For us, summer reading is a way to promote leisure reading and a way for
young people to find stories that really resonate with them.
Summer reading's all about choice, it's all about fun, it's all about
self-selected reading and exploration.
This summer is different for us in several
ways. We realized that there are a lot of young people in Wichita who don't have a
regular access to a library. They also may not have regular access to
transportation which would get them to a library. They don't have access to books
in their community or in their homes and so for them, learning during the summer is a
pretty tough challenge.
Central Library has adopted a local school. We have been
working with Washington Elementary over the past few years. We noticed that their
school library media specialist and their teachers and their principal are really
excited about providing alternative, experimental opportunities for the
kiddos to learn and so we've teamed up to offer library service on the front
steps of the school every Wednesday afternoon at 3:30 p.m. and we have a
library space for them and we have games and fun and we play music and we create
a family atmosphere so that kiddos can come and have fun and get library service.
Hi, did mom bring you this week? No, you just came on your own?
Some folks are driven by their parents, but there are quite a lot of young people who
walk from their homes. They've all got their little reading logs and they've
been keeping them safe all summer and marking down the days that they read.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight! Good job you two! All right!
You guys made great progress and you only started last week.
And they get prizes and we make sure that they get a snack. The local Methodist Church is
providing snacks and drinks.
We got some hula hoops, some chalk that they can play with
while she gets all the kids signed up and also help them get books, trade out their books.
We've got plenty of books available donated both by the school and the
public library so that these kids don't ever have to worry about getting their
hands on some sort of reading material.
Because a lot of our kids don't have
books at home so this is putting the books in their hands and for free.
You know, we're there for 45 minutes. It's really like a blip in the week but for
these kids, it's a world of difference. That 45 minutes we spend
with them every week is the equivalent of having a library of
their very own and we have over 50 kids signed up, kids and teens all the way from a
couple of babies all the way up to some folks who are juniors and seniors in high school,
even. It's been really great to see entire families show up.
I see a lot of kids that are returning and they are loving getting a new book
to read. They're excited. They get to win prizes and they're just excited
about reading and that's super exciting.
Look at what you did! (speaks Spanish)
Uno, dos, tres, quatro, cinco...
Half of our families speak Spanish,
so having library staff with us who speak Spanish is invaluable.
Having library books in Spanish is invaluable.
I've seen over about half of
the people that come are bilingual, so me being here kind of helps
with that too in case they have questions or anything like that. We are also
available in Spanish.
When we give families books in Spanish, this empowers the
families to read together and it empowers them to share and to cherish
that first language, which is just as important as their second language.
Just super excited that is that the Library was volunteering to do this and as you can
see, it's been a really good turnout just to get those books in their hands over
the summer helps to get those reading scores up and just gives them a good opportunity.
Wow! Leslie, you're only two away from your big second prize.
So we want to really reinforce with the Washington kids that yes, your reading makes a
difference and you are going to know somebody who's won something special and
we wanted to reward them for showing up to the school and basically making a
special effort to read on a regular basis during the summer.
So the data that we collected from our summer readers, we shared that with USD 259,
a very large urban school district, over 50,000 students from all
different walks of life. What we found out is some of our strongest readers were the
ones self-selecting into summer reading and we had to take a big step back
and say, "Look, what are we not doing to attract emerging readers, potential readers?"
Young people who see reading as a chore.
I see you do summer reading, too? I've got prizes for
him, too. He thinks he's too big.
How are we changing their view of the library
and reading? How are we engaging with them?
For us, I think here at our school
access to books is probably the hugest barrier and that's what's so exciting about this program.
It was great, it was good. Despite the heat - everyone's sticky
and sweaty but we're having a lot of fun and we're having a lot of success in
stopping the summer reading loss.
We now have 55 signed up, whole families
have signed up, which is great. Yay!
So back out here next week?
Yep, back next week. See you next week.