Post 11: How to Get Them Reading

I have put behind me, my reflections on Aleppo and other things and will now get back to my main concern: reading!  This is the worry of librarians the world over and I'm sure others as well.  Oh stop being so concerned, I hear you say.  They are all reading on their mobile devices now!  I wish that I could believe that but from anecdotal evidence at my school, that isn't the case.

A teacher said this to me this morning and I asked this question based on a case at school.  If a student took out and read (I am assured by the Lower School librarian and her teacher, she did) 53 books in grade 5 and only checked out 1 in grade 6, is it likely that her parents bought her 52 books for her kindle or iPad?

The problem of the transition from grade 5 (primary) to grade 6 (secondary) at our school is more complex than the fact that students now have their own iPad and can take it home at night.  The work load is higher, there are no weekly library classes and the English teachers in the secondary are no longer coming to the library with their classes to check out recreational reading. What is more, they are no longer having DEAR (Drop Everything and Read) with their classes, nor are the teachers asking students to set goals for their reading each month.

I would like to think that there was something that I could do to by-pass the English class teachers and get the students back on track.  This has been my plan so far:

1. I put spinners with paperbacks of interest to middle and high school students in prominent places around the upper school.  I made sure that they were all new or nearly new and of high interest. These books were not put in the library collection and I don't worry about them not coming back.  Instead I have been deleting duplicate copies of books in my collection and putting them on the spinners as well as new books I have bought or had donated.  I don't care if I never see them again, just that they are read!

2. I have been encouraging tutor groups (we call them advisories) to come to the library when they don't have something particularly planned for that time period.  I also encourage the teachers to go away and have some time to do whatever they want to while I give a short book talk and encourage students to read.

3. I have launched Battle of the Books (the English head wasn't interested in my doing it but I have decided to ignore him) with 20 titles, fiction and non-fiction in English and two other languages.  The big push takes place when we start back after half term.

That's it for now but I have kernels of ideas for March and World Book Day.

That's all for now!

Post 10:

I have wandered off piste a little in these blog posts.  I had expected that I would writing mostly about education topics but found myself reminiscing about my time in Syria.  It started with some pictures on Facebook of Aleppo, where we spent three wonderful and challenging years.  Tonight I had to write a letter to a Parkinson's nurse who had done a survey on the care of Parkinson's patients at our local hospital.  My husband was one of those patients until his death last October.  I find myself unable to write much more so I am going to put here the body of the letter I sent her and tomorrow I will get back to the education world!

"I regret to inform you that my husband, Clifford Crofts, a member of your Parkinson's survey group, died at St. Peter's hospital, on October 10th of last year.  Unfortunately, the care he received as a Parkinson's patient was in part responsible for his death.  He went in to hospital in early August, having aspirated.  He was in relatively good health at this point and it had been decided that he would be given a PEG in case this should happen again.  

His condition deteriorated quickly due to a number of mistakes made with his medication.  It was either forgotten, given at the wrong time or the pharmacy ran out of it completely.  After one of the incidents, Cliff became unable to swallow again and was unable to eat, drink or take his medication.  He was left like this for more than a day at which point, after much prodding on our part,  it was finally decided to insert a tube through his nose and down to his stomach.  It took multiple tries to insert it, all the while he was without medication, food and water.  After each try, he had to be x-rayed as they were unsure whether or not it had been successfully inserted.

This was just the beginning of a litany of mistakes, which eventually led to him improving enough to have the procedure, developing peritonitis due to faulty equipment or human error, and dying.

To make matters worse for me, I subsequently discovered that the information we were given about the risks of the PEG procedure highly underestimated the likelihood of Cliff dying within the first 30 days afterwards.  

Though I realise that Cliff would likely have died within a year, I feel that he was subjected to unnecessary pain and suffering brought about by the lack of knowledge and understanding of Parkinson's disease of the nursing and the medical staff.

There is very little I can say to commend the care he received at the hospital.  There has been an investigation by St. Peter's, the results of which I will be privy to in March, though the coroner has yet to close the case.  The cause of death has been given as natural causes but the coroner is still endeavouring to answer certain questions.

