St. Philip's third-graders named Minnesota state reading champions

A third-grade class at St. Philip’s Catholic School in Bemidji turned a free, four-week reading contest into a Minnesota title, giving Beltrami County a rare literacy spotlight at a time when third-grade reading remains a serious statewide concern.

Monica Barrette’s third-grade class was named Minnesota State Reading Champions through READBowl IX: The World Championship of Reading, a PreK-12 competition built around reading minutes. The contest runs for four weeks, beginning the week before the college football national championship and ending on Super Bowl Sunday, with state winners announced at the close of the event.

St. Philip’s Catholic School lists Barrette as a grade 3 teacher at 702 Beltrami Ave NW in Bemidji. READBowl’s rules say a team is a group or class of at least eight students, and third grade competes in the Big Three Conference. The format favors sustained reading across the full competition window, making the Bemidji class’s finish a sign of steady daily participation rather than a one-day burst.

The recognition also carries weight beyond one classroom. Minnesota Compass identifies third-grade reading as a key statewide data area, and an analysis of Minnesota Department of Education MCA results found that more than 54 percent of Minnesota third graders were not proficient in reading. Against that backdrop, a state title from a local Catholic school in Bemidji stands out as more than a feel-good award. It points to a classroom where reading time, consistency and student buy-in were strong enough to hold up against teams across Minnesota.

READBowl is run by Read With Malcolm, the youth literacy initiative of Malcolm Mitchell’s Share the Magic Foundation. Mitchell, a former New England Patriots player and Super Bowl champion, has said discovering a love of reading was his greatest achievement. The foundation says it has focused on literacy since 2016, building the competition around the idea that reading can change a child’s future.

READBowl IX drew students from all 50 states and 19 countries, and participants logged more than 800 million reading minutes worldwide. For Bemidji, the result puts St. Philip’s in a national literacy network while underscoring a local lesson with countywide relevance: sustained reading habits, supported inside one classroom, can produce measurable results in a state where too many third graders are still falling short.