Here are my personal reflections and reminders for the process of developing a grant and shepherding people through the application process.

What Worked
•I was really glad to see that the number of CART applicants was more than double the number of Teacher As Researcher grant applicants that we had three years ago. I hope that this is an indicator of strengthening interest in CFG work in Houston.
•There was also more of a range of CFG experience in the applicants. A couple of the applicants just completed their training in spring 2007. For the TAR grants, most of the applicants had been trained in 1998 and 1999.
•The support sessions helped me and Tim make connections with the CFG community and I think it probably strengthened several of the applications.
•The scoring went smoothly. This particular group of readers/scorers was very serious and committed to carefully evaluating each proposal. I think it helped that I created the “What is A+. . .” information sheet that explained the purpose and values of the Houston A+ Challenge, CFG’s, and action research.

What Needs Tweaking
Here are a few things to remember to tune up if I am ever involved in writing another Request for Proposals.
•Add a line on the cover sheet for applicants to tell when they were trained as CFG coaches and who trained them. This will help us check and confirm eligibility. We were able to dissuade several non-CFG trained folks from applying for the grant when they came to the support sessions, but one slipped by. That group cannot get funds from this particular grant, but I hope that this experience encourages that school to send some people to CFG training.
•Be more clear about the limits of what A+ will fund. They do not pay for big technological purchases.
•Solicit more detailed information on the budget summary form.
•Remember to take a calculator to the scoring event. Some readers made minor math errors as they were scoring the applications. I double and triple checked everything at home later that night, but it would have been better to do that immediately so that I could have been absolutely certain of the scorer’s intent.
•I also regret that we didn’t have time to get written reflections from the readers.

Other Thoughts
On future requests for proposals, I want to communicate to the applicants that communication skills really do matter. Almost all the applications could have been improved by a careful editor. A razor-sharp focus with supporting details would be much easier for a reader to understand and score than the meandering prose this year’s readers sometimes had to deal with.
I have found that I have a really difficult time giving cool feedback about writing to adults. I know that this is ridiculous since I used to teach eighth grade English and had to prepare students for the Writing TAAS. Maybe it’s the fact that I think that feedback is most effective when it is asked for, and these colleagues haven’t asked for any specific feedback.
Finally, I want to note that the commitment letters really mattered to this set of scorers. They preferred individual letters to checklists, and lukewarm letters from supervisors were definitely remarked on on the scoring sheets.