LUCKY LAKE - Both the students and staff of a local school have a pretty good reason to celebrate these days.
It may be a small school out on the rural Saskatchewan prairie, but the story coming out of the halls of Lucky Lake School shows that bigger things can indeed happen in smaller towns.
The school learned at the end of this past June that it was the recipient of a $50,000 Biogenius grant awarded by Sanofi Canada to help enhance their science lab.
Sanofi Canada is a health care company that provides annual grants that are designed to foster the next generation of scientists by providing opportunities for students to access Science Technology Engineering Math (STEM) learning and embrace scientific study.
After Math and Science teacher Makayla Heslip was made aware of the possibilities surrounding the grant by Lucky Lake School principal Terry Hall, Heslip recruited her students to help put together a grant proposal. Photos of the school's lab were taken, videos were created that supported the school's proposal, and more people lent a hand where it was needed, including Principal Hall, the local SCC Chair Gloria Simonson, and the Assistant Superintendent at the time, Jill Long, who all provided letters of support to assist the school in their intended goal to acquire such a monumental grant.
Students themselves wanted to help with the grant because they saw it for what it was - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to improve their school's scientific amenities.
And then, just as school was letting out for the summer in June, Lucky Lake School learned the outcome.
They had won the $50,000 grant.
And the students were left speechless.
Teacher Heslip, originally from Indian Head and only in her second year of teaching, having started at Lucky Lake a year ago, highlighted some information about the grant in a phone interview with The Outlook.
"Sanofi Canada is a pharmaceutical company that's looking to expand science research in youth," explained Makayla. "They have a couple of different grants, and there's one that's just student-based where they can submit different grant proposals and they'll fund them to give students more opportunity to increase their science knowledge. The one that we applied for and got, they had a secondary high school grant that consists of $50,000 to a school that is in need of a laboratory or a lab that needs repairs and new equipment with the exact purpose to increase opportunities for hands-on learning to build STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) in schools."
The possibilities of what the grant could mean for a school such as Lucky Lake were heavy on the minds of both Heslip and Principal Hall, who originally came to Makayla with the idea. What followed was an effort that perhaps outweighs the idea of a 'team effort', as it felt like as if the entire school division was on the side of Lucky Lake in pursuing this unique opportunity.
"It was sent to me by my principal, who said, 'Hey, you think you'd be interested in this?' and I said sure!" said Heslip. "So I started looking at the grant proposal, and it was obviously a lengthy one because it's $50,000. We had to have a couple of different letters of support, so I wrote one, and the Grade 9-10 classes who are Grade 10-11's now also gave me a bunch of ideas, and we wrote a letter of support together and they all signed it. We also got a letter of support from our SCC chair, our principal, and our superintendent last year, Jill Long. I think the thing that really made it, though, is that the kids actually recorded videos to say why we needed this grant as part of it. I think that was really the selling point for Sanofi, although obviously, I can't speak on their behalf. I think the kids being involved really helped us there. I added in and edited it together, and there were more questions that were kind of like short essay questions, and we also had to submit a bunch of photos of our equipment."
When the students learned that the school had indeed won the major grant, Heslip says that shock and awe almost doesn't describe what they felt.
"They were pretty excited, and I still have a few that are still in disbelief!" she said. "I had one that went, 'Wait, did we actually get that?!?' because I walked in and went, 'Hey guys, guess what? We got the grant!' and they all just went silent. They also said, 'But we don't get the money for a long time, right?' and I said, 'How about next year?' and their faces just lit up! It was a highlight for me last year, for sure!"
The requirements of the grant meant that the eventual outcome would see the previous school year end on the highest of high notes for Lucky Lake.
"Grant applications were due in May, and we learned right before finals at the end of June that we got it," said Makayla. "It was an exciting way to go out on the school year!"
The efforts by the students were hard not to notice, with Heslip noting that they were all in on this endeavor.
"That 9-10 class was really awesome," she said. "We used some of the photography time to go around and interview each other, and I had a couple of students who actually edited part of the video together. It was just really nice to see them be excited about it too. They were a very big help."
Heslip's own reaction to the news was one of total elation, especially being a first-year teacher at the time. She says that it almost feels like the end of a long marathon where the finish line is the ability to provide more opportunities for her students to learn all they can in science.
"I was really excited," she said. "As a first-year teacher, the end of the year can feel like you're almost sprinting a marathon on some days because you're getting absolutely everything you can in and getting work done and different things like that. It just really solidifies that the whole year of work was worth it to be able to get that grant and provide more opportunities to the students for some hands-on learning and some labs because they really like labs here. Our principal is so excited too! Mrs. Hall was super happy when she heard about it, and we were all pretty ecstatic. We actually had to email them back and ask, 'Does this mean we get $50,000?' and they said yes, and we were all just, 'Okay, this is just crazy!'"
The school is expected to receive the funds very shortly, with Heslip explaining that they'll then begin coming up with a spending plan.
"The cheque has been sent out in the mail, so it should be arriving in the next week or so here," she said. "We'll then come up with our spending plan for November and start purchasing stuff so that we can do bigger projects!"
Improvements to the school's chemicals and equipment is at the top of their list, and Heslip also says that there are now opportunities to engage in more scientific studies and activities that weren't there before due to a lack of resources and funding.
"Right now, our science lab is in pretty good shape," she explained. "We have a good gas system, as well as our sinks and things of that nature. It'll mainly be used for replacing our chemicals in our storage room because most of them are from the 1990's. We'll also be replacing Bunsen burners, scales, and different things like that so that they'll be more modern. As well, we'll use some of the budget to do bigger projects that the kids want to do, as a lot of them want to do a garden and learn about the science behind plants. Others want to do dissections, and those types of things are expensive, especially for a rural school, so to be able to have the funding to be able to do those things that the kids are really interested in and not just have to rely on different simulations and things like that is really huge for us."
Such a story of a small town school dreaming big and seeing those big things actually happen puts away the notion that incredible things don't happen in smaller communities and schools.
"I think so," said Makayla. "I grew up in a small town as well, and it's pretty amazing to see what can be accomplished when a group of people come together as a community. This just shows that. Even if you're in a small town and some opportunities don't happen that in a city, they would, there are things out there, and it's about looking and putting in the work towards them."
If there's something to be learned from what Lucky Lake School has accomplished, it's perhaps a simple lesson: dream big.
