Psi Alpha Alpha Chapter and the Bernie L. Bates Foundation, Inc., conducted its third and final "Read-Aloud” session of their Reading for Success program at Riverside Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia, for this academic year. On May 17, 2024, the Brothers, known affectionately as “The Sirs,” supported five third-grade classes with a total of 102 energetic students.
For our third reading, we chose the book “Buddy Ran Away” by Thea Feldman. The book tells the story of a boy named Sam whose pet beagle “Buddy” runs away while chasing a rabbit in the country. Sam had to return home without Buddy, but the beagle’s sense of smell enabled him to return home all by himself. It was exciting to see how eager the students were to read to the class and answer questions about what they read. Equally refreshing was the students’ recognition of the “vocabulary” words in the story.
The Fairfax County Ques were represented by twelve brothers who served as reading mentors: Brothers Philip Benjamin, Bradford Caldwell, Marvin Chisolm, Maurice Cogdell, Antonio Coleman, Eric Edmond, James George, Kermit Jones, Charles Lawrence, Dewy McRae, Larry Pratt, and Kenneth Younger. Today’s session culminates our 10th year of this elementary school mentoring program in which we donated 360 age-appropriate books and spent a total of 74 hours volunteering this school year. What was unique about this session was the power was out at the school for some of the reading sessions, so the classes were consolidated, and we persevered.
The mentees, mentors, teachers, and principal are all convinced that we have made a significant impact on their students’ reading skills and vocabulary. We look forward to and have been invited to continue this program in the next academic year with their new third graders. We have concluded that the “Reading for Success” Program is making a “Real Difference!”.
