Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence announces Family and Community Engagement Grants of $23,000

(Pictured L-R are Laura Smith, Social Emotional Learning Instructional Coach, Riddle Elementary School; Kristen Bertrand, Program Officer for the Community Foundation; Kris Maleske, Community Services Director; Vincent Walk, Social Science Teacher and Class E Facilitator) Photo submitted by Southeastern Illinois Community Foundation.

For Immediate Release

(MATTOON, Illinois – 2021-2022) Southeastern Illinois Community Foundation is pleased to announce that it has awarded three family engagement mini-grants through the Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence Fund.

The Birth to 3 Program in the Mattoon Unit 2 Community School District received $1,000 for their community thanksgiving meal project. A community thanksgiving meal hosted at the school on November 4, 2021, the goal was to build trustworthy relationships with families, school staff and community members. Family table games were included to promote family time and parent-child interactions as well as an opportunity for children to visit the Lending library and read a story with an activity by Mattoon Public Library. Each child received a book to take home to continue with parent-child reading interaction time and supporting early literacy skills. Parents and or adults received training on Celebrate Recovery while children went to the library.

Riddle Elementary School and Williams Elementary School each received $1,000 to support the 7 Habits of Successful Families– Family Engagement Activity. This highly engaging opportunity for Riddle and Williams Elementary families provides activities to introduce the 7 Habits of Highly Effective Families through the book by Stephen Covey. Three one-hour in-person sessions will be facilitated by a certified social-emotional learning teacher. During the in-person sessions, families will participate in hands-on activities to demonstrate the “7 Habits” while learning to apply them to their own unique family units. To ease the burden on families, on-site childcare will be provided by MCUSD childcare supervisors. The online platform component will provide support for families as they dig deeper into the 7 Habits at home. This component will consist of reading guides, discussion questions, and recommended family activities. Participants will interact with the facilitator and each other through the use of a discussion board format

(Pictured L-R are Kris Maleske, Community Services Director, and Andrea Orr, Social Emotional learning Instructional Coach, Williams Elementary School) Photo submitted by Southeastern Illinois Community Foundation.

The Community Foundation also awarded two community engagement grants through the Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence Fund.

Riddle Elementary School received $10,000 for the “Not All Classrooms Have Four Walls” program with the Douglas-Hart Foundation to improve the existing Riddle Arboretum green space and create an outdoor classroom. In 2003, teachers Nancy Brachbill and Ron Ghere created the beloved Riddle Arboretum, which features numerous native trees, pollinator plots, and numbered posts. They worked alongside fellow 5th-grade teachers, allowing students to adopt a tree and learn about its characteristics and needs throughout the year. To ensure Riddle Elementary teachers are comfortable using the arboretum space, the Douglas-Hart Nature Center staff will train all Riddle educators. These workshops will cover an array of topics including the numerous benefits of teaching outdoors, how to successfully utilize an outdoor classroom space, and how to integrate reading and math into the science curriculum in the outdoor space. Additionally, Douglas-Hart Nature Center educators will visit Riddle Elementary and conduct a full environmental education lesson with every K-5 class in the outdoor classroom, showing teachers real-life examples of how to use the outdoor space.

The Mattoon High School received $10,000 for the 2021 Mattoon Community Homecoming Week and for the Spring Career Day. These projects will connect Mattoon High School students to the community in a variety of ways. The activities of homecoming week gave students the opportunity to interact and learn about the many service organizations in the Mattoon area. It also exposed them to volunteer opportunities, which prepared them for service-learning activities later in that week.

During the spring of 2022 MHS hopes to add the inspiration of a keynote speaker and host a career/college day at Mattoon High School similar to what was hosted in 2019. MHS wants students to become more aware of local career options and opportunities and to start building professional connections with businesses and alumni, which could develop into internships and valuable mentor connections.

The Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence was established in 1994 with funding from Consolidated Communications’ Earning for Learning grant and became a component fund of Southeastern Illinois Community Foundation in 2005. The Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence was originally designed to support teachers in Mattoon CUSD #2 beyond the available budget of the school district. The Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence provided classrooms with supplies that were needed in the classroom but lacked the long-term impact the district was striving to achieve. In 2017, the Community Foundation convened school administrators, teachers, and other community leaders to realign the mission of the fund and its programming to better reflect the school’s priority and vision of strengthening the relationships between the school, families and the community. This discussion led to two new grant opportunities: Family Engagement Mini-Grants and Community Engagement Grants. Research has shown that when families, schools and communities partner in promoting learning and healthy development for all children, schools thrive, and student outcomes increase.

The Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence is funded through the Consolidated Communications Earning for Learning Program. Consolidated’s Earning for Learning Program began in 1993 and has provided $3.5 million in grants to central Illinois schools focused on K-12 academic initiatives with new technology purchases and innovative learning programs and projects. In 2019, the Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence received $5,000 from the Earning for Learning Program.

The Mattoon Foundation for Academic Excellence is a fund of Southeastern Illinois Community Foundation. For more information, contact Alex Pleasant, President/CEO, at 217.342.5409 or alex@enrichingourcommunity.org.