Part 3 - Starting a Blaze - School/Library Partnerships - Take 2

This is the third in a series of blog posts I wrote in 2009 sharing ideas that worked for us when I worked in a library in a smallish (15k) community. I believe no matter what size the library, staff or budget, amazing collaborations can make a win-win situation happen for kids. Into the wayback machine, my friends!

4/21/09
Now you are cooking - teachers use your services, you have some great partner mojo working....what else can you do to make your school partnerships smoke?

School-Created Programs
Talk to school staffers who have cool hobbies, skills, passions and see if they would like to be part of a program or present a program for kids - or be open to them suggesting programs. It is amazing what colleagues who are knowledgable in how to talk to and reach kids can do. I have had teachers present Japanese and German culture programs for kids, a National Adoption Day program, as well as spearheading a monthly bi-lingual Spanish program series.

Shared Book Collections
If you and your school library media colleagues identify a mutual area of both of your collections that need beefing up, consider sharing a collection. We wrote a small grant for easy readers (90 at each school) housed at the schools Sept-May and then at the public library during the summer rush. It was a wonderful project and when we no longer needed to share the collection, simply divided it up between the public library and schools. It took a little oversight but really worked well to make more materials available to kids.

Kids as Book Buyers
What's better than getting a kids-eye-view of what books your collection should have. Book buying with kids for the library is a treat. We worked with our schools to identify at-risk third grade readers to join a public library club and visit a bookstore to select a non-fiction book for the public library. The kids picked carefully, we let them keep the books in their classroom for the first month and then had a party at the public library where the books were housed in a special display. It made a huge difference to the kids and us!

Early Literacy Projects
Gaining school support for library efforts to prepare kids for success in school is golden. If we can make the sale and help staffers see how we are helping them by working with preschoolers to increase literacy, school staffers can become our strongest advocates. It's worth the effort to bring them on board in initial efforts - or ask for a place at the table as they are planning literacy activities so you can let them know how many preschoolers and their families that you see!!

We'll tamp our fire down to embers for our final post and look at some simple ways to be a great partner even if you have no time, money or staff.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 4
Part 5