Good conversation, good food and good music. That’s how students in the LeBron James Family Foundation program and their parents start their Hometown Hall meetings.
A meeting this month at East high school on Brittain Road kicked off with students saying the foundation’s My Promise Pledge.
De’Anthony Bussey, 9, a fourth-grader at David Hill school, led the pledge as the other students repeated after him. He knew every line by heart and spoke with confidence.
“We say it every morning in class,” De’Anthony said.
The meetings are held once a month at various Akron high schools to accommodate students in that neighborhood cluster of schools. There is one cluster meeting a year in each high school.
“The Hometown Hall meetings grew out of a need to connect with our families on a smaller scale,” said Michelle Campbell, the chief operating officer of the foundation. “As we get new kids every year and grow larger, the meetings allow us to come together as a family to have some one-on-one interaction and to share with them our updates, but most importantly, to get a lot of feedback from them about what else they need from the foundation for the children.”
“The foundation’s goal is to hold Hometown Hall meetings so that our Wheels for Education and Akron I Promise Network families have a forum to speak their minds and ultimately to tell the foundation how we can better serve their incredible children,” Campbell said.
There are 1,127 students in Wheels for Education, which serves third- through fifth-grade students, and I Promise, which Wheels students start in sixth grade. Third-grade students, who read below their grade level, are selected for Wheels after being recommended by school staff.
The oldest participants in the program so far are eighth-graders, who will graduate from high school in 2021 and start at the University of Akron on a four-year scholarship if they maintain their grades. The foundation recently launched the I Promise Institute, with a team of educators and advisers to help students finish high school, get to college and graduate.
Luckily for De’Anthony’s teacher, Toni Roberts, six of her students are in the Wheels for Education program.
“Actually, it was a coincidence, but I love it,” Roberts said. “I love it because they can relate to doing the [My] Promise Pledge every day and they get to know each other better. It’s like here’s my buddy.”
She said the entire class is like family and the pledge has goals that everyone in the class can use.
“The students really do take the pledge seriously,” she said. “They choose one of the pledges that they feel they keep the best and two others they think they can improve on.”
Never give up
She encourages all 23 of her students to participate in selecting pledges they want to focus on.
The promise De’Anthony said he keeps the most is to “never give up, no matter what” and the two he wants to focus on most this year are “to live a healthy life by eating right and being active” and again to “never give up, no matter what.”
In her class, Roberts said she reinforces self-esteem, character and achievement as do the sayings she has posted on the classroom walls: “You’ll never regret doing the Right Thing,” “You are Valuable. Don’t let anyone make you believe differently” and “Never settle for less than your best.”
The Hometown Hall meetings build on those themes and family pride.
At the meetings, students are given an opportunity to share good news with the family, such as improvement in school work. De’Anthony was proud that he and classmate Jaivyn Roberts both scored 10 points higher in the state’s math skill test.
There are family games like bingo where prizes are given out. The bingo questions include a little science, math and a few easy ones like what NBA team does LeBron James play for. There are also prizes, such as $1,000 gift certificates for groceries, if an I Promise decal sticker is spotted on a car or a window in a house.
“The idea of the meetings is to get the family talking internally with one another, like you would at the dinner table,” Campbell said. “We are in such a world of TV and video games that we want to go back to an atmosphere for communication. The families are excited and try to come up with the answers together.”
Fireside chats
Something new this year are fireside chats designed to let children and parents know what the foundation is doing and to talk about some of the events.
Shanell Bussey, De’Anthony’s mother, said the program has helped both of her sons improve their grades. She also has a 12-year-old, Dai’Leon, in the program.
“It helps to have someone like LeBron James, their local hero, telling them what they need to do. It’s not just me saying you gotta do this and that. It’s LeBron saying it,” the mother said. “They are making the honor roll now and talking about going to college. They are also getting to experience different things that they normally would not have been able to do, like attend a Cleveland Cavs game and the yearly family reunion at Cedar Point.”
This year, more after-school tutoring was placed in the schools to help with reading and homework, because families said that’s what the kids needed, Campbell said.
The interaction between parents and representatives from the foundation is held before the Hometown Hall meetings so parents can speak freely. University professors from the LeBron James College of Education meet with parents in a focus group to get real feedback from parents.
The foundation has three advisory boards — a community board and two others that represent school administrators. One board is made up of elementary educators and the other, secondary school representatives.
The next Hometown Hall meeting, which includes parents, teachers, board members and the LeBron James Family Foundation members with be Jan. 26 at the Firestone/Litchfield Community Learning Center, 470 Castle Blvd.
Marilyn Miller can be reached at 330-996-3098 or mmiller@thebeaconjournal.com.