School Library

Introduction

After introducing my students to the importance of literacy through the public library, it was very important to me that they have access to a variety of books on our campus as well. Our campus is a kindergarten to first grade branch campus with 8 classrooms and approximately 200 students, and until I took on this project we had no school library. The books from our new school library can be used in the classroom, at the library location which is inside our multi-purpose room, and at home with a checkout system I created.

Through this project, I fought against the systemic injustice of not having a school library on behalf of my young students. In turn, my students learned about the inequity of opportunities created by not having a place at school designated for reading. They also learned that they had power to create changes in our system. They then used their collective assets to advocate for activities that they wanted, such as letter writing to get permission for community members to come visit our library.

Purpose

Children from families with a lower socio-economic status "have less access to learning materials and experiences, including books... [necessary] to create a positive literacy environment" at home (American Psychology Association, 2019). In order to combat this, I wanted to make sure that my students were provided with a literacy-rich environment at school that they could bring home. Part of advocacy is fighting injustices, and my students not having access to literacy materials from a young age is an injustice that can create a learning gap between them and their wealthier peers that may last the rest of their lives.

My students understood this injustice and learned how to advocate for themselves by writing a group letter to our administration explaining how we would like to share this resource with another group of people who might not have access to libraries - elderly people. My students asked our administration for permission to share our new resource after we created it and learned the importance of advocating through letter writing.

Planning

In order to create the library, I knew that I would need to find a space for it, work with other teachers and administrators to gather materials, and complete the large task of organizing and making books accessible to all students at school and at home. For the space, I chose our multi-purpose room because all other spaces on campus are currently in use. I then began to gather resources.

Here is an email exchange between myself and our school's literacy director about my initial plans for the library. He works on our main campus, which serves students 2nd to 7th grade, and we had previously discussed in person the books that he might have available for us to use at our K-1 campus. These books were a collection of picture books and early readers, leftover from the main campus and also donated from families whose children had outgrown them. This is what I used as a starting point for our library creation.

Creation

One of my largest goals with this project was to make sure that our library was accessible to young students on their own. We do not have a school librarian, so my purpose was to create a system that teachers could use where students would be able to re-sort the books themselves. With this in mind, I created a pictorial sorting system that would be useable by pre-literate students.

Our finished library took approximately thirty hours to complete (ten hours of work with our volunteers, and twenty additional hours where I worked on my own). This time was spent sorting and labeling the books, creating pictorial labels for each bin and section, and then organizing the books into their corresponding areas. I was able to purchase bins, foam seats, a carpet, and curtains to protect the books when the library is not in use with a $200 budget from the school. I finished physically sorting books into the book bins, and then sorted each bin into larger categories such as "People", "Animals", and "STEAM" to make the bins easier to find.

Student Reflections

In order to ensure the projects' success with students and to hear and implement student feedback, I tested the system out on my class first. We visited the library twice in the first week after its creation to practice using the materials and see if my students were able to sort books independently as intended.

Developing Community and Advocating for Future Use

Part of helping my students appreciate this resource also involved explaining the injustice of not having a library on campus. I showed them pictures of different libraries around the world and explained how these libraries were resources for entire communities to learn and grow together.

After reading "Last Stop on Market Street" by Matt de la Peña about a boy and his grandmother helping their community at a soup kitchen, my students created written responses about how they would like to help our community. One of my students connected the idea of helping others with using the library in his written response displayed below.

I reached out to a local retirement home multiple times over the course of two months to try to arrange the meeting with some elderly community members. Unfortunately, due to growing COVID-19 concerns and the particular physical vulnerability of elderly people, we were not able to make this happen this year. My class and I also discussed using this opportunity to invite their own grandparents and elderly relatives as well, but again we were unable to due to school closure.

Future Uses

In the future, as our school continues to expand, our first grade classes will move to a different campus and our current campus will become a kindergarten and pre-kindergarten location only. This should result in fewer classrooms being used, and more space available for resources rooms. With this in mind, I hope that our library will be moved to its own room so that it can be used more often. Our current multi-purpose room is used as a cafeteria and gym as well as a library, which limits the time that students can spend there. However, if a new space becomes available for the library, the systems I have created should be easily moveable in a way that will keep the books sorted and still accessible for all students.

If school reopens this spring, we also hope to be able to complete our plan to have visitors come to our library. As my students wrote in their appeal to our administration, inviting people to read in the library is a way to build community connections and make people feel happy. My students felt empowered by being to advocate for themselves through letter writing, but I would like to be able to complete this event so that they can have the full experience of advocating for an activity they want and having their plans come to fruition.

Conclusion

Having access to literacy resources is something that people often take for granted, but my students and I found that the resources they had available through our school were lacking. With this in mind, I advocated on behalf of my students by creating, organizing, and instituting a library for our campus that is accessible to all students. My students in turn learned how to advocate for themselves by giving input into how they would like the library to be organized as well as petitioning for an opportunity to share this resource with an often neglected population. Data suggests that early childhood reading competency correlates with children's home literacy access and the number of books their families own (Aikens & Barbarin, 2008). My students may not be able to afford many books independently, so it was imperative for me to take action and find a way to make these resources available to them for free through our school.

I believe that creating this resource for my students will not only make them more confident and competent readers - it will also create a lasting impact on our school in a way that can benefit future students for years to come. My students will also understand how they can have an impact on their campus by voicing their opinions, writing letters, and speaking out about injustices that they see and experience in their daily lives.

References

Aikens, N. L., & Barbarin, O. (2008). Socioeconomic differences in reading trajectories: The contribution of family, neighborhood, and school contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100, 235-251. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.235

American Psychological Association. (2019). Education and socioeconomic status. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pi/ses/resources/publications/education.aspx

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