Students from Piscataway High School and Eisenhower Elementary School continue to work together on expanding partnerships that benefit the younger children and their teenage peers!

The young men from the PHS 50 Strong mentorship group returned to Eisenhower on March 25 for their monthly sessions with boys in Grades 1-3. They decorated bookmarks, read together in the spirit of Read Across America, and enjoyed a fun game of Human Bingo. To play the game, each mentor and mentee had to ask each other questions to fill in their Bingo boards, which contained facts like, “loves pizza” and “is afraid of spiders.” Counselor Rodney West is the adviser for 50 Strong.

That same day, peer-to-peer mentoring expanded to Eisenhower girls, as well. Members of the PHS mentoring group Ladies of Inspiration, Fortitude, and Talent (LIFT) engaged girls in Grades 1-3 in a large group ice breakers followed by smaller mentee-mentor groups to get to know each other better.  The students closed out their first mentoring session with a fun high-energy game of Castle Ball. 

The wonderful opportunity for the older and younger girls to connect, which will continue monthly as well, was created collaboratively by Eisenhower Principal Vincenzo Stio, Vice Principal Diane Mosko, and Behaviorist Sara Haarburger, and PHS LIFT advisers Dawne Dionisio, Mawiyah Husbands, and Shar-Mekka Pernell, in coordination with District Supervisor of Special Projects Noel Aprile.

For Eisenhower kindergartners, Reading Buddies has been an incredible partnership with the PHS Future Educators Association and National English Honor Society. Since the beginning of February, PHS students have been working with Eisenhower kindergartners to build skills in phonemic awareness, decoding, and encoding.

Thank you to PHS faculty members Jillian Alonso, Briana Bennett, Kelly Chilakos, Michelle Klastava, and Joy Scott for their collaboration with Eisenhower’s Support Specialists Janelle Burley, Stacey Cukierski, and Lisa Pizzuti in giving students these meaningful and impactful experiences. #PwayLearns #PwayInspires