Teachers across the Okanagan Similkameen school district are taking risks this year, with a little help from some district grants aimed at encouraging them to push the educational envelope.

At its Jan. 13 meeting, the district’s Education Committee awarded 10 “take-a-risk” grants to teachers pursuing unique learning initiatives in their classrooms.

The grants are each worth $1,000, and were awarded for everything from in-class calming stations for high-anxiety students to theatre experiences and new, out-of-class teaching methods.

Bev Young, the district’s superintendent of schools, said the grants are “the district’s way of supporting teachers who are trying new things in their classrooms with students.”

“They’re looking at 2016 curriculum, around technology, around redesigning learning environments … they had some ideas they wanted to try and these will help them with that,” she said.

Six of the grants will be put to work in Oliver schools: three at Oliver Elementary School, and three at Southern Okanagan Secondary School.

Take, for example, Lori Martine and Karen Sinclair’s “The Lion King Experience,” which Martine calls “an innovative and rigorous theatre curriculum” that will bolster Oliver’s arts offering.

The 18-session program is being offered once a week, coinciding with the extra-curricular production of Disney’s The Lion King Jr., and integrates lesson plans and assessments for speaking, listening, writing, reading, language, theatre, dance, visual art and music.

At SOSS, Ryan Baptiste’s EPIC program will also benefit from a grant.

The program will give several students a completely unique semester, completely foregoing the traditional school timetable. In place of “classes” they will undertake a number of projects and learning opportunities in the school and community, many coming courtesy of the local First Nations community.

“The four walls of a school doesn’t do it for all the kids in the school, all the different types of learners that we have, so we’re just trying something new,” said Vice- Principal Tracy Harrington.

By Trevor Nichols