Putting the ABCs Into Practice
The Pint-Size Pair With Athlete-Mentors to Improve Reading

By Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 25, 2007

It wasn't yet 3:30 p.m., but the kids could hardly contain themselves.

"Where's my mentor?" asked one boy.

Another ran up, glanced at the library door and said, "Where are the players?"

They didn't have long to wait. A minute later the door of the Tuckahoe Elementary School library burst open, and 15 tall, lanky teenagers spilled in, all baggy jeans and shaggy hair.

The children's eyes widened.

Quickly pairing up with the second- to fifth-graders, the young men draped themselves over couches and small chairs and launched into a task that goes hand-in-hand with being a member of Washington-Lee High School's varsity basketball team.

"They are wid -- uh . . ." said Austin Park, 8, reading "The Heavy Hippo." He paused.

"Wider," prompted David McNally, 18, a senior with a goatee and floppy red hair.

"Wider than my arm," said Austin, completing the sentence.

"See, it's wider," McNally said. "So it's like, more wide."

Around the room, similar scenes were unfolding as the students completed the sixth session of the 15-week Readers Are Leaders program, which brings high school athletes into elementary schools as mentors and role models.

Started three years ago by Wendell Byrd, a Fairfax County basketball coach and retired second-grade teacher, the program spread from Fairfax this year. In Arlington, the Washington-Lee varsity basketball team tutors children once a week in Tuckahoe's extended-day program. In Alexandria, T.C. Williams High School basketball players (varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams) are spending 18 weeks mentoring students at three elementary schools -- Maury, Jefferson-Houston and Cora Kelley.

At Tuckahoe last week, second-grader Sam Gonson said this experience was different from working with an adult. "I don't know why, but I don't really get in trouble [for] talking instead of reading. We talk about, like, what's going on in our day."

Antonio Bethea, 17, Sam's mentor, said he was intrigued because he had seen other athletes doing similar work. "You see professionals, you see them doing this stuff on TV, so I thought it would be neat to do it, too," he said. "I thought at first it would be rowdy, but everyone was, like, calm, and we just, like, bonded from there."

As of this year, Byrd's nonprofit program works with six high schools and six elementary schools, plus children at two community centers run by Fairfax County's Community and Recreation Services. It costs $50,000 a year, which goes for supplies, field trips and donations to the schools.

Tonight, the Tuckahoe students plan to go see their mentors on the court. It's something many of the groups do, and it is a big deal for the younger children.

"They're so excited," Byrd said. "They see them in this setting, reading and mentoring, and then they see them . . . in the center of attraction, on the court and being an athlete."

Washington-Lee basketball coach Bobby Dobson said the program does as much for the teenagers as for the younger kids. "I think it gives them some confidence," he said. "All these kids are really, really bonded to them. Sometimes they don't make it to practice, but they always make it here."

Ivan Thomas, T.C. Williams's head basketball coach and academic counselor for athletes, said the program has helped his players think more about their own academic work. "It puts emphasis on reading with them," he said. "They say, 'Hey, I need to make a conscious effort to read more on my own as well.' "

Dobson said he had seen a difference in the players' behavior since the program began. "The way they treat people, the way they treat each other, it's just a respect," he said, adding that he hopes to add the junior varsity team next year. "They talk like they're supposed to talk, they act like they're supposed to act. . . . We say, 'If this were your brother and sister, if someone was here teaching them the wrong thing, would you like it?' "

The athletes respect the kids they're tutoring, he said, "and they don't want to let them down."

As the Tuckahoe session drew to an end last week, Jamarle Drakeford, 16, crowed about how Caroline Frias, 9, had read three books and made only one mistake. "She flies through the books," he said. Caroline, in a jaunty pink jacket, glowed.

"When I was young, I didn't get that much help, and it's nice to give it to people who need it," Drakeford said. "As we got to know them, we're not just their mentors, we're their friends."

Colin H. Brown, assistant principal at Tuckahoe, said the program allows the children to imagine themselves as high schoolers. "It makes them say, 'I can get there, I can play basketball in high school, I can be a successful high school student.' "

It can also remind high schoolers such as Nicholas Jones, 18, of when they were younger. When he started working with second-grader Bryanna Lansing, he said, she was shy. So he tried a technique his teacher had used with him -- asking about Bryanna's weekend -- and she started to open up.

"I was like that when I was young, too," he said. "So I know how it is."