I would be happy to discuss this further with you, should you wish.

I am sure that Clifford would be happy to know that the survey may lead to other patients receiving better treatment."

Day 9: I'd never thought of highways as amusement parks

I'd never thought of highways as amusement parks until I went to live in Syria.  On that first evening we left the airport for the drive into Damascus and found ourselves on a highway turned into a picnic ground.  Barbecues had been set up on either side of the road, various vendors were selling their wares to the partying crowds and children were playing football from one side to the other.  I think that I remember someone offering camel rides but that might have been another time and other city. The journey was slow.   I was later to learn that the president's son had died on that road when he hit one of the round-a-bouts at high speed.  It obviously didn't happen on a Friday or Saturday night.

I remember the heat, the neon lights, the traffic, both animal and otherwise, the truck horns and flashes of women clothed in black at the edge of roads.  And then we were in the peace and sanity of the ICARDA guest house where we were to spend the night before the drive up to Aleppo.  Our introduction to Syria was a series of sensory bombardments, which continued till the day we left.  So exciting, so life affirming!  How I miss it!

Day 8: We arrive in Syria

I don't think that I had ever heard of Aleppo before the head of the ICARDA International School  put a note in my pigeon hole at the ECIS job fair in 1995.  We had been living in Cyprus for 5 years and we all had island fever, which is like cabin fever but doesn't involve being snowed in!   It was time to move on.  I was offered a job in Zambia and one in Aleppo, and at the time, Aleppo seemed the safer bet.

Larnaca to Damascus is a half our flight.  After the ride up to Aleppo from Damascus, I might have wished that we had also taken the half hour flight from Damascus up but for some reason we didn't. In retrospect, we would have missed out on a rather uncomfortable adventure if we had.

We left Cyprus in the early evening and flew into Damascus with no idea what to expect.  We didn't have entry visas but were assured by the school that someone would meet us and sort everything out. When the man in front of us was taken from the queue and sent back to Cyprus for not having one, we did start to get worried.  I hoped that being a family of four might make us seem less threatening or suspicious.  We shuffled nervously toward the front.  I think that it was about then that one of us, or perhaps one of the airport guards, noticed that someone was waving at us from the other side of the room.  The guard motioned for me to go over and it was then that I met Mr. Jabri, our future banker, travel agent and sponsor in Syria.  He introduced himself briefly, and handed me the paperwork. What a relief!

We passed through immigration after answering the questions which soon became a standing joke with us and other Europeans we worked with:  mother's name? father's name?  I never knew why their names were so important.  My father was dead but it was easier to give his name than try to explain that, when I didn't speak Arabic and the immigration officer didn't speak English.

We came out of customs hot and bewildered into the warm embrace of Alem and Asma from the school.  And so it began!

Day 7 Aleppo

It's the weekend and I'd like to stray from writing about education for one day at least.

I used to live in Aleppo in northern Syria.  Today someone posted a picture of the souk in Aleppo and the memories came flooding back.  We used to go to there often, not every weekend but probably twice a month.  A friend introduced us to Aladdin shortly after we arrived and we would always make sure to visit him whenever we went.  What an amazing young man!  He could converse with almost every nationality that came to his shop.  If he didn't have what we wanted, one of his many brothers would and would be sent for, while we sat and drank sweet, mint tea, surrounded by scarves, blankets, table cloths, soap and so much more.  

The pictures below gives you a sense of what it was like but it's missing the donkeys!  You could sit and watch the world go by in Aladdin's shop and that would include a number of donkeys carrying loads of goods to their owners' stalls.

The souk has sections for different products.  Near the entrance we used to go in, there were a number of sellers of women's under garments, the most interesting being the knickers with flashing lights.  My daughters called them 'landing lights'.  I wish I had a photograph or two of those.  The wedding dresses were also located in the same area. Quite spectacular!

I miss Aleppo.  I always planned to go back but never got round to it and now I never will.   I mourn the loss of such a beautiful city, so many wonderful people, and a their way of life.

