Reply #20: I'm trying. [View All]

I worked in a school library for a dozen years before completing my teaching credential and moving into the classroom.

During that time, I grew the library collection from 1500 volumes to 9000 volumes, and had a very high circulation rate, and a whole school very active in the library. We got no state funds for library books, and a minimal amount of federal funds. Those federal funds could be spent elsewhere, and were often spent on technology instead.

In addition, with the advent of "Accelerated Reader," many school libraries spent some of their book money on tests for the books, and narrowed their orders to those books that HAD AR tests. Then they labeled every damned library book with a "level" and restricted kids to choosing books on their level.

Today, many leveled books are purchased, but maintaining a vibrant school library of general fiction, classics, non-fiction and reference for self-selection is just not on the list of priorities.

I have a great classroom library. I'm out of shelf space, and out of room for shelves, but I keep adding to it every year, anyway. It's not the same as a well-developed school library, but my students read more from my shelves than they do from our so-called "library."

Our library has one room dedicated to "AR" books. Shelves and shelves of leveled paperbacks. The main library has a small selection of books that should have been weeded out of the collection 25 years ago. If you weeded everything that is outdated and worn out, the shelves would be empty. That would be ok, since nobody checks that stuff out anyway.

The best of all worlds, for me, would be to hold my class in a real library every day, lol.

The real reason kids aren't reading, imo, is that our culture does not value reading. When kids come from homes where adults don't read, they don't value spending time that way. When they are provided with electronic amusements, they choose those over books by a wide margin. In the classroom, I share my love of books. I read with them, I talk about books with them, and I require them to read. I allow them to choose, within reason, what they want to read, but they must read. I do my best.

Those who have already decided that they don't like reading before they get to me rarely change their minds. I did a better job turning non-readers on to books in the library than I do in the classroom. Then, I would have students who would never check a book out when their class visited, and who made a big deal about how much they despised reading when their peers were in the room. Their teachers used to send them back, though, alone, and they would ask me to help them find something else "as good as the last one you picked for me."

Many of those learning to love reading were "in the closet," even then.