Advocacy in Reach. Supporting a Literacy Ecosystem

by Stony Evans, November 2017

All school libraries have a goal of helping create an environment that inspires and supports literacy at all levels. There are countless ways to work toward this goal. To illustrate a few of our best practices, I will emphasize how we have developed a series of library collaboration programs using class novels and share how we had our first international book club collaboration. These events have been powerful ways to promote literacy in our learning community though library programming. They have also been great events to share with our administrators and community through social media and local news as avenues for advocacy.

Class Novel Sets

One of the services we provide in the library is textbook support. This includes many class sets of novels that students check out from us each year. While being in charge of textbooks can be a tedious task, it has proven to be a positive experience since we get to see all of the students when they come to get the novels as a class; in addition, we know what they are reading.

Dust Bowl with ELA & Science

For many years our eighth grade ELA classes have read Karen Hesse's Out of the Dust as an introduction to the Dust Bowl era. This created a perfect opportunity to use the library as a space to immerse students in both the literature and the era itself. Students visit the library to experience several differentiated learning stations designed to help them to better understand the 1930s. Some of the stations include a music video of "Dust Bowl Blues" by Woody Guthrie, a recording of President Roosevelt's Dust Bowl speech after he visited the impacted areas, and artwork/images from the era. In addition, the library staff and teachers always dress as farmers and perform a skit during the program to set the stage for students.

The event has always been very popular and has proven to be an excellent way for the library to support an ecosystem of literacy. In fact, during the 2015-2016 school year, science teachers indicated they wanted to join the experience. To accommodate this, we extended the program an extra day so that two science teachers could hold experiments in the library. One showed students experiments and demonstrations about static electricity. The second had students complete water filtration experiments. Both of these additions helped connect the science curriculum to the novel's content. The evolution of this program exemplifies how the school library can support and contribute to a literacy ecosystem. Because of this program, several other similar programs have developed in grades 8-12.

International Book Club

Thanks to my librarian friends, Lynn Kleinmeyer and Elizabeth Hutchinson, we had our first national/ international book club. This is another example of how a library can support literacy in the building and beyond. Lynn is a teacher librarian in Iowa, and Elizabeth is the head of Schools' Library Service on the island of Guernsey, which is located in the English Channel. We all decided to read Wonder by R.J. Palacio during the last month of school. Lynn had the idea to have students connect to share ideas on the collaborative tool Padlet as they read the book. The application worked out beautifully as Padlet provided a digital canvas for students to write and reply to each other. I wish we had started the project earlier since there wasn't much time to explore the possibilities at the close of the year. We all made a pact to have a similar club next year.

Advocacy Angles

In both examples, there are countless possibilities for advocacy. We shared photos on social media so our learning community could see the evidence of what happened in the library. In addition, I have written a few blog articles about the Dust Bowl program so our teachers, administrators, and parents could read about the activities. Imagine how these programs potentially changed the way students viewed the books we covered. Also consider how the programs impacted our building. Teachers and administrators saw the library as an extension of the classroom and, literally, an extension of the world. As your school year progresses, begin thinking "outside of the box" about ways that the library can support the ecosystem of literacy in your building. When you have teachers and students take new risks with you, each instance is an opportunity to expand the ecosystem.