“We have different incentives to encourage the students to read. Little kids are really motivated by pencils, bookmarks, erasers and stuff like that. We do AR (accelerated reader) dollars. I run reports every few weeks, and they get a dollar for however many kinds of points they’ve earned. We have a prize list, and they can buy things with their points. There’s a big shelf of brand new books that they can spend $10 of fake money on and get a book to take home and keep forever. It’s like shopping at the book fair for free.

“The biggest thing we do is lunch and ice cream in the library. They pay for it with AR dollars, and I put them on the schedule. They get to come in here with three friends and watch something on the big screen. They eat lunch, and we have ice cream parties. It’s something different, and the kids just love it. It only costs me the price of some cheap ice cream from the store, but they think it’s amazing.”

— Amanda Rayburn

(Photo by Olivia Garza/Liv’s Looking Glass)

Related:

• Free Little Library connects kids with reading

• Teaching kids the importance of reading is key

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“A big kind of buzzword these days is ‘future ready librarian.’ What a lot of that means is, are we preparing young students for the technology that they’re going to encounter? Are we exposing them to coding, robotics and different things like that? We’re definitely exploring all of that, and it’s fun for them. But it doesn’t matter what you’re doing now or in the future, you still have to be able to read.

“It all comes back to the basics of reading. And I can teach you how to read. But reading with understanding and reading with passion, that comes from holding a book in your hands and just reading.

“We all probably remember the book or series of books that sparked our love of reading. For me, it was the Little House on the Prairie books and the Nancy Drew mystery books. And let me tell you, I still read them. About once every couple years, I’ll read through the whole series. It takes me back to when I was in late elementary school and junior high. I could never get enough of books.

“So what I try to make the kids understand is that while all the other activities we do are cool and wonderful, reading is at the core of everything. Finding good books and reading them, because we’re interested in them and because they make us excited to turn the page, that’s what is most important.”

— Amanda Rayburn

Amanda taught kindergarten, first grade and third grade for seven years at Travis Elementary, before returning to school to earn her master’s degree in library science and getting her certification. She is in her fifth year as librarian at Lamar Elementary.

(Photo by Olivia Garza/Liv’s Looking Glass)

Related:

• Little Free Library connects kids with reading

• Reading more fun with prizes, ice cream parties

The post Teaching kids the importance of reading is key appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I was looking at a librarian page on Facebook, and someone had posted about their Little Free Library. I thought it looked pretty cool. So when it came time to write Education Foundation grants, I decided to do one for our campus.

“We placed it behind the school because I wanted it to be more of a neighborhood thing. I didn’t want it out front because of all the traffic. We have a lot of families that live close by, so many of the kids walk to school. This way, whether it’s on the weekend, during the summer, or just any time school isn’t open and kids don’t have a ride to Sterling Municipal Library, there are books here available for them. We also have adult books, so it’s not just for the students.

“The Little Free Library motto is, ‘Take a book, share a book.’ Anyone can take a book and keep it at home forever, return it here, or drop off it or other books that they may have at other Little Free Library locations across the country. If they’re traveling, they can go to the website and search to see if the city they’re going to also has one. They give you the address or GPS coordinates for it.

“A school librarian’s job, first and foremost, is to help instill a love of reading in kids by any means necessary. It could be through graphic novels, comic books, magazines, cereal boxes — just anything they want to read. This is another great way to help encourage them to read.”

— Amanda Rayburn

Amanda is the librarian at Lamar Elementary. She was able to purchase the Little Free Library through a grant from the Goose Creek CISD Education Foundation.

(Photo by Olivia Garza/Liv’s Looking Glass)

Related:

• Teaching kids the importance of reading is key

• Reading more fun with prizes, ice cream parties

The post Little Free Library connects kids with reading appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“Our daughters are different. Our oldest one is very outgoing and determined. The younger one, not as much. We have to push her on some things. She’s slightly autistic, very minor. So we’re just trying to get her out of her shell.

“We didn’t learn about it until she was in high school. Actually, my husband and I were watching a documentary on these two boys when we kind of realized that sounds like her. Her biggest challenge is that she doesn’t know how to read people to communicate. We’re trying to encourage her. I run our junior church, so I’ve put her where she has to interact with the children. On Wednesday nights she helps me out by designing games for them to play. She’s doing well with that. And here at college, they’re trying to get her involved a little more with certain things. She’s also in Baytown Concert Band, which is nice, but she doesn’t really interact unless she knows someone.

“She wants to become a librarian. During the summer she helped out with the Dayton library, and she’s going to do that again next summer. She’s very good at what she does. She has OCD, so everything has to go a certain way. But when you give her a task, she does it fully. It may take her a little more time than others, but I think she’ll eventually be able to get a job. I think she’ll be a good librarian.”

— Tina Friesland

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“I was always a book person. The library was my summer job when I was in high school. By the time I was a junior in college I started thinking, what am I going to do with my English degree? That’s when I switched over to library science.

“I ended up being a school librarian for 33 years. I especially loved reading to those primary school kids. I enjoyed reading them ‘Curious George’ for the first time and just seeing their eyes light up. Occasionally I would read them old classics, like ‘Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel’ and ‘The Little House.’ I also read them ‘The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes’ every Easter. Those stories are more than 60 years old, but they still have an appeal.

“To help young kids develop that love of reading and learning was so cool. I think you have to love it yourself first. That was never a problem for me.”

— Lori Janick

The post School librarian shares her love of books appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I always had the feeling that I’d be happy if I could work in a library. I love to work with the people, especially in public libraries where you get all ages and all kinds of people. And then just being around the books is great.”

What’s your favorite book?
“My very favorite novel is by C.S. Lewis, ‘Till We Have Faces.’ It kind of shows the three parts of us: the real spiritual part, the more rational part and then our base part, the part that’s not so great. It’s the one book that I keep revisiting over my lifetime because it’s very meaningful.”

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