Photo Credit: Ace Schwarz Literature featuring LGBTQ+ characters has been around since ancient times and spans a wide variety of cultures... So why is it still a taboo subject for some school libraries? It isn't that it isn't available... there are plenty of LGBTQ+ titles out there across all grade levels! It isn't for lack of quality; many of the titles that are out there have won awards. There is no easy answer as to why LGBTQ+ lit is not as prevalent as it should be within our school libraries; however as school librarians, we have a duty to ensure that ALL of our students are represented in our collections. As we all know, good literature should function as a mirror to allow students to see themselves represented in stories. When we provide literature with LGBTQ+ themes, characters, and plots, we normalize the child with two dads, the girl who is exploring her crush on another female classmate, and the boy who knows he was born into the wrong body. These children need to see themselves represented in literature. Books also serve as a window to see into the lives of others... the cisgender, heterosexual children (and teachers!!) around them need to see those children represented in their reading as well. It is critical that we understand the issues and problems that our LGBTQ+ students handle on a daily basis. We know that reading builds empathy; what better way to do so than include a variety of LGBTQ+ literature in the library? But which books are right for your patrons and their needs? After all, five out of the ALA's top eleven most frequently banned and challenged books from 2018 made the list primarily due to LGBTQ+ content. Recently I helped an amazing colleague, Ace Schwarz (they/them), with a project they had in mind. They post frequently on Instagram, and they recently had the idea to post elementary, middle, and high school book lists for their followers. The goal was to post several books per day for elementary, middle and high school. This worthy project was eye opening for both of us; we quickly discovered that many books featuring LGBTQ+ characters or plots were not actually written by authors who identify as LGBTQ+. A little background research proved that this is the generally the case for a variety of reasons; however, if the books we are handing to our students are to be authentic, they need to be written in the author's #ownvoices, a hashtag started by author Corinne Duyvis. (For more on this topic and why it is important, check out this article!). Without further ado, I present to you the hard work put together by my colleague. Major props to them... this list represents many, many, MANY hours of work and research! This project contains:
If you aren't sure where to begin with understanding LGBTQ+ Issues, or what all those letters even mean, here is another great resource that Ace created - the ABCs of LGBTQ+! For further reading on the topic, please check out GLSEN's national reports on many aspects of school safety and student life. Reports I would recommend specifically would include:
Finally, please check out this amazing set of resources from the American Association of School Libraries on Defending Intellectual Freedom: LGBTQ+ Materials in School Libraries. These resources are perfect for defending your book choices to community stakeholders who may show resistance. Research has shown how much representation matters. We need to make sure that our LGBTQ+ students feel safe and visible. I challenge you to take a good look at your collection and the books it contains. What message are your books sending to your students? How can you better support them? Are you an ally to the LGBTQ+ community or a silent bystander?
I don't often get on my soapbox; however, when it comes to the safety, health, and well-being of my students, I am very passionate about protecting those who are our most vulnerable... and I will ALWAYS defend my students' right to read! Please feel free to comment below; I am always looking for feedback... especially additional titles that you would recommend that a school librarian should purchase for their collection!