Day 6 Nearly Past Me By

Here we are at Day 6 and I am still ill and writing from my bed.  Not fair!  I was hoping to go up to London tomorrow to visit the Sherlock Holmes exhibit at the London Museum.  Ah well, half term is coming up in one week and I can go then.  I had better do this blog entry now or my lurgi may claim me back and I will have let down the side!

I had intended to keep pursuing the issues I've been having with my library but two other topics are pressing me more closely and so I will leave the library for the moment.  A friend and former colleague, Nina O'Connor, retired from international teaching 6 or 7 years ago and went back to live in Michigan.  She is working for the university and has also started a series of cooking programmes on YouTube in French.  The idea is to help people improve their French while learning how to make simple French recipes.  Her first recipe was for a vinaigrette.

This reminded me of the time I did a salad and a vinaigrette with a class when I was being observed.  It was the best vinaigrette I have ever made and I have never again been able to make one as good.  Funny how that happens.  I'm not sure whether you could use this series with beginners but I'm sure you could with students who have a few years of French under their belts.  Kids love cooking in class and it doesn't have to cost much.  Nina's next recipe is for a salade niçoise.  I think you could do that one in class as well.  Nothing to really cook. It's just a matter of putting everything together.  A baguette would go well with it.

Years ago when I started teaching French in Canada, I brought in a set of cooking cards I collected from Marie Claire for my grade 11 French class.  Students chose a recipe, made it at home and brought in the results and talked about making it.  We then had a wonderful time tasting everything.  I can see a way of including the use of the I-pad by having students work in pairs and film the preparation and then present in class.

Joe Dale tweeted yesterday asking for ideas about using the I-pad for primary literacy.  I spent some time thinking about his today and also did a little research.  I've found an article in a journal called The Reading Teacher  (Exploring the Use of the I-pad for Literacy Learning), and later this weekend, I will have a look at it and then report back.

Day 5: How to decide what is most important

I having been worrying over the fact that my circulation of books has dropped dramatically in the last few years.  When I took over in my library, the previous librarian had put very little of her budget into the acquisition of fiction, and especially paperbacks.  In fact I don't think there was a paperback in the entire library, though perhaps that is an exaggeration.  I set about increasing our fiction, only buying paperbacks and housing them on spinners so that students could see the covers of as many as possible.  I also got comfy sofas and set up areas where students could sit and read, play chess or quietly talk.  (As a side note, I hadn't realised that chess is actually a contact sport with middle schoolers and high school students.  Not at all quiet!)

I studied book stores and got ideas on how to display my collection to the best advantage.  I also took my advertising campaign out of the library and around the school.  My circulation started to climb.  I encouraged teachers to bring students in for books talks and though it was mainly middle school classes which came, there was a real buzz about books going on.

Once I had a good collection established and a protocol set for adding new books to the fiction collection, I moved on to my non-fiction collection.  Yes, we are in the age of the internet and internet research.  So, as I have asked myself often in the past, are print books still necessary for students to use for research.? That is a whole other question and I have answered it for myself and won't go back over it here.  Needless to say, I am still buying books, both print and 'e' and students are still using them.  My non-fiction collection is a bit more problematic than the fiction.  It was easy to weed my fiction collection but not so easy to weed non-fiction.

I was discussing this with a man who came over from another school to help me come to terms with certain aspects of our VLE.  He was disappointed that I would consider weeding books on topics that were not part of the curriculum.  I made the argument that if they were never going to be taken off the shelves what was the point of having them there.  Then he reminded me of 'serendipity'.  How would someone come across a book in my library by chance, on a subject they might never have considered, if I got rid of them.

Do you remember that happening to you?  I do.  It has led me to an interest in subjects I might never have considered.  I have become less aggressive in my culling after that conversation.  However, I know that one day another librarian will look at some of the books I've added and wonder, as I do about my predecessor:  why in heavens name did she buy that?

I've wandered away from the title of this post.  I started with the idea of discussing which should be of most importance to me as a librarian - literacy and encouraging it and assisting students in developing information literacy skills.  They are interrelated, I hear you say.  Yes, they are but I am the only person in my library and focussing on both of these equally has become difficult.  By answering this question, I am hoping to find a way forward.

(More musings on this tomorrow!)