Bonnie Chambers Grants

Recognizing the extraordinary challenges elementary and middle school teachers face, a $6,000 in grant money will be awarded to purchase books for K-8 students in an Ohio public school buildings. Bonnie Chambers Grants are designed to help teachers who strongly promote the use of quality literature in their classrooms. Teachers will use the grant money to select and purchase their own book choices (fiction or non-fiction) that encourage literacy.

Application Criteria

• This grant is open to any* Ohio public school teacher(s) in grades K-8 who demonstrates a need for money in the purchasing of classroom books for their building.
• If a group of teachers apply, one teacher will apply on behalf of the building and serve as the contact teacher.
• Need can be demonstrated through free/reduced lunch ratios, recent school-levy results, extraordinary events, etc. 

*No standing OCTELA Executive Board member may apply or benefit from this grant.

Application Materials

The Bonnie Chambers Grant application for 2025-2026 will be linked here soon. 

Proposals for the grant shall include an application, a brief narrative describing need, and a brief description about how students in the building will benefit from the grant. Recipients of the grant will be contacted for a follow-up debriefing at a later date.

All applications are completed online. If you have questions about the grant or the application process please contact Allison Volz at allison.volz@gmail.com

Review Process: Applications will be reviewed by the Bonnie Chambers Committee. Winners will be notified no later than mid-January. Awards will be dispersed to the school district’s treasurer in the name of the applicant and presented at the OCTELA conference in February/March.

More Information on Bonnie Chambers

Bonnie Chambers touched so many lives as a teacher, a mentor, and a colleague. To all these individuals, and they were myriad, she was also a friend.  Bonnie’s friends--students, teachers, literacy researchers, children’s book authors--experienced her kindness and her wisdom in equal amounts. In addition to serving on the faculty of Bowling Green State University, on the OCTELA board, as OCTELA president, and as active member of NCTE, Bonnie was also a member of CELT (the Center for Expansion of Language and Thinking) a kind of think-tank devoted to the study of literacy and learning.

As a member of these communities of learners, Bonnie was able to give her friends who were working in elementary school classrooms access to the conversations that were taking place across the profession. These professional conversations expanded their own views as classroom teachers about the importance of language arts teaching and how it should impact thinking. What evolved for many classroom teachers influenced by these conversations was a sophisticated view of professionalism: teachers as keen observers of children and as well as being active learners themselves.

Teachers, Bonnie believed, are called upon to make thoughtful decisions every day about how best to meet the needs of the students they serve with their ever-changing, often unique needs.  Also central in Bonnie’s message about teaching and learning was the power of children’s literature—great stories, engaging information—to captivate learners who would see themselves and others in different ways and continue to move forward through their journeys as literate individuals.

This award was started by two teachers who became friends of Bonnie by different paths. Both these teachers grew in their understanding of the teaching and learning processes through Bonnie’s influence. The goal of these two teachers was to, in a small but they hoped enduring way, pass on the vision of learning and teaching that Bonnie spent her career embodying: teachers as learners, teachers as powerful decision-makers, teachers growing through on-going professional conversations, and teachers as leaders in selecting and promoting the best literature for their students.  It is a vision all our teachers continue to need.

The work of building and maintaining the endowment for the Bonnie Chambers Award has been carried out over many years by the Bonnie Chambers Committee and, most significantly, Bonnie’s husband Norman in a partnership with the Columbus Foundation.