New year, new direction
So, I leave for New Jersey tomorrow, for a two-day orientation at Rutgers before coming home to the RGV and starting my coursework online. Oh, the wonders of continuing education in the 21st century! As my coworker Rob so delicately put it, I'll be getting my master's in the Dewey Decimal system. In other words, becoming a School Library Media specialist. Yay, me!
One of the tips offered on the MLIS orientation website was to keep "a diary or chronicle and reflect upon what type of librarian you are becoming." To that end, and because my LJ is sorely lacking for love and meaningful content these days, I've done a small LJ makeover and will be attempting to update regularly with entries chronicling my journey into Libary and Information Science. Try to contain your excitement. :)
To start things off, here is the statement of purpose that I wrote as part of my application to Rutgers' back in July. If I do say so myself, it's a pretty compelling argument for my decision to become a school librarian. Read and enjoy!
“Miss, do you have Gathering Blue?” Reuel, one of my brightest sixth grade reading students, was standing in front of my desk clutching a worn copy of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, which I had suggested he read just two days earlier. Now he wanted the sequel. I smiled.
“No, Reuel, I don’t, but the library probably does. Did you check there?”
“They don’t have it, Miss.”
I hated seeing that defeated look on the face of a student as excited about reading as Reuel. “Okay, don’t worry. I’ll go to Barnes and Noble tonight and get a copy for our classroom, all right?”
I’ll never forget the huge grin on Reuel’s face the next day, when I handed him a brand-new copy of Gathering Blue and told him he got to be the “preview reader” of the novel for our class. My student’s excitement was priceless compared whatever I’d had to pay to get the book into his hands.
As a member of Teach for America working in an impoverished area of the country, I had known that I would have to deal with many challenges as I pushed my students to make academic gains. But, as a reading teacher, I hadn’t imagined that the biggest of those challenges would come from the school library. Reading teachers-or any teachers, for that matter-shouldn’t have to beg the librarians to let them check out class sets of novels, or be limited to taking their class to the library only once a month. But at my school and many others in the region, that was the reality. As I looked around me and as I listened to stories from colleagues at other schools, I realized that quality school libraries just weren’t a priority in the Rio Grande Valley.
I had begun my two years of teaching reading at Grulla Middle School with a sense of idealism. I loved reading and learning; I would inspire my students to feel the same way. But the challenge was far greater than I had anticipated. My students, by and large, saw reading as a chore. They didn’t voluntarily read independently and they would rather sit in class and work on homework during “preferred activity time” than visit the school library. I wondered time and again what was wrong.
Slowly, during my first year of teaching, I worked to change this dynamic. I obtained class sets of high-interest novels for my students, buying them out of my pocket when I couldn’t get our librarians to order them for me. We turned our classroom into Narnia and drew life-sized character posters of the heroes from Ella Enchanted. We envisioned The Tiger Rising as a movie and wrote poems about the Holocaust to accompany Number the Stars. In my second year of teaching, I had students who had moved on to seventh grade come back and tell me how fondly they remembered the novels we’d studied in my class.
Then, in my second year, just a few days after I gave Reuel Gathering Blue, I spotted a hand-written note tucked between the locked library doors: “Dear Librarians, Please keep the library open more so we can read more.” It frustrated me that there wasn’t more that I could do to promote reading at our school, and I wasn’t getting any help from our school librarian. The note-writer had a point, I realized. In the last month, the library had been closed almost as much as it had been open. No wonder I couldn’t get more library time scheduled for my students!
In relating my struggles to a friend later that evening, I realized that there was something more I could do to promote reading for my school students, to change the Rio Grande Valley’s attitude toward libraries-I could become a librarian! I marveled that I hadn’t thought of it before. So much of students’ feelings about reading and learning, I had realized, come from their experiences with the library. If it’s an unpleasant place to visit, or a hardship to check out books, students just won’t go there. I dreamed of a school library where a love of reading was in the air. By becoming a school librarian, I could make that dream a reality.
In pursuit of this goal, I’ve chosen to apply to Rutgers because of the program’s top ranking for students seeking to become School Library Media Specialists. Rutgers’ online degree option will enable me to pursue this degree while also remaining in the Rio Grande Valley, where I can continue to work for educational excellence in Valley schools as I work towards my MLIS degree. I am excited not only about embarking on this new phase in my education, but also in the work it will enable me to do for students who need it the most.
