Librarian joys

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Let me bore you for a short moment with a high point of my teaching year so far.

I take this Year 7 class once a fortnight for a library lesson in one of their English periods.  Still, today, they arrive late for their last lesson of the year having 'forgotten' that it was library.  They are totally off with this fairies this group.  We've certainly had a few low moments along the way.

Today their class teacher insisted that they choose a book to borrow for the holidays.  They don't love reading (um, understatement).  This pronouncement was greeted with their usual moans and groans about anything resembling schoolwork.

But I managed to get them to all leave the library having borrowed at least one book and many of them had borrowed more than one.

I was able to talk to them for ages, recommending new books that I had read over the year that I thought they would enjoy.  All the hours I've spent reading young adult fiction that starts to sound the same, paid off.  I could genuinely talk to them about the stories and tell them why they would like them.

And even if they don't actually read the books, for a brief moment there were kids who don't like reading, excited about borrowing books to take home.  High point of a teacher librarian's life!

Comments

Sarah said…
My greatest 'librarian joy' was when I was working at a uni library and met students who were close to dropping out because they didn't know how to find the info they needed for their assignments. Once they'd been to a library class or had an individual appointment with a librarian, the look of relief on their faces was wonderful. One lady in her 50s, who was doing tertiary study for the first time, told me she'd just been about to drop out before I helped her. It really made my day that she was going to continue on with her degree. Yay for librarians! :)
November 30, 2012 at 6:06 PM
Jenny said…
It's very satisfying isn't it? I helped a year 11 boy last week who was looking for a novel to use as an example for an assessment task. He'd spent weeks putting it off and was getting desperate. I just talked to him about it, we found him a book (& even the audio version - he wasn't a great reader) and he left happy. He didn't get on well with his teacher so to have another teacher to talk to seemed to help.
November 30, 2012 at 6:11 PM
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