Facts from the Stacks
Inside the SRVUSD Middle and High School Libraries Mar. 2019
Thank you for supporting the work that our secondary school librarians do every day. Collaborating with students, teachers and administrators, both on campus and at the district level, we are partners in helping to make the SRVUSD a culturally responsive, academically strong, and innovative learning community. Your acknowledgement of our leadership and the importance of the work that we do as teachers sends an important message to all of our stakeholders. Thank you!
Librarians Support Culturally Responsive Teaching
Presently there are 3 teacher librarians on the SRVUSD CLR Leadership team. In addition, we have met together with our CLR TSAs for workshops and PD to develop culturally responsive libraries.
Narrative Nonfiction Discussions
Every student at GRMS has been studying narrative nonfiction throughout the year designing units together with the teacher librarian. Our libraries are able to provide a wide variety of choice for students to be able to read well-written memoirs from passionate people. Many of the books in this unit are the YA editions of best selling nonfiction for adults.
Social Justice Lit Circles
After being awarded a generous grant from Academic Boosters, the CHS Library and English departments teamed up to build thematic literature circle text sets. With a focus on Social Justice and Mental Health, these YA collections will speak with an authentic voice to students.
Quick Picks for Struggling Readers
The CWMS Library has added a Quick Picks section to the library this year for students who are struggling readers. It contains HiLo books as well as elementary school titles. Students of all reading abilities will now be able to find a good book at their reading level.
Innovation Centers
CWMS and GRMS libraries are the hub for our new district Innovation Centers, purchased through a grant from San Ramon Valley Ed Foundation. Teachers throughout the district are invited to check out robotics and other creative materials to use within their classes. Among other STEM goals, these project materials provide equity and access to all students, some of which may not have the opportunity to interact with these types of innovative tools on a regular basis. Involving girls and other groups that are minoritized in STEM focused activities are part of the discussion.
Holocaust Survivor Addresses Students
A survivor of the Holocaust in Nazi Germany addressed 8th-grade English students in the DVMS Library this month. The speaker, who as a child was separated from his family and hidden during the war, shared his first-hand experiences of nearly being discovered and of losing members of his family. At the end of World War II, only four of his thirteen close family members survived. DV students were given the opportunity to ask him questions they had prepared, and to learn the importance of tolerance and combating hatred. In conjunction with his firsthand account of events, students read The Diary of Anne Frank.
Read WOKE
A WOKE book:
• Challenges a social norm
• Gives voice to the voiceless
• Has a protagonist from an underrepresented or oppressed group
• Seeks to challenge the staus quo
• Provides information about a group that has been disenfranchised
Our libraries are building collections of WOKE books for students and teachers to discuss and build culturally aware units of study across the curriculum.
Windows and Mirrors
Our libraries are discovering new ways to promote the understanding and acceptance of our culturally diverse populations. Books are carefully researched and chosen by their culturally relevant representations of characters and plot and can act as mirrors for our students to see themselves in the text. Titles are also shared as windows into other people's cultures as ways of promoting acceptance, understanding and discussion around multiple perspectives.
Dystopian Unit Highlights Real World Connections
Teachers and librarians are creating powerful collaborations to teach students how to read dystopian fiction- the fasted growing YA genre. Students studying dystopian books are analyzing authors' messages through the use of allusions in the text which can act as a catalyst for increased awareness in our world today. Among the most popular allusions make references to communism, the Holocaust, slavery, the Red Scare and the Salem Witch Trials.
White Fragility Book Discussion Group
Cal High hosted the book discussion group of "White Fragility" by Robin DiAngelo. Facilitated by CLR lead, Jon Parks, this book group provided staff the opportunity to reflect on how race impacts teaching and learning. Through DiAngelo's work, staff explored barriers to discussions about race, reflected on their own teaching practices and discovered resources to further their educational journey.
Social Justice Book Groups Teach Empathy
8th Grade Core teachers worked with WRMS Teacher Librarian to select highly-engaging titles. Modeled on the New York Reading and Writing Project, teachers developed a unit that will allow students choice -- but will allow them to address culturally responsive issues by answering the same set of essential questions for each book. Students can then compare responses for different titles deepening their understanding and empathy for worldwide issues.
Social Justice Research
DVHS is deep into research season, much of it social justice-focused. The Hero's Journey class is researching aspects of society that need a "hero". AP Environmental Science students are researching the societal impact of nuclear power. English 11 students are researching nuanced aspects of race, class, and gender in society today. AP Psychology students are researching stigmas around mental health issues and how to move past them. And so much more!
Women's Literature Book Pass
The SRVHS's Women's Literature class came to the library to find nonfiction books written about women's issues for their outside reading book this quarter. We used a "book pass" activity to ensure that each student had two minutes to browse the many titles on the table. Within two minutes they examined the cover, read the summary, flipped through the text to learn how the book is formatted, read a paragraph from any page to examine the author's writing style, and ranked the book by their interest level from 1 to 5. Then DING! They passed their book to the left and examined a new one before browsing on a larger scale. Through this collaborative effort we were able to generate enthusiasm around these issues and update our collection of books on Women's Issues - just in time for Women's History Month!