One of the tips offered on the MLIS orientation website was to keep "a diary or chronicle and reflect upon what type of librarian you are becoming." To that end, and because my LJ is sorely lacking for love and meaningful content these days, I've done a small LJ makeover and will be attempting to update regularly with entries chronicling my journey into Libary and Information Science. Try to contain your excitement. :)
To start things off, here is the statement of purpose that I wrote as part of my application to Rutgers' back in July. If I do say so myself, it's a pretty compelling argument for my decision to become a school librarian. Read and enjoy!
“Miss, do you have Gathering Blue?” Reuel, one of my brightest sixth grade reading students, was standing in front of my desk clutching a worn copy of Lois Lowry’s The Giver, which I had suggested he read just two days earlier. Now he wanted the sequel. I smiled.
“No, Reuel, I don’t, but the library probably does. Did you check there?”
“They don’t have it, Miss.”
I hated seeing that defeated look on the face of a student as excited about reading as Reuel. “Okay, don’t worry. I’ll go to Barnes and Noble tonight and get a copy for our classroom, all right?”
I’ll never forget the huge grin on Reuel’s face the next day, when I handed him a brand-new copy of Gathering Blue and told him he got to be the “preview reader” of the novel for our class. My student’s excitement was priceless compared whatever I’d had to pay to get the book into his hands.
As a member of Teach for America working in an impoverished area of the country, I had known that I would have to deal with many challenges as I pushed my students to make academic gains. But, as a reading teacher, I hadn’t imagined that the biggest of those challenges would come from the school library. Reading teachers-or any teachers, for that matter-shouldn’t have to beg the librarians to let them check out class sets of novels, or be limited to taking their class to the library only once a month. But at my school and many others in the region, that was the reality. As I looked around me and as I listened to stories from colleagues at other schools, I realized that quality school libraries just weren’t a priority in the Rio Grande Valley.
I had begun my two years of teaching reading at Grulla Middle School with a sense of idealism. I loved reading and learning; I would inspire my students to feel the same way. But the challenge was far greater than I had anticipated. My students, by and large, saw reading as a chore. They didn’t voluntarily read independently and they would rather sit in class and work on homework during “preferred activity time” than visit the school library. I wondered time and again what was wrong.
Slowly, during my first year of teaching, I worked to change this dynamic. I obtained class sets of high-interest novels for my students, buying them out of my pocket when I couldn’t get our librarians to order them for me. We turned our classroom into Narnia and drew life-sized character posters of the heroes from Ella Enchanted. We envisioned The Tiger Rising as a movie and wrote poems about the Holocaust to accompany Number the Stars. In my second year of teaching, I had students who had moved on to seventh grade come back and tell me how fondly they remembered the novels we’d studied in my class.
Then, in my second year, just a few days after I gave Reuel Gathering Blue, I spotted a hand-written note tucked between the locked library doors: “Dear Librarians, Please keep the library open more so we can read more.” It frustrated me that there wasn’t more that I could do to promote reading at our school, and I wasn’t getting any help from our school librarian. The note-writer had a point, I realized. In the last month, the library had been closed almost as much as it had been open. No wonder I couldn’t get more library time scheduled for my students!
In relating my struggles to a friend later that evening, I realized that there was something more I could do to promote reading for my school students, to change the Rio Grande Valley’s attitude toward libraries-I could become a librarian! I marveled that I hadn’t thought of it before. So much of students’ feelings about reading and learning, I had realized, come from their experiences with the library. If it’s an unpleasant place to visit, or a hardship to check out books, students just won’t go there. I dreamed of a school library where a love of reading was in the air. By becoming a school librarian, I could make that dream a reality.
In pursuit of this goal, I’ve chosen to apply to Rutgers because of the program’s top ranking for students seeking to become School Library Media Specialists. Rutgers’ online degree option will enable me to pursue this degree while also remaining in the Rio Grande Valley, where I can continue to work for educational excellence in Valley schools as I work towards my MLIS degree. I am excited not only about embarking on this new phase in my education, but also in the work it will enable me to do for students who need it the most.