Loving All Things Library

It was quite an honor for the Virginia Community School District to receive the RAILS My Library Is… Grant! We were able to receive this grant through our teamwork and love for the library.  It all started when our 2023-2024 School Librarian, Ms. Stephanie, and our High School ELA teacher, Mrs. Crivilare, implemented a survey for student input on book recommendations for the school library.  Once Ms. Stephanie received the results she knew she needed to find funding for our student’s curious and growing minds! 

Ms. Stephanie came across the RAILS My Library Is… Grant and thought, “This sounds like a great opportunity to help the students!” With that, she got to work! Ms. Stephanie contacted the elementary teachers to see what their students would love to learn more about in the library.  Keeping the junior high and high school book recommendations in mind, Ms. Stephanie added the elementary book recommendations of animals and presidents to her list. The library non-fiction section for elementary school will soon grow and the junior high and high school library section was on its way to finding love from students again!

When the 2024-2025 school year began, our new library aide, Ms. Jess started receiving the books that were ordered with the grant! WOW, it was amazing to see all of these books coming in! This grant was making the day of so many students.  The students were so excited to see them sitting on the counter and could not wait until the day they were in the system so they could read them. Ms. Jess could not process all the books quick enough to get the books in the hands of the students. Ms. Jess then reached out for help from the junior high students during their Guided Study hour.  This was a great opportunity for the students to learn more about how books are prepared, processed, categorized, and how the library functions during the afternoon hours.  This was the start of a beautiful relationship with books that will create a love for reading.  During this time not only were the junior high students able to work with Ms. Jess on processing the new books and realizing how interesting different genres could be, they were able to assist with younger students in the library by reading to them, helping them find the perfect book to check out, and building relationships with them. The elementary students were so thrilled every time they got to see the junior high students.  This aided the younger students with developing a stronger, more positive, relationship towards the library and helping build a love for reading. 

The RAILS My Library Is… Grant not only helped with funding for our small-town school district, but also brought many people together to show the love we have for our school library. The students have found a renewed interest in the library, thanks to the many new books and our junior high helpers.  With all the new books in the library this year, the students were more willing to try different styles of reading that they normally thought they would not enjoy.  This has been a great experience for the Virginia students to flourish and find a passion for reading again!

This week’s blog post was written by Jess Miller, Library Media Aide, Virginia 64. 

This project was made possible by the My Library Is... Grant.