By Carol Koechlin & Anita Brooks Kirkland
As this most epic of school years draws to a close, we offer up some friendly advice for moving forward.
Keep them Reading, Thinking, and Making this Summer
This has been a chaotic school year for students. Among other disparities many have had very little access if any to the library learning commons, thus independent reading has been a challenge. We know that reading for pleasure has many positive spin-offs for learners. What we don’t know is how much damage has been done because students have not had the best opportunities to find books of interest for such an extended time.
In spite of so many physical libraries being shuttered from students, many teachers and school library professionals have initiated some very innovative programs to keep learners engaged in reading. Everything from making classroom visits with rolling book carts to online story-time and access to digital books have been initiated to try to fill the gap. Many teacher-librarians have taken the LLC to the virtual world and extended their websites to become a virtual learning commons environment. In this edition discover how Beth Lyons has utilized virtual space to continue literacy based inquiry and keep students reading, thinking and making.
If you and your students are actually present at school (we mean bodily present!) then we strongly encourage you to set your books free for the summer. Trust your students to take good care of these most treasured resources. Our research says that they will return what they borrowed, to say nothing of experiencing the joy of reading over the summer.
Send your students to the public library! Libraries across the country run the TD Summer Reading Club, and this year that club is online! This is a great opportunity to keep students reading and stimulated.
Be a Library Activist
These are precarious times, and you are exhausted. We know that. Despite the uncertainties about next school year, there are some hopeful signs for school libraries as we emerge from the pandemic. We encourage you to read about recent advocacy successes and envision how school libraries can lead for the future. As they say, we are all in this together, and together we can lead learning for the future.
Wishing you the very best for the end of the school year. As you take some time to renew and refresh over the summer, we hope you’ll do just a little bit of dreaming about future possibilities.