Another view on elementary school libraries
With permission, I offer you the benefit of a reader response to my comments on elementary school libraries in the last e-mail newsletter.
You point out that NAFCS offers no real funding for elementary-school libraries. This is true, and unfortunate, but it's not the fundamental problem -- not in good ol' Georgetown, anyway.
I volunteered in the Georgetown Elementary School library from 1995 to 1997. I did a lot of uninterrupted work covering books with transparent Con-Tact paper -- not regular book covers, because there wasn't any funding. But the Con-Tact paper worked fine. So what was wrong? I WASN'T being interrupted. There were no kids there to interrupt me. I found that each class had 20 minutes a week in the library. Total. Each kid could get one book. Period.
Soon I was present during some of these periods (and got to see my then-second-grade daughter). I was a pretty good reader, and the kids liked having me read, and I liked getting to read to them (my personal favorite was The Butter Battle Book). The problem here? The adults. Any kid who came within five feet of me was shooed off for "disrespect" (hey, folks, if THEIR wishes don't deserve any respect because their birth certificates are insufficiently dog-eared, how about showing some respect for MY wish that they come closer?). When I checked their books out (one to a person), I occasionally let the kids come behind the desk and use the date stamp....
(here Bill comments on some of the reactions of teachers and teachers aides and at his request, I have redacted what he considers less than germane remembrances - RS)
...Since, as you note, the library got no funding, it depended for new accessions on donations. Since I owned more than two thousand books, including classics like Isaac Asimov's Realm of Numbers and Realm of Algebra which were certainly accessible to bright fifth- and sixth-graders -- I first read them in the fourth grade when I got them from my school library in Evansville -- I supposed, since I was volunteering anyway, that I could help out by donating a dozen or so such books. In the view of the aforesaid teachers' aide and her consoeurs (I don't know if there is such a word or not, but, being women, they certainly weren't confreres), however, the proper thing to do with an Asimov work was to toss it into an hellbox labeled "Over Our Kids' Heads" which would then be stowed in a remote corner in the hope that it would occupy enough space that the library would not overflow with oxygen and its occupants, should there be any, hyperventilate and pass out. Or maybe they hoped the Flesch Reading Ease Fairy would carry it off. No kid saw the contents of the dread box; that's for sure. I eventually got the books back.
After I gave up volunteering, I was told by several kids that they wanted me back and by several parents and teachers that the library was frequently referred to as "the mausoleum" because there was so little life in it. Not surprising, if the kids only get 20 minutes a week, have to walk on tiptoe for fear of showing "disrespect," and aren't allowed to see anything containing words not on the Dolch list. I remember spending an hour or more after school in my elementary school's library (I didn't ride the bus -- this would have been a problem if I had, I suppose). No after-school hours in Georgetown, though. We also had a whole period (48 minutes, I believe) a week and no withdrawal limit. The troubles with elementary-school libraries go deeper than money.
-- Bill Kenney
You point out that NAFCS offers no real funding for elementary-school libraries. This is true, and unfortunate, but it's not the fundamental problem -- not in good ol' Georgetown, anyway.
I volunteered in the Georgetown Elementary School library from 1995 to 1997. I did a lot of uninterrupted work covering books with transparent Con-Tact paper -- not regular book covers, because there wasn't any funding. But the Con-Tact paper worked fine. So what was wrong? I WASN'T being interrupted. There were no kids there to interrupt me. I found that each class had 20 minutes a week in the library. Total. Each kid could get one book. Period.
Soon I was present during some of these periods (and got to see my then-second-grade daughter). I was a pretty good reader, and the kids liked having me read, and I liked getting to read to them (my personal favorite was The Butter Battle Book). The problem here? The adults. Any kid who came within five feet of me was shooed off for "disrespect" (hey, folks, if THEIR wishes don't deserve any respect because their birth certificates are insufficiently dog-eared, how about showing some respect for MY wish that they come closer?). When I checked their books out (one to a person), I occasionally let the kids come behind the desk and use the date stamp....
(here Bill comments on some of the reactions of teachers and teachers aides and at his request, I have redacted what he considers less than germane remembrances - RS)
...Since, as you note, the library got no funding, it depended for new accessions on donations. Since I owned more than two thousand books, including classics like Isaac Asimov's Realm of Numbers and Realm of Algebra which were certainly accessible to bright fifth- and sixth-graders -- I first read them in the fourth grade when I got them from my school library in Evansville -- I supposed, since I was volunteering anyway, that I could help out by donating a dozen or so such books. In the view of the aforesaid teachers' aide and her consoeurs (I don't know if there is such a word or not, but, being women, they certainly weren't confreres), however, the proper thing to do with an Asimov work was to toss it into an hellbox labeled "Over Our Kids' Heads" which would then be stowed in a remote corner in the hope that it would occupy enough space that the library would not overflow with oxygen and its occupants, should there be any, hyperventilate and pass out. Or maybe they hoped the Flesch Reading Ease Fairy would carry it off. No kid saw the contents of the dread box; that's for sure. I eventually got the books back.
After I gave up volunteering, I was told by several kids that they wanted me back and by several parents and teachers that the library was frequently referred to as "the mausoleum" because there was so little life in it. Not surprising, if the kids only get 20 minutes a week, have to walk on tiptoe for fear of showing "disrespect," and aren't allowed to see anything containing words not on the Dolch list. I remember spending an hour or more after school in my elementary school's library (I didn't ride the bus -- this would have been a problem if I had, I suppose). No after-school hours in Georgetown, though. We also had a whole period (48 minutes, I believe) a week and no withdrawal limit. The troubles with elementary-school libraries go deeper than money.
-- Bill Kenney
posted by All4Word at 11:05 PM
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