Welcome to the HUB!

     

    Photo by Pixabay

The library is the hub of any school, and the librarian and staff are at the center of it all. The weekly reading that I can relate to this week is the ALSC Blog-- Programming for Children with Special Needs. Over my past 14 years in five different schools, only one of the librarians has had special programming for these students. I fulfilled the roll of librarian and library assistant in a rural middle school for one year, and I created programming for these students. It broke my heart not only as a parent, but as a future librarian to be told by the teachers of these students that they have never been welcome in the library. Ms. Twarogowski states "Why begin a new story time program for children with special needs and their families?" The answer: to provide support for a vastly underserved area of our population. Efforts to provide special needs programming are an important aspect of library service which results in numerous rewards for families, communities and libraries."

    These students are most certainly underserved. I collaborated with the ED, LD, Profoundly disabled, and students with mild/moderate intellectual disabilities to find out what types of activities students enjoyed, the types of books they liked to read, and which seating types they preferred. I quickly realized that some of the students preferred doing a craft or building with magnetic blocks while listening to me read. They were paying attention to the story, but needed to be doing something with their hands. Cocky's Reading Express was able to come visit my students, and they enjoyed the interaction, stories, and free books. My favorite time with this special group of students, was when one of the non-verbal students in the profoundly disabled class said the next sentence in the story I was reading, out of the blue. This student had been in the same classroom for three years and had never spoken a single word. That is proof that all students, especially special needs students should have programming that fits their needs.

                 Photo by Pixabay

    Intellectual freedom is something I completely agree with, and will defend and protect in my future school library. The ALA defines intellectual freedom as "the right of every individual to both seek and secure information from all paints of view without restriction. It provides free access to all expressions of ideas through which any and all sides of a question, cause of movement may be explored."  It is not fair to our patrons to only purchase materials that do not explore and offer insight to all sides of a topic. In public schools, there has always been a separation of religion in the school library. However, as my time has gone by, more schools have become culturally inclusive. International Week has become a highlight during the school year. The library helps support this week, as well as providing materials that provide current information on various cultures, as wells as religious beliefs. An example would be also having a Quran in addition to a Holy Bible in the library collection.

                        Photos by Pixabay

    This also ties in with censorship. The ALA states "Censorship occurs when expressive materials, like books, magazines, films and videos, or works of art, are removed or kept from public access." Censorship is direct opposition to intellectual freedom. My plan is to celebrate Banned Books Week by promoting in the library with not only a bulletin board display, but also a book display and having a lesson plan to use with my students. This would included pulling picture books and chapter books. I would have the students work in groups and give them a worksheet with questions to answer. Such questions would include Why do you think this is a banned book, etc.

    My takeaways this week are how important it is to offer library services that are inclusive to our population, even if some people disagree, and want certain materials to be removed from the library, restricted to a certain age group, or even placed in a certain area of the library where patrons do not have access to view the material, without having to ask a librarian to hand them the material. I will celebrate diversity in my library, and will create displays and flyers to place around the school. If I happen to go back into the elementary school, story times will include diverse books. Currently, I do this with my special needs students, as they still enjoy picture books aka everybody books.

Resources

Admin. (2017, October 20). Intellectual Freedom and Censorship Q & A. Advocacy, Legislation & Issues. https://www.ala.org/advocacy/intfreedom/censorship/faq.

Contributor, G. (2012, March 17). Programming for Children with Special Needs, Part One. ALSC Blog. https://www.alsc.ala.org/blog/2009/06/programming-for-children-with-special-needs-part-one/.