BATON ROUGE — LSU men’s basketball player Garrett Temple participated in Literacy Night at Greenbrier Elementary School on Tuesday night as part of the Shaquille O’Neal CHAMPS/Life Skills program.
As part of Literacy Night, several mystery readers came to the school to read Dr. Seuss books to the audience of elementary school children and their parents. Temple, a member of the Southeastern Conference Good Works Team and the LSU Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, read to a group of students on the special “Cat in the Hat” themed stage, while also visiting with the children, signing autographs and taking pictures.
Earlier this month, beloved children’s author Dr. Seuss celebrated his birthday and the month of March has been dedicated to literacy in his memory. In addition, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the beloved Seuss book “The Cat in the Hat”.
For the evening, students from various grades in the elementary school were joined by past students who have since moved on to middle school and their parents to celebrate literacy. The event was also scheduled during the Greenbrier Elementary book fair.
The CHAMPS (Challenging Athletes Minds for Personal Success)/Life Skills Program was designed by the NCAA to help student-athletes realize higher academic achievement, increase likelihood of graduation and enter a chosen profession with a higher level of vision, knowledge, motivation, self-responsibility and greater overall success. In Spring 2003, the CHAMPS/ Life Skills Program honored one of LSU’s most memorable graduates, Shaquille O’Neal, by naming the program after him.