Overview of the Commission scolaire du Val-des-Cerfs’s Librarian Squad
By Ariane Régnier
According to the PIAAC survey (Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies) conducted by the OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development), 42% of adults from Quebec between 25 and 44 years old in 2012 had insufficient or weak reading competencies.
By this, we mean individuals who have difficulty reading a grocery list, a lease, or the list of ingredients from a recipe book. These statistics may be partially explained by the fact that there are fewer books per household than in other provinces, and therefore people read fewer books each year (Desrosiers et al., 2015).
But what about children? Let’s be honest; although motivation is often present, for many of them reading is difficult to learn, and even more so to love.
Reading is pedagogical. It’s a tool to learn the language they are going to use to define themselves, to communicate, to express their opinion, to debate. To read. To read in order to write. To write in order to change the world or just for fun, one word at a time. And what better way to counter apathy than to dream? To get youngsters to dream, to sway them, to make them come out of the routine in which they must, day after day, learn to become adults, humans, workers… It’s a duty, an obligation. It’s sometimes hard to make this all a positive experience, but it’s not impossible.
We know librarians who take care of one, two, or thirty-seven school libraries. We see librarians helping teachers, training students to develop information literacy skills such as the importance of citing their sources, conveying the importance of reading and learning. We see librarians reading stories, developing collections. We see librarians who must reconsider their practice each year in order to take their place, which is to take care of libraries so that the teachers and their students may enjoy an attractive, dynamic, and modern collection of books adapted to the needs and requirements of the Quebec Éducation Program (QEP), in addition to providing them with a physical environment in which they will like to evolve.
At the Commission scolaire du Val-des-Cerfs (CSVDC), the librarians have centered their interventions around a pedagogical support model which focuses on proactive customer service. Superman (Olivier Ménard), Batman (Marc Campeau), and Wonder Woman (Ariane Régnier) go around 35 elementary schools and 7 secondary schools in order to spread the pleasure of reading.
Albert Einstein reportedly said, in a famous discussion with a young mother, “If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales” (Winick, 2013). In addition to reading stories, all methods are good to hide from children that we are, in fact, trying to make them see books as games rather than learning tools.
We believe that reading speaks primarily to the emotional side of young people. The pleasure and habit of reading therefore first comes from emotion. The director of Gabrielle-Roy library in Quebec City, Marie Goyette, said a few years ago, “It’s not so much the reading that is important, but the moment shared around a book. It is this moment that can give and transmit the taste of reading” (Bergeron, 2006).
We seek to create this emotional bond when we introduce ourselves in a class. During the school year 2017-2018, the book superheroes did more than 400 educational activities in classrooms. Those activities are based on an abundance of youth literature resources drawn directly from the school libraries of the CSVDC.
Every time we can, we pick our favorite books from the school library, borrow them from the teacher’s account, and present the books in class. It’s a small attention that we try to give at the end of as many activities as possible, especially from grade three on, when the question of what to read is increasingly felt. That is why we present the activity How to Choose a Book That Fits You. But why should we read? To have fun or to learn? Should we read fiction or non-fiction books? Most activities are played with buzzer style remote controllers and the students (and teacher!) are fighting a ruthless battle to rack up more points for their team. We use hidden words puzzles, true of false questions, multiple-choice questions, charades, seek and find games (our favorites!), and even sound clips.
We are also involved in several projects to promote the development of literacy at the Maison des familles de Granby et région, and we help newcomers at Regional Ethnic Solidarity Yamaska (SERY). These various collaborations are formed from the perspective of consolidating socio-cultural partnerships that allow us to intervene with young people who are also students of the school board. We raise awareness among adults during Passe-Partout workshops, which are designed to prepare parents and their four-year-old children for their arrival in kindergarten. With the use of reading tips, examples of activities to do with children, shocking statistics, fun games, and advice on the importance of reading at home, for the past year we managed to get a positive rate of 97.5%, out of 202 responses to the question, “Have you learned any interesting tips during the conference to parents to give the taste of reading to your child?”, from parents who attended the workshops. Ninety-nine percent of the respondents warmly recommended the presentation to other parents in the years to come.
Each month, we send the Info-Biblio, a small magazine of about thirty pages that explains our work and our services, provides reading suggestions, and shows the activities that we have done in classrooms. Through an original and hip visual we include relevant articles about youth literature, pictures of what we did in schools, etc. The column Libraries around the world is particularly appreciated. All this work is done to create a craze around reading, an excitement, a sense of belonging among students, teachers, and other employees of the school board.
If the diversification of language acquisition in the child relies on their family environment (e.g. car, automobile, vehicle), a big part of the work also comes from the pedagogical actors supporting the child’s development. Often, in grade four, the children will come across difficulties related to more complex words that will require more effort (Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec, 2003). That is why we suggest games such as Méli-mélo de mots, an activity that challenges children to discover the words (charades) that are presented on the screen. Each educational activity is fashioned according to the needs of the students and the teacher.
This collaborative work has created a culture that allowed the librarians to supervise and carry out collection development in the school libraries, which is not always the case in Quebec. By working in close collaboration with the teachers, the volunteers and the school staff, it was possible for us to develop valuable collections that are adapted to the needs of the different school environments, and to promote those incredible resources with pedagogical activities in the classrooms. All this, thanks to the pleasure of working together with trust, and mutual respect.
We are often told that the teacher is responsible for at least 75% of the work to bring about the pleasure of learning in the students. We think that it is similar for the librarian and the pleasure of reading: by having ourselves a positive, enthusiastic, and dynamic stance, we are offered the incredible opportunity to complement the work of teachers, but most of all, to influence the journey and vision of young people towards reading.
None of this would be possible without the trust and collaboration of school principals, teachers, and school board managers who believe in us. Together, we can make a difference… one book at a time.
References
Bergeron, U. (2006). Il était une fois le plaisir de lire. Le Devoir, Repéré à https://www.ledevoir.com/societe/123046/il-etait-une-fois-le-plaisir-de-lire
CSVDC. (2018). Bilan annuel de l’Escouade des bibliothécaires de la CSVDC en 2017-2018. Document inédit.
Desrosiers, H. et al. (2015). Les compétences en littératie, en numératie et en résolution de problèmes dans des environnements technologiques: des clefs pour relever les défis du XXIe siècle. Rapport québécois du Programme pour l’évaluation internationale des compétences des adultes (PEICA), Québec, Institut de la statistique du Québec, 249 p.
Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec. (2003). Les difficultés d’apprentissage à l’école. Cadre de référence pour guider l’intervention, Gouvernement du Québec, Ministère de l’Éducation du Québec, Repéré à http://www.education.gouv.qc.ca/fileadmin/site_web/documents/education/adaptation-scolaire-services-comp/19-7051.pdf
Provencher, J. (2014). Trucs Lecture, pour transmettre l’amour de la lecture aux petits et aux grands. CARD, Québec, 74 p.
Winick, S. (2013, 18 décembre). Einstein’s folklore [Billet de blogue]. Repéré à https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/2013/12/einsteins-folklore/
Ariane Régnier is a member of the Superheroes of Books Squad and a professional librarian at the Val des Cerfs School Board in Montérégie, Quebec. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Literature from the University of Sherbrooke and a Master’s degree in Information Science from the University of Montreal. Among other things, she likes to hit her colleagues with foam swords and lift weights that are too heavy for her.