As the child of a language arts teacher who grew up to be a teacher themselves, I remember “Take Your Child to Work Day” fondly. It was the day I got to go to my mother’s school instead of my own. The day I got to see the lesson plans she wrote at home come to life, including the soap dolls students carved when they read To Kill a Mockingbird.
My mother had “class sets” of To Kill a Mockingbird and every other novel she taught. Nearly two decades later, with investment in public education at risk, such class sets are rare. We had few in the elementary school I worked in. My niblings have to provide their own copies of the books their language arts teachers assign.
The New “Class Sets”
I got to talking about this with one of the librarians at my favorite local branch. She mentioned that the library can secure additional copies through Libby ahead of time if they anticipate a demand for them. Ideally, teachers should reach out to their public library with a list of titles students will need and when they’ll need them. She said that few teachers realize that the public library can do this—I know I didn’t!
Just last week, I presented at the Council for Exceptional Children’s first ever inter-division conference, UnifiED. Secondary special education teachers in attendance expressed frustration that decoding difficulties often limit their students’ access to text. They spoke of language arts teachers who don’t consider listening to the audiobooks “reading.” They shared about bringing students to another room to listen to the audiobook of assigned texts, but also the logistical complications of this taking more time than silent reading. I was so excited to pass along what my public librarian had told me about Libby. While these teachers’ students each have a Chromebook they can take home, they were concerned about those without reliable Internet. We discussed how Libby allows users to download checked out materials so they are available offline.
When I got back into town, I returned the books I had checked out to use for my UnifiED presentation. The aforementioned librarian happened to be at the circulation desk. I told her I’d spread the word at the conference. And she said she’d secured additional copies of a book on Libby for a teacher since she’d seen me last!
All this to say: please reach out to schools in your area if this is something your library is willing and able to do. You can rest assured that I’ll keep spreading the word amongst my fellow educators!
This blog post relates to ALSC Core Competency V: Outreach and Advocacy.
The post Public Libraries and the New “Class Sets” for Language Arts Classrooms appeared first on ALSC Blog.
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