Mays Prep Kicks Off R.E.A.D. to LEAD Program (Read Each And Every Day)

January 2010

Recently, businessman and 2010 Mayoral candidate for the city of New Orleans Troy Henry read to a group of Mays Prep students. He read Barack Obama: Son of Promise, Child of Hope.

At Mays Prep, we subscribe to a very simple philosophy: The more children are encouraged to read, the more they will read – and the more they read, the better readers they will become. Our newly minted R.E.A.D. to LEAD program carries this philosophy one step further. The program's mission is to encourage and promote civic engagement with Mays Prep by securing community leaders to read to our students. We believe that when students see others read, especially those whom they admire, the more they are prone to replicate their behaviors. As a result, various leaders from New Orleans who have reached the heights of personal and professional success will read to our children once per week. Even more, we hope the program will serve as a very powerful symbol about what is important, and we plan to use it to ignite a movement whereby consistent community engagement with Mays Prep becomes the norm. Principal Duke Bradley says, "Make no mistake about it, I want the R.E.A.D. to LEAD program to spark a significant public awareness campaign. As a school community, we can promote early literacy, but we can also send a very clear message to our student body that reading leads to success - and what better examples are there to illustrate this point than the many business and community leaders of New Orleans?"