Red Raven Football Quarterback, Cayden Cochran of Oklahoma City, Okla. read the book “Strong Man” by Meghan McCarthy to every first grade class at Community Elementary as part of the RIF program Friday.
Members of the Coffeyville Community College (CCC) Red Raven Football Team took Friday morning (Oct. 8) to promote reading to grade school kids at Community Elementary. The players volunteered their time to the Reading Is Fundamental (RIF) program. RIF is the nation’s oldest and largest nonprofit children’s literacy organization. RIF’s mission is to ensure that every child believes in the value of books and the importance of reading, to assist children and their families with the fundamental resources children need to become motivated to read and to build community-based children and family literacy programs. RIF has been a part of the Coffeyville school system for over 30 years and serves all students at Community Elementary with three book distributions per school year. Parent volunteers run the program and utilize groups in Coffeyville to assist as celebrity readers in each classroom as well as book distribution and handing out bookmarks. The Red Raven football players helped with the October 8 RIF program and read to students as well as helped with distribution and signed autographs. They talked to the kids about how important it was to read every day as well as what they like to read when they are not on the football field, studying or in the classroom. In the end everyone learned that reading is fun.