ROSA PARKS ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND THE MENTORCARES STUDENTS FROM NORTHWESTERN HIGH SCHOOL IN HYATTSVILLE MARYLAND CELEBRATE THEIR READING PROGRAM SUCCESS. 

Hyattsville Maryland-May 13, 2008. Students, teachers and parents from Rosa Parks Elementary School gathered at the school on Saturday morning May 10th, 2008 to hold an event celebrating the success of their 2008 pilot literacy tutoring program. The program partnered caring high school students from the MentorCares program at Northwestern High School with Rosa Parks students for Saturday morning reading and tutoring sessions. 

The celebration event included an emotional thank you to Ms. Tasha Jackson who along with her daughter Anisha Davis, a MentorCares student at Northwestern, created and developed the concept for the program. Several MentorCares students spoke of their involvement in the program and how much they enjoyed working each Saturday with the younger kids. Ms. Karen L. Matthews the Reading Resource Specialist at Rosa Parks spoke about the success of the pilot project and how much she and her team looked forward to next year and the continued growth of the program. Ms. Tracey Adesegun, the Principal at Rosa Parks Elementary thanked all those involved for making the program a reality. She also thanked Ms. Antoinette Sampson, the MentorCares Coordinator at Northwestern, and she presented special thank you gifts to each of the MentorCares students. As part of the celebration a fourth grader at Rosa Parks, Ms. Mojisola Adesegun, read the poem “Hugs Are Important” and received a loud round of applause from everyone in attendance. Each Rosa Parks student received a certificate and a bag filled with books for their summer reading. Each student was greeted with loud applause as they came up to receive their certificate and books. The celebration event was capped off with a wonderful buffet luncheon put together by Ms. Karen Matthews and others on the Rosa Parks Super Star Team. 

As part of their LiteracyCares™ outreach project for the 2008 school year the MentorCares™ students adopted students from Rosa Parks Elementary School in Hyattsville, MD and conducted tutoring sessions with Kindergarteners, 1st and 2nd graders on Saturday mornings at Northwestern High School and at Rosa Parks Elementary. The tutoring sessions consisted of having the elementary students along with their parents move from station to station learning different aspects of reading. This included guided reading, learning long and short vowel sounds, matching opposites, playing words games, working with phonics tiles, using sight word flash cards and many other literacy related activities. Each station was manned by MentorCares high school students that received training from the Rosa Parks Super Star team in how to conduct the tutoring sessions.

The Rosa Parks team along with the students from the MentorCares team hope to grow the program next school year and train more high school students as literacy tutors!

For more information on literacy issues and how you or your organization can become a sponsor of this program call LeadershipCares at 301 540-5791 or visit the web site at www.leadershipcares.org