Reading, writing and role models

The guest reader plowed through the rather dry, 30-page story on an American historical figure and then showed his fifth-grade audience the tools of his trade: The shiny badge. The holstered gun. The magazines of bullets.

The notebook and pen?

"What do you think is the most important thing I carry?” Omaha Police Chief Alex Hayes asked the room of 10- and 11-year-olds on Tuesday. "Reading and writing is probably the number one thing I do on my job.”

Hayes was among 25 men chosen to read to Mount View Elementary School students this week as part of a new effort to reinforce reading and to place positive black male role models in front of children, especially those without fathers.

The program, called Real Men Read, was started by Willie Hamilton, a Mount View parent and north Omaha activist who modeled it after one he had seen in Chicago. Some of the men will read Wednesday.

The Omaha Public Schools plans to expand Real Men Read. Hamilton said the Nebraska Department of Education is interested in a statewide effort.

"I know the impact black men have not only in school but in my life,” said Hamilton, who founded and heads the grass-roots nonprofit group Black Men United, which is organizing Real Men Read.

Hamilton long has been active in community betterment. But a comment from his eldest son prompted this latest effort. Defending his decision to enter the Army, the son told Hamilton he saw no difference danger-wise between the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and "what I see in my community.”

"It really bothered me a lot,” Hamilton said.

All but one of Omaha's homicide victims this year so far were black, and 12 of 14 of them were men. The victims were killed in north Omaha or north-central Omaha.

Already involved with the OPS greeter program, which places African-American men in schools to greet children, Hamilton looked for another way to increase positive encounters with black men. He had heard about the Chicago Public Schools' Real Men Read, which, according to its website, placed 800 readers before 24,000 students in 105 schools this year. The men read monthly for an hour.

Mount View Principal Matthew Williams said Omaha's version of Real Men Read will feature guest readers for a half-hour each month in the second and fifth grades of 30 OPS elementary schools. The district is partnering with a Scholastic Books program that will provide books the children can keep.

Williams said tapping community readers "complements what we're already doing in the classroom.”

"The fact they're saying, ‘Reading is important and I'm doing it too' is really important,” Williams said.

Hamilton said the need is great given how many black men are incarcerated or absent from their children's lives. He said he's tired of "this dumb-down syndrome we have” in which it's not cool to excel in school.

"You've got to get a black man in front of these kids so they can see he's not a gang member, he's not a thug,” said Hamilton, noting that he never knew his own father. "Maybe, just maybe, they'll say, ‘I can be an Alex Hayes.'”

Hayes addressed 15 children, nine of them boys. At least two of those boys don't have fathers.

Akol Malong, 11, who was born in Ethiopia and moved to this country at age 3, said his father had died. He called Hayes' visit "awesome” and said he loves reading, pulling out for proof "Diary of a Wimpy Kid Dog Days.”

"I've read one through four” in the series, he said. "I can't wait until the fifth one comes out!”

De'Andre Wells knows he has one thing in common with the police chief. When Hayes told the fifth-graders his favorite subject was math, De'Andre blurted out a "Me, too!”

It appeared De'Andre had another love as well. Sitting in his desk were four books, including a 400-plus page novel he's reading now and a 539-page science fiction book he polished off in two days.

De'Andre's father is not in the picture, and his grandfather, who helped raise him, died several years ago. He has few males in his life, said his grandmother, Faye Douglas. She is hoping to find him a mentor.

Meanwhile, Douglas is happy to see her love of reading take root in her grandson.

"Reading is knowledge,” she said. "It can take you to far-away places.”

Contact the writer:

444-1136, erin.grace@owh.com