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| Slow Down and Read! |
Do you ever get the feeling that kids are just too cool for the library these days? They’ working so hard to be cutting edge, on top of the next wave, prove they’re in the loop - it’s a lot of work. Just keeping up with the chatter on facebook and twitter is a full time job. Then there’s I-tunes, the mall and the movies...no wonder there’s no time to go to the library, and besides who wants to spend all their time with their head in a book? (Besides me, I don’t count)
Bella Grace Tyler of Norwich, C.T. does AND she’s having fun doing it. Debra Lau Whelan introduced me to Bella Grace last week in her School Library Journal article, Library Inspires Second Grader to Start 1,000 Books Read-a-Thon. Fortunately, Bella Grace doesn’t yet realize that she’s not having fun, she actually LOVES going to the library and reading so much that she started her own read-a-thon to see if she could read 1,000 books in a year. Bella Grace got hooked on reading last summer when The Otis Library ran a reading contest that let kids earn points for every hour they read, Bella couldn’t get enough. She went to the library almost everyday, blew through her summer reading list and came up with the 1,000 book challenge for herself. She has read 800 books since June 18, 2010.
The Otis Library couldn’t ask for a more enthusiastic spokeskid,
“The library has great books for free, super nice librarians who help me, and fun programs where I can read and do arts and crafts. If I have to pick on a scale of one to 10 where 10 is the best, then it's a 10-plus. Every time I go to Otis library it's like Christmas!”
No, the Bella Grace is not on the payroll, she is an old fashioned kid who has been protected from all the ‘fun’ she’s supposed to be having with technology and modern American culture and allowed to discover what kids (and grown ups) have known for centuries: reading is enjoyable.
The students who come into my classroom each September are changing. They are increasingly hostile about reading, when they first arrive they groan and roll their eyes when it is independent reading time. I ignore them because I know that my classroom is a detox program for our culture. At first, it is painful. They miss the constant flashing lights, the instant feedback and the stream of images telling them how to look and act. They have trouble focusing on print, sitting still for more than five minutes and getting lost in a story, but in my classroom the choices are limited. There are books, magazines, paper, pencils, plants, a frog tank, sunny windows and quiet. I keep reading and they keep reading and slowly the tide begins to turn. The only reason it works every year is because in my room reading and thinking are cool and books don’t have to compete with glitzy or violent entertainment options. The kids have the time to discover that reading is fun (especially when you find the right books) and doing your best actually makes you feel pretty good about yourself - and they are not embarrassed to admit it.
Bella Grace and the kids in Norwich are lucky to have the Otis Library, it is a reading resort with a full line up of book clubs, programs, activities and engaging events. They recently ran a contest to name the new children’s room mascot, a Russian, four toed tortoise. Eighty kids stopped by the library to vote on the name Toodles. Now Toodles has a list of her favorite books to share with kids. This is what John Cotton Dana advocated 100 years ago - meeting the needs of patrons, demonstrating that the library is relevant and allowing readers to find the things that excite them.
Bella Grace Tyler is a great example of what libraries can offer kids, not more of the same, but a break from the relentless pressure to be connected, entertained and cool (and to spend money doing it). Sure, these things are fun but if we don’t protect our kids they may never discover that reading is too.
It’s Friday afternoon and my students are racing around the library, pulling books out, looking at the cover for 2 seconds and then shoving them back in. “Slow down,” I remind them, “read a few pages, see what you think. Remember how we practiced looking for the ‘just right’ book?” I breathe deeply and try to hang onto my patience while I watch them skip from shelf to shelf. The truth is they only have 10 minutes to find a book and check it out, their adrenaline is flowing from the P.E. class they just finished and they are 10 yrs. old.
Our school librarian retired last year and the district decided she would not be replaced. ‘Library’ is not a mandated curriculum extension subject in N.Y. so it was quickly swept out of the schedule and replaced with another P.E. class. I love P.E., I wish my students could have it everyday BUT they also need time in the library, especially if we actual want them to love books and reading. It’s like asking someone to become a chef and then giving them 10 minutes in the kitchen (a week) and letting them pick one ingredient.
