Tuesday, January 25, 2022

Mobile Library Project from Empower Youth Leaders


The Empower Youth Leaders (EYL) have teamed up with CVSD Librarians to deliver “mobile bookshelves” to our K-8 schools. Empower Youth Leaders is a CVSD student organization that meets weekly, with a goal to promote Social Emotional Learning (S.E.L.) for our schools through community service projects.

The middle schoolers from EYL developed a plan to procure a mobile bookshelf for each of the CVSD K-8 schools. A Mobile Bookshelf is a moveable bookshelf on wheels. The bookshelf will house books that students can take home to build their home libraries. We are hoping that these books will promote social emotional learnings skills to kids, as they open doors to different journeys through reading.

Students will be able to keep the books that they choose from the mobile bookshelf. There is no need to return the book the the school library. Have fun reading!
 




Here are some potential questions you may have, answered by the EYL students.

How are the students expecting to manage the donation process? We are only using books that are planned to be thrown out from classrooms, and libraries. These books will already have been evaluated, so librarians, or students will not have to re-evaluate them.

Students may have some confusion about the mobile bookshelf and the school library: about which books are the library's - and must be returned - and which books are free for them to keep? How will we indicate that clearly enough between the library and the mobile bookshelf so that our students know the difference? The Mobile bookshelf will be in the hallways not the library. And it will have signs to explain the difference too.

Where will the bookshelf live? Will there be signage around it that indicates that it's not part of the school library? When will students have access to it? The Mobile bookshelves will be in the hallways so that it is more accessible to students. We will label it as the mobile bookshelf, and we will decorate it to show that it is the mobile bookshelf with decorations and signs, and we hope that we can make some announcements in the morning to inform about the bookshelf and help prevent any confusion.

Will it work like a free little library, in which students are swapping books when they take one? If so, extra management of content is required. These books are to be taken from the mobile bookshelf and taken home. This is a way for kids to get access to books that they may not have at home. They will not need to swap any books. These are just to take home without having to swap any book in return.

There is also the issue of the physical quality of donations. I have had many people enthusiastically donate books that are in terrible shape: ripped, stained, and not appealing. How will people know what the standards are for their donations? At this time, we are not accepting donations. We are planning on only using books that are being discarded from the library or classrooms.

The work with Empower School Leaders is done with the support of an SEL in Action grant from the NoVo Foundation. We'd like to give a special shout out to Katherine Batty, school counselor at Hinesburg Community School, for her work supporting the Empower Youth Leaders in CVSD. Thank you, Kathy!


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