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There has been a lot of discussion about "Ditching Dewey" (which is a term I hate, we still use Dewey in the library!!) recently among librarians. There are articles on both sides for and against genrefication. I debated long and hard about whether or not I should genre-fy my fiction collection. Ultimately the decision came down to doing what I believe to be best for kids... so I chose to go for it. The reason I decided to reorganize the fiction collection is simple - the number of students who came to the library and would ask for books by genre was staggering. It was a constant stream of "Where are your science fiction books?", "Do you have any fantasy books?", "I want to read about dogs... do you have any stories about dogs?", etc. When I replied that they could search using our online catalog, I was often met with resistance. Students were not interested in taking the time to search, and the overwhelming majority preferred to just browse the shelves for what catches their eye. I also knew that I had great titles that were just lost in the shelves... for example, Doll Bones by Holly Black is a REALLY creepy horror book, but my students never checked it out because it wasn't with Mary Downing Hahn or R.L. Stine. I always LOVE selling books to kids, but most times I am teaching a class when they come down to check out books, so I'm not always available to help them find what they are looking for. I knew it was time for a major overhaul... but WHERE to begin? First, I checked with another fabulous librarian in my county, who directed me to this blog post that she used to help her get started. I followed most of the same protocols listed in the blog. Phase One: Assign Genres.The first portion of the project was completely behind the scenes. I ran a report within Destiny to give me a .CSV file of all of the fiction titles in the collection. I then sorted them alphabetically by author and uploaded them to Google Sheets. After working with another librarian and my supervisor to decide on categories for genres, we came up with the following system-wide list:
I did weed the collection as I went, though it was fairly well-weeded before I began and I did not pull many books from it... perhaps another 20-30 books total came out. Most were old paperbacks that I ordered hardbacks for if the circulation warranted it. I did not choose to make a classics section, as I felt that those books, collected together in one place, would never circulate. However, if I could "hide" them in other sections they would be more likely to circulate. I also did not choose to create an LGBTQ+ section for two reasons... the first was because those books, authors, and characters are found across all genres. Normalizing LBGTQ+ relationships is a priority in my library so that all students feel safe and welcome. The second reason was to protect students who may be exploring or questioning their gender and/or sexuality; if they are not out to family, friends, teachers, or other people, they would probably not want to be "seen" browsing that section or reading a book with a rainbow flag sticker. For more of my thoughts on LGBTQ+ books and their place in the library, check out this blog post! So, how to assign genres? I manually added a genre to the books by searching sources such as Follett Titlewave, WorldCat, and crowd-sourced sites like GoodReads. You can view my spreadsheet HERE if you would like; feel free to use the genres I have assigned to my books for your own collection if it somehow helps you! If you are stuck on a book because you believe it belongs in two or more genres, you have a couple of options:
You'll also need to attend to series to make sure they all end up in the same location, particularly series like the 39 Clues books. Because they are all written by different authors, they have the ability to end up accidentally in different genres. Once the books were all assigned a genre, I sorted the spreadsheet and ordered colored spine label stickers from Demco based on the results of the spreadsheet. Here are the genres and the colors I settled on: It it worth noting that I already had already used blue for my Everybody books, yellow for Foreign Language, purple for Graphic Novels, and copper for Biographies prior to beginning this project. I worked on this phase of the project for approximately 6 months off and on. I was not in a huge rush to complete it because I was getting all new shelving, so I wasn't planning on moving the entire collection and then moving it again for new shelves. I finished this part of the project just after Thanksgiving Break this year. Phase Two: STICKER ALL THE BOOKS!The 2nd phase of the project was to sticker all the books. It involved an army of student volunteers who helped me locate and sticker every book in our fiction collection. This was not a small task... it was lengthy and tedious. I had to remind myself many times that what we were doing was what's best for kids. Each book that we stickered was colored in on our spreadsheet to notate that a copy had been stickered. You may notice that some books are still white on the sheet - that means they have not yet been returned to the library since I genrefied the collection in late December/early January. I completed this project in the middle of the school year; the books were not all on the shelves when I completed the process. Once the majority of the books were done, the shelves were a rainbow parade of spine stickers: This phase took approximately one school week (5 days) to complete with the help of several student volunteers. Even now, 3 months later, I am still stickering books that were lost or overdue as they come back. This part of the project won't be done until after the students leave! Phase Three: Sorting, Adding Copy Categories and Reorganizing / Rearranging the CollectionThe final phase in the project was to sort the books, add copy categories and rearrange the collection. Sorting the books was the scariest part of the process to me. It really felt like the point of no return. It took 4 student volunteers and myself less than 45 minutes to unload and sort the entire fiction collection: We completed the sorting in the last hour of the day before winter break. I was so nervous about leaving it over break - not because I was worried about what would happen to the books, but because of the amount of work awaiting me when I returned from winter break. All I could think was "WHAT HAVE I DONE?!" I mean seriously... look at the empty shelves!! I had to close down book circulation for three days to complete the next job. I did this over the three days coming back from winter break, with permission and full support of my administration and staff. Have I mentioned that I work