Teachers now have a weekly 10 minute time slot to allow their students to select a book. 10 minutes. Are you kidding me? I can’t even get past the magazine rack in 10 minutes. Finding the right book takes time, it’s like finding the perfect pair of jeans, these things can’t be rushed. But, alas, this is the reality in 2010, so the students race around, grab a book and check it out - 1 per week - only to bring it home and discover it’s not the right book. The next day it is back in the return box and kids are pawing through my measly classroom library (that I have purchased and collected on my own)..
William Hite, the superintendent of Prince George’s County Public Schools, announced that he would like to fire 90 school librarians in 2012 in order to close the $85.7 budget shortfall in the district. 90 school librarians. It would save the district $7.4 million but what would it cost the children? Where are they going to learn about the library? Who will read a book to them that sparks their imagination? When will they sit in beanbags and listen to a book on CD? What will happen to Prince George’s $250,000 collection of books and materials?
New York, my home state, is thinking about eliminating library and media information classes in middle school in order to ease their budget woes. David Steiner, the commissioner of education in New York, says he understands the importance of the library and is “discussing a set of cost containment and mandate relief options. These proposals could increase local flexibility and reduce certain existing requirements—without adversely impacting the essential elements of education reform or student health and safety and, where possible, improve educational outcomes.”
First of all, who talks like that? And secondly, I hope he bring his magic wand to the discussion.
Of course some kids are lucky, they have parents that already take them to the public library every week or they live close enough to a library to walk or ride their bike on their own. But most of them are not lucky - the library will become a memory, something they used to do and they will soon forget about. Students who begin pre-k and kindergarten next year will never have the chance to listen to a librarian read to them, learn how to find books they love or where to find information about their favorite author. The irony is that while districts slash library funding with one hand, they pile on new literacy and technology standards with the other. The solution, in their minds is that teachers, who are having such an easy time educating students as it is, can now increase their class size, reach ever higher common core standards and incorporate the library curriculum - all in 10 minutes a week. No problem.
I have a vague memory of elementary school librarians explaining how to use the card catalog (remember card catalogs?) and the Dewey Decimal systems. I recall the unsettling feeling of confusion as I looked at all the tiny numbers and followed the librarian through rows and rows of books while glancing sideways at my classmates to see if I was the only clueless one ...
Thirty some years later I have discovered that the Dewey Decimal system is not that difficult, in fact it’s really quite clever and very practical. Here are the cliff notes: Melville Dewey divided all knowledge into 10 classes (religion, history, language, etc. ), each class was segmented into 10 divisions and each division dissected into 10 sections. Therefore, all books can be organized by precise subject and by number. For instance, a book on butterflies would have the number 595.789 because 500 is natural science, 90 is zoological science, 5 is other invertebrates, .7 is insects, .08 is lepidoptera and .009 is butterflies. Believe it or not, every new book is assigned a Dewey Decimal number by a division of the Library of Congress (I think this means an actual person!) and then the number gets approved by OCLC (the Online Computer Library Center) - imagine how the books would stack up if you were out sick for a day or two? Currently, the DDC is mostly used by public libraries and k-12 schools (about 200,000) in 135 countries but academic libraries have taken up with Dewey’s rival, The Library of Congress Classification.
The Library of Congress System (LC) was developed to organize the books in the Library of Congress. The LC system added classes into its system only when they were needed to add a new book in the Library. This approach made it easier to add branches for new areas of knowledge (computer science and engineering) and incorporate new subject matter that Melville Dewey never imagined! The system uses 21 letters of the alphabet for initial classes ( T is for technology, but they don’t all work out that neatly) and each letter has alphabetical subclasses and is then further classified by numbers. The authors last name and the publication date are added under the LC code and the result is a unique four line name for every book in the library. The LC system is more efficient in academic libraries that have larger, comprehensive collections.
And all this time I have just been writing down the number and following the little signs on the shelf. Tomorrow I will tackle the most interesting thing about either system - Melville Dewey. He may have been a rockin’ librarian but he was about as eccentric as they come....
