Blog

Most of you who have been at RAA a while are familiar with our Kindergarten Buddies system where our 5th Graders and Kindergartners are partnered up for fun activities and community building. From having the 5th graders reading to or with the kindergartners to going on scavenger hunts looking for different kinds of plants to working on art projects together, this has been a decades-long tradition here at RAA.

We know this has been fun and something to look forward to for our students from the time they start in kindergarten to the time they reach 5th grade and get to be buddies themselves. Well, why stop there? This week we decided to build on this tradition by extending the buddy system beyond 5th grade when we brought our 6th graders and 1st graders together. We hope to continue this tradition of mentorship and community building until all grades get to participate, keeping their buddy or buddies all the way through until both graduate. We hope that by creating a longer-term mentorship program, it will allow our students to learn from each other, develop life skills, create memories, and have a strong supportive community that they can lean on.

For now, our 6th graders spent time reading to their first grade buddies with smiles all around, sometimes dual partnered, but in the coming weeks, our 5th graders will get their kindergarten buddies too. It’s always so much fun seeing the older students be kind and helping the younger ones, and the younger ones recognizing their buddies on campus and going to visit them. We can’t wait to see the fun that this will bring.

Speaking of teamwork and camaraderie, our high school varsity boys flag football team (what a mouthful of a title) made history. They took on our longtime friendly rivals, Loma Linda Academy, and won! It was amazing to see, watching their teamwork and skills come together as a group to achieve something they had never accomplished before. Next time you see them, give them a big congratulations!