With high-fives and attaboys, male role models walk the walk with middle-schoolers

Fathers, grandfathers, uncles and community members lined the walkways Wednesday morning of Lochburn Middle School in Lakewood to give support to returning students on the first day of school.

“Many of them desperately need to see positive male role models showing an active commitment to the educational lives of our children on the first day of school,” said language teacher Talia Kircher.

Kircher is a former student of Lochburn herself.

The event is part of a nationwide campaign that grew out of the Million Father March.

The men arrived early for doughnuts and coffee Wednesday and then lined up to give students “high-fives” and affirmations.

“I’m here for all of them,” said Jarrard Drummond, father of sixth-grader Dasean Anderson.

“We want all family members involved,” Lochburn principal Greg Wilson said. “But getting the dads involved, I think, is special because they don’t always get that invitation.”

“Studies have shown that as more men are visible at their children’s school that they are more prone to be more successful academically,” Kircher said.

This story was originally published August 30, 2017 at 12:34 PM with the headline "With high-fives and attaboys, male role models walk the walk with middle-schoolers."