Chris Hays, teacher librarian, has been working at ASD ELC/ES for 2 years. I am passionate about developing in students the understanding that reading and finding information is the gateway to learn anything one is interested in discovering.
1. As you look around your library, what is a display/program/initiative that you have happening right now?
Our library is working to create forward facing displays for as many books as possible. One of the challenges stems from the popular books being borrowed and the displays becoming empty.
Most students will become disenchanted when their searches lead them to spaces without seeing the book they would like. By creating signage for the forward facing boxes, the students can easily see what book or books are supposed to be there. I find that the students are less discouraged when they know they have found the correct location and the book is just checked out at the time. They feel more confident having found the location and are more likely to ask for the book to be held.
2. What’s something new or exciting happening in your area of the library?
I am working to develop reading for the love of reading. Our school had a fourth grade teacher who worked with the others in her grade level cohort to run a mini-battle of the books. It was a great start, yet based on books in which all students at the grade level read or had as a portion of the curriculum. Additionally, the contest did not carry forward into fifth grade. Our middle school had a similar contest, yet the scale was much larger and it took just the strongest most dedicated readers to participate.
Last year, I started to create a bridge between the two styles of competition. Taking from the Battle of the Books concept in the USA and adding student initiative we created a contest for grade 5 and expanded grade 4. The expansion kept the 3 novels they had always used in class and we added a variety of high interest books in series or by a prolific author. This encouraged students to try and read 7 of the ten books independently.
In grade 5 we launched a contest with 20 books knowing the students would form teams to be able to participate. It helped to stir discussion about creating a team with peers who read different types of books. We made it clear that the contest was independent and not compulsory. Students were encouraged to write questions that would be used in the contest once they had finished a book.
The addition at fifth grade has created a few positive bridges including; giving students the freedom to make their own teams, externally driven academic students an outlet to compete, partnerships with parents looking for good stories for their children, and a positive growth mindset when moving into middle school where they have 25 books per grade.
3. Tell me about a recent moment with a patron that stuck with you?
One of our new third grade cohorts was coming to the upstairs part of the library for the first time. Upon seeing the poster of the teacher on the wall, she turned to a friend with a squee stating, “Oh my goodness! How did our teacher get up there?”
4. What’s a book (or 2–3) you’ve been recommending a lot lately?
In a strange set of events about 18 months ago I had a reluctant reader accept a copy of Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume. His enjoyment of this 50 year old book spread to his younger sibling’s class and cohort of grades 3 at the time. We currently have 6 copies “on the shelf” and the circulation rivals that of all but the most recent Diary of a Wimpy Kid book. I have not discovered a solid answer to the ‘why’ students are enjoying this aged novel in modern times.
Spotlight Project
School libraries always want to promote reading and I think the old original ALA Read posters are a great way to do this. Unfortunately there are a couple of problems with the read posters when working internationally. The first challenge is they do not always age well or they feature pop stars with a short shelf life. The second note is that what might be popular in the USA and a big hit with ALA, might not feature culturally relevant figures recognizable to our elementary population in Dubai.
All our elementary students recognize the teachers within their grade level or their specialist. So I enlist the help of the faculty to make posters featuring them, an outside interest and reading. A basic poster with a teacher reading a book is a good starting point for the project. I like to elevate the posters to feature more than a teacher reading their favorite books. It helps to find out if the volunteers want to share an insight of something they love or feature a book or series they want to share.
Once a teacher decides they would like to help and they know what they want to feature, we workshop how we might explore their “posterization”. We have a spirit wear Friday in which the teacher dress code is a little loser. As a counter one of our teachers tries to dress smart on Tuesday with the phrase ‘Top Tier’ or ‘Top Tie’ Tuesday. We leaned into this and one Tuesday I captured a photo of him with the book the Spiffiest Giant. The poster was made with a backdrop of a fancy library.