with the best staff ever? Because I do. #truestory. On the first day back after break, I added the Category and Sublocation in Destiny. This allows the students to see it in the search results! This was achieved by going to the Catalog Tab > Update Copies (on the left) > Individual Update Tab > Sublocation and Category to match the genre I was preparing. Then simply scan each book... See pic below for clarification. This took approximately 4 hours to scan the entire fiction collection, stopping to switch Sublocations and Categories for the 11 genres that we had chosen. After this was finished, a search in Destiny looked like this: The final step was one of the hardest parts... re-shelving the entire collection. It took a solid 2.5 days with help from an amazing parent volunteer to get it finished. Even though I had counted and recounted shelves and analyzed the number of books per genre, I ended up moving some books after they had been shelved to a different part of the library. We also ended up changing a sticker color because two of the stickers were too similar to one another and they were right next to each other on the shelves; this would have resulted in too much interfiling. It probably would have only taken two days if not for that. But BEHOLD... the results of a LOT of hard work!! Phase Four: THE RESULTSWe reopened book circulation to all students and staff on Monday, January 7th. The results were immediate! Kids were excited to see the library reorganization. Some comments I heard were:
In addition to the student comments, the hard data shows the truth. From January 7th to March 13th, we were in school for 42 days. Fiction collection book circulation increased by 34.3% during those 42 days as compared to the previous 42 days of school. It WORKED!!!!! The students and staff loved the reorganization. And while it was a LOT of work, and it's not completely done, it was 100% worth it. And because I work with the BEST STAFF EVER, they threw a ribbon-cutting ceremony, complete with student speakers and refreshments! It was an unforgettable moment in my career; never have I felt so supported and appreciated as I did in that moment. It was PERFECT! I'm always looking for new and exciting ways to engage reluctant students and increase foot traffic in the media center. I was doing some research on a super awesome robot that we have in the library, Cozmo, when I discovered that ANKI also makes a robotic race car track called Overdrive. I knew immediately that this was going to draw students to the library, particularly some of my reluctant readers who check out race car books by the armload but will engage in no other texts. Enter DonorsChoose.org. After a little more research, I wrote a grant for the ANKI base kit, two additional cars, a storage bag, some extra track pieces, and several books related to robotics, race cars, and more. The grant was funded almost right away! I love it when donors believe in what I'm doing and fund my little pet projects! When the cars arrived, the kids tore into them right away. The kids were captivated - within a few minutes, they were building tracks, downloading the app, and driving the cars. As I mentioned - the grant I wrote included several books. I processed them that morning and by that afternoon they were gone. It was a very easy sell to get the kids to take the books - they were engaging and interesting! In fact, I don't have pictures of the kids reading them because they aren't ever on the shelf. Mission accomplished! Over the next few weeks, interest in the Anki cars continued to grow. Two students brought in their own Anki base kits to donate to our collection, growing it from 4 cars to TEN! We had an incredible amount of track, too - the kids were able to make some amazing courses! The robotic Anki smart cars have certainly sparked an interest in coding, robotics, artificial intelligence, and racing in my students. What are YOU doing to increase foot traffic in your media center? Drop a comment below and let me know, I'm always looking for new ideas!
April was National Poetry month, and this year the library hosted our first-ever "Blackout Poetry" contest! Blackout poems are created by taking a piece of text and blacking-out words so the poems are left. Here's one I did as an example: The page is from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I had a copy come in that all the pages were falling out... so I sacrificed it for this project. I sent the directions out to our ELA department, including this awesome resource from Scholastic. The student submissions were amazing! The winner was Brianna N., for her poem below, entitled The Mirror. Here are some of the other student submissions! I am so proud of my students and their creativity. I'll do almost anything to "sell" a book to a reader. It doesn't matter if it's a student or adult, old friend or stranger in the grocery store - I'll try my best to be a #bookdealer and find that one perfect book for a reader. Thanks to Pinterest, I took every student at SPMS on a date with a book - several books - in February! BAHAHA! It was epic and amazing and FUN! I started with an overview of what speed dating was and how it worked... the kids were horrified at the amount of social interaction dating required:
Ahh, youth. Next, I went over the "Mrs. Hurley's 6 Rules for Dating" which (mostly) apply to both humans and books!
Then we moved into the speed dating area: Complete with red tableclothes, LED candles, heart decorations on the tables, vases with fake roses (shout out to the Dollar Tree for all the decorations!)... I even turned down the lights to "set the mood"! But by far the worst was the music. I streamed some of the worst covers of the world's cheesiest love songs. Some of my favorites were:
To be clear, I enjoy some of these songs... but the covers were AWFUL. And I blasted them as loud as my speakers would go! The students had 3 minutes with each "date". At the end, they had to rate their dates and write some notes about the date and why they gave it the rating that they assigned it. Click HERE for my rating sheet sample - this one was for 8th grade. Feel free to copy and remake as needed. Below are pictures of some of my kids mid-date. It was SO MUCH FUN! Hands down probably one of the most loved activities I've put together for my students! The best part was setting up those "second dates"... here is just one sample email I had from students immediately after classes. I received over 100 hold requests for books that were "dated" during this activity! One book had so many holds that I ordered 3 "emergency" copies (in addition to the two I already had) sent from Amazon and processed them the next day to put them in the collection... there were more than 15 requests just for that book!
