Reflection on Grant Proposal Writing

Writing grant proposal was one of the most useful experiences I have gathered from my MA program. In education there are so many grants that are offered by federal/state government as well as various organizations and corporations. I had minimum idea aboutthese grants opportunities until I started to write this grant. As I was searching for grantor/funding agency for my grant proposal, I was surprised to find the high amount of grants offered by several grantors. Through that experience of searching for grantor I have realized that every teacher needs tobe aware of different grants offered by these agencies,as well aslearn how to write an effective grant proposal to utilize the financial support in order to enrich their classroom environments.

The purpose of my grant proposal was to secure funding for a longitudinal research project on technology integration in mathematics instruction.Before writing the proposal I have conducted a small-scale research to find out whether or not using the graphing software during the instruction of polynomials can improve students’ understanding of function and their ability to create and interpret graphical representation of functions. Even though my overall experience of the research was very positive, I felt that I needed more time and financial support to conduct the research on a larger scale.The result of my research did not came out to be significant, because my experimental and control groups contained only fifteen participants per group, and the allotted time for the research was only three weeks. Through this experience I realized that I should write a grant proposal that will provide financial support for a significant research on the issue.

This was my first grant proposal that I have written. At the beginning of the process, I started to create a detailed budget for the proposal. Even though I initially thought that my proposal will need around $200,000, as I was breaking down various direct and indirect costs I realized that this amount would not be sufficient for a successful Ed-Tech research. After detail analysis of the budget, I found that I would need more than $400,000. I felt that the proposed amount of grant would be impossible to get approved. But after talking to my professors and my fellow students, many of whom were also writing grant proposals, I wascontent about my budget amount. It was difficult to follow the guidelines for the budget because a big portion of the initial budget amount were earmarked for the technology and related equipments. But I was allowed only 10% of the budget to spend on the technology and equipments. I had to make difficult changes to my budget so that the proposal is within the guideline. Concurrent to the budget process, I was also working on the ‘Timeline’ for the grant proposal. Working on the budget and the timeline created a feedback loop for the process, where I was going back and forth between the two,and both of those were giving me insights in to the others.Creating successful collaboration with the classroom teacher was also bit of a challenge. We had several meetings to discuss the purpose and goals of the research project. At times it was difficult for me to communicate my ideas to him. Now I believe I needed at least two classroom teachers and two TA for this project. Having more teachers would allow me to gather more data, and thus creating a better representation and analysis of the outcomes. It was challenging as well as rewarding to complete the proposal. I have learned many valuable lessons through this experience.