now we are looking to educators and others to find the solutions. We will award up to five $2,500 cash awards to individuals who submit the solutions voted as most responsive to the problems.

Elementary music educators at North Brook Elementary in Vale, North Carolina jazzed up a traditional poetry lesson for fourth and fifth grade students with the help of a NEA Foundation grant.

Using the Garage Band computer program, students integrated writing and musical composition lessons by setting their poetry to musical rhythms they created. Watch the video created by our grantee to find out more about what these students learned.

This Fall we awarded 57 grants totaling $252,000 to educators in 33 states. Learn more about our newest grantees. 

Do you hear that? It's the sound of thousands of educators discussing their problems, sharing ideas, and offering their opinions about what's working (and what isn't) in our public schools. These conversations are happening online every day particularly on Twitter, Facebook, blogs, discussion boards and even via video on YouTube. We have joined the conversation in a new way with our new Facebook and Twitter pages and the NEA Foundation Blog. Here you’ll find stories about our grantees, resources for educators, and a commentary about our work and current issues.

Find us on Facebook and Twitter, visit our blog, and share your thoughts with us.