McDonald House gives $20,000 to literacy project

Representatives from Ronald McDonald House Charities of Outstate Michigan presented a check for $20,000 to the College of Education Michigan Literacy Project (MLP).

Lesa Dion, executive director of Ronald McDonald House Charities of Outstate Michigan, and Randell G. Price, owner of the Allendale McDonalds, presented the donation November 13 at the L. William Seidman Center.

The Michigan Literacy Project is an initiative that gives quality children’s literature to recent College of Education graduates teaching in K-5 classrooms in underserved Michigan public schools. COE faculty members Sheryl Vlietstra and Megan Freudigmann, and COE staff member Forrest Clift started the initiative in 2014 as a way to help new teachers build their classroom libraries. 

The program is open to alumni who started their elementary teaching careers within the last three years and who are teaching in underserved Michigan public school districts across the state.

In the past two years, 11 teachers received hundreds of books through MLP. The RMHC grant will enable MLP to provide 45 classroom libraries over the next three years.

For more information, contact Sheryl Vlietstra at (616) 843-3192 or submit an application at www.gvsu.edu/coe/MLP