|Photo by Emma Delk| McDonald’s Owner and Operator Bob Stoltz hosted this year’s MAC Grants recipients at the Elm Grove McDonalds to receive their checks and enjoy dinner. From left, Stoltz, Wheeling Middle School teacher Wendy Seidewitz, Moundsville Middle School teacher Carol Hill and Moundsville Middle School teacher Shelly Lynch. Moundsville Middle School teacher Holly Stillion is not pictured, who also was rewarded funding.

Four local middle school teachers will be able to satisfy their students’ hunger for hands-on learning with the $500 they each received in McDonald’s Make Activities Count Grants.

Moundsville Middle School teachers Carol Hill and Shelly Lynch and Wheeling Middle School teacher Wendy Seidewitz accepted their checks and enjoyed a dinner hosted at the McDonald’s in Elm Grove Wednesday night. Moundsville Middle School teacher Holly Stillion was also selected for the grant but was not able to attend the presentation.

To receive the funding, each teacher created an educational project for their students that would make learning “come alive in their classrooms,” explained Local McDonald’s Owner and Operator Bob Stoltz.

For Seidewitz, the hands-on activity she wanted to supply for her children was clear. Wearing many hats as Wheeling Middle School’s band and general music teacher, as well as the Dean of Students, what her students needed most was new mallets and drumsticks.

“They were old and falling apart, and there was just not enough money from not only our school but our parents to buy new ones,” explained Seidewitz. “I have seven drummers right now in the percussion ensemble who will really benefit from this.”

She added that “ironically” during band class on Wednesday, the top of one of her student’s mallets came off and flew across the room.

“There was this look of pure shock that came to the student’s face when that happened,” recalled Seidewitz. “When I announced after that we’re getting new mallets and drumsticks after that, the whole band cheered.”

Lynch applied for the MAC grant not to avoid objects flying across her classroom but to encourage it. The Moundsville Middle School eighth-grade math teacher’s $500 will pay for projectile launchers from which students will eject ping pong balls to measure the distance and angles of their flight.

After their landing, the students will create a scatterplot and find the line of best fit for the ping pong balls’ flights.

Hill, who teaches seventh-grade math at Moundsville Middle School, will use the grant money to buy balancing scales for her classroom. She explained that using hands-on activities while solving equations helps prepare her students for the harder math they will do when they head to Lynch’s classroom next year.

Both Moundsville teachers emphasized that having hands-on activities helps students engage more with their subject. Providing their students with a visualization of what they’re learning helps their kids understand what “may be more difficult to comprehend only on paper,” added Hill.

“It helps engage kids who usually aren’t paying attention during the lessons,” noted Lynch. “When you do hands-on, it brings everybody in.”

While “technology is extremely important in the classroom,” Seidewitz explained that hands-on activities also provide her students an outlet away from “technology all the time.”

“Socially, I’ve had kids bond in my band classes that never would have any other way because it’s a combination of all grade levels,” she explained. “We have a lot of peer mentoring that happens, and it makes me very happy to see and foster that.”

Stoltz labeled this year’s batch of winners as the “cream of the crop” amongst applicants for the program. He noted that the funding would go towards an important cause, as hands-on activities are often one of the first things that get cut when school budgets are decreased.

“That’s why it’s so important for McDonald’s to fund these kinds of programs,” Stoltz added. “We want the funds available for these teachers so their students can appreciate these exciting activities.”

The MAC Grant program is in its 29th year, with McDonald’s collectively raising over $3.3 million for teachers across the tri-state area, according to Stoltz.

“I just love that we’re able to give back to the teachers,” he said. “We love to help the community, especially teachers, and we hope we’re making a difference.”