It's important to note that not all of the books I put out were brand new. Many of these were great titles that I noticed weren't circulating. I am happy to say that all of those books are really feeling the love now! I even "sold" some of these books to staff members - some of whom weren't ELA teachers! They fell in love just by walking through and wondering what in the world was happening in the library... and they left with a hold on a book they couldn't imagine life without. YES. What books would you put out for your students? Comment below and let me know!! The third annual Springfield Middle School Bookmark Contest was held during the month of November, and the results are amazing! We had over 40 students enter some amazing work. We had memes, feathers, quotes, book covers - so many great pieces of art! Check out the best of the best below... these bookmarks were voted the winners! Want to run a bookmark contest at your school? Here is my original form where the students turned in the work. Feel free to download it and use it as needed.
Students had from November 1-20 to turn in their entries, then voting lasted one week. Copies of the bookmarks were posted in the library with numbers (not with names). Voting was done via a QR Code attached to Google Form. Students were allowed to vote once per
Capstone Interactive eBooks are an awesome resource available in our library for both students and staff! These engaging, interactive texts do double duty as an audiobook, too! Students can elect to have the books read aloud and/or highlight the words as it reads. The best part about these amazing titles is that they have an unlimited number of simultaneous users! This means a single user, a small group, an entire class, or even the whole school can be reading the same book at the same time! It's amazing! Here's a short video I created to show you the easiest way to access our Capstone Interactive collection... as of today, there are 270 titles available for you at SPMS to check out! Enjoy! What's your favorite Capstone Interactive title? Comment below and tell me!
In an ongoing effort to put books in the hands of kids, I decided to run a FaceSwap contest during the month of December. Face-swapping is an option in Snapchat, and there are several apps out there that allow users to swap faces. The challenge for the library was to FaceSwap with a book! Biographies are easiest of course, but there are several Fiction and Everybody books that made for some great FaceSwaps. To encourage entries, I am giving away a SweetFrog gift card for each winner. There are contests for 6th grade, 7th grade, 8th grade, and teachers/staff! Here are some of our hilarious entries below... once you're done laughing, go make one of your own! The library hosted our 2nd annual bookmark contest during the month of November. Students could enter their original artwork between 11/1 and 11/17. Voting opened on 11/18 and ran through 11/30. All bookmarks featured below will be printed in full-color and available for students to take. Congratulations to our winners - HERE THEY ARE! 6th Grade7th Grade8th GradeMarylanders love Edgar Allan Poe - his suspenseful, creepy stories ensnare middle schoolers across the state every year! The celebrated poet met his untimely death in Baltimore and is buried there - you can visit his grave! The Enoch Pratt Free Library in Baltimore has a wonderful special collection of Poe-related items. You can make an appointment to view them in person by calling 443-984-2451. Unfortunately for us, that wasn't really an option as we are about two hours west of Baltimore. Enter Mr. Michael Johnson! Mr. Johnson is the manager of the Poe special collection. He brought replicas of artifacts from the Poe collection to our students. His 25-minute presentation was a great overview of Poe's life and gave the students some solid background knowledge to kick off their module on suspense (featuring the works of Edgar Allan Poe). Of particular interest to the students was the fact that Poe married his 12-year-old first cousin, Virginia... when he was 25 years old! As you can imagine, the students were surprised and appalled. Mr. Johnson brought reproductions of several letters and poems written by and about Poe, and discussed his life and death with the students. I was fascinated by the letters and how they were addressed - even though they only had the addressee's name and the city of Baltimore, MD, they were able to be delivered. Incredible! Check out these great pictures! It was a wonderful experience that we are lucky to have been able to give to our students. I highly recommend that you contact Mr. Johnson and have him come present to your students, too! Here is is contact information if you are interested:
Michael K. Johnson Manager, Special Collections Enoch Pratt Free Library/Maryland's State Library Resource Center 443-984-2451 [email protected] |
About the AuthorHi! Welcome to my blog! My name is Christine Hurley. This is my 17th year of teaching - I've taught Kindergarten, 4th grade, elementary media, and now I am in my 6th year of teaching middle school media! Archives
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