Fifty one

Fifty years ago…

Most people would agree that a library is an essential part of any school. After all, learning at this level is textbook based, and to lack resources that can and extend and refine those methods would ultimately lead to the demise of any school. No one book can contain all of the knowledge and information that one comes to possess over the course of their educational experience at Pius, which is all the more reason to maintain a vibrant and full stocked library so that all interests, ideas and needs can be better explored.

Saint Pius has always understood the importance of the written word to the instructional process. In June of 1959, just two years after the school had opened and before there was even a full, dedicated classroom for the eighth grade, the nuns at the school were already concerned about building up the library. They began, as did all things at Pius, with humility.

We recently came across a short article in a publication put out by the nuns call The Family Circular. Volume 25, No. 3, contained the following description of Pius and the library:

The new unit comprises two classrooms, a central library, and restroom facilities. This addition is referred to as the “Birdie School,” because of its various colors; Finch yell, Warbler green, Cardinal red, Pelican gray, and other hues harmoniously blended in an attractive and cheerful atmosphere.

While the construction crew was busy about many details, we began to catalog our library books into a central system. In order to accomplish this task more efficiently and quickly, we were very happy to have Sister Evangela and Sister Benedict with us for about four days. During this time, we cataloged about three hundred and fifty books. We have discovered that a librarian’s job is never done, and up to date we can boast of approximately four hundred books.

Thus it began. It is rather appropriate that the nuns who founded this place would do so in such a simple matter: they needed books, so they asked for them, one at a time. Saint Pius has never been concerned about the way things look to the outside world; it has always been concerned with finding a need and meeting it in whatever manner was possible.

We have come a long way since then, and our current library has far more than four hundred books. We now offer a software program, Accelerated Reader, that allows our students to assess comprehension of books that they read on their own. This in turn allows our students to exceed their school reading requirement. We have a library class that teaches students the basics of library skills and how to gather information. And we have plenty of resources that allow our students avenues to take their learning beyond the classroom.

And the bottom line is this: it is not nearly good enough.

A goal for the future

Truth be told, our library does not meet our current needs. It has long been catered to the younger grades, and our current collection lacks many essential titles that would interest our middle school students. We have little or no access to classic writers that could interest our exceptional learners. Middle school students generally feel that there is no longer any need to visit the library.

Other schools have addressed this issue before us. Many are moving to collaborative models where the library is the central hub through which cross-curricular instruction takes place. Essentially, students are taught that what is learned in their literature class carries over to science, which carries over to math, which carries over to social studies. It helps students understand that all parts of their intellectual journey are connected, and more importantly, it shows them how to find those connections.

A great library, then, would be one where students learn how to access information, how to extend and refine what they are learning in their classes, how to create new skills and build upon their current interests. It should be a collaborative center that allows teachers to step above and beyond their current curriculum as needed in order to reach students in innovative ways, and above and beyond all of this, it should inspire in them a love of reading, a desire to better themselves, and provide them with the materials to do so. The best news that we can give you is this: Saint Pius does not really want a great library.

That would be thinking a little too small.

Setting the bar higher

With all of our lofty expectations, there will still need to be practical details and plans to accomplish all we set out to do. To that end, we will be keeping our current K – 5 library where it is. We will convert the former preschool, located just off the cafeteria, into the new middle school branch. This space will be large enough to hold a full class, will feature numerous tables and a study area, and will also allow us enough shelving to continue to expand our library in the future.

Teachers will be asked to participate in building a love of reading, and a set of shelves will be dedicated to Top Tens, lists of books that the teachers, staff and friends of Saint Pius have laid out in order to inspire our fledgling readers. Students will be encouraged to use the library both before and after school, and will also be able to make requests for volumes that we do not have to be added to our collection.

We will also be offering a number of eBooks, digital books that can be accessed from anywhere and manipulated in ways that bound books cannot. This is important for a few reasons: first, the books are cheaper than their bound counterparts, meaning that very expensive texts can become affordable, and we are therefore granted greater access to information within our library; second, they can be accessed from anywhere, so students compiling research projects no longer have to do so within the library alone; third, these books can be manipulated – text can be highlighted or expanded, and this in turn allows us to eliminate the need to purchase expensive, large print editions of books for our students with visual issues.

Furthermore, we will be hosting a collection of novels that will be utilized by our middle school teachers in order to better teach reading to their classes. We will purchase enough copies of each novel for every member of the class, and there will be twenty-five such sets the first year. We will expand this to over one hundred sets within the next four years, meaning that students will have even greater access to classic texts that they can digest, share and take meaning from in a classroom setting. This will also allow us to ensure that all of our middle school students are reading at least eight novels each school year, a number that will hopefully continue to increase as they continue to develop.

And we’re not done yet

As I mentioned, the goal of the library is to bring learners together and allow collaborative, cross-curricular learning to take place. It allows students who might favor non-traditional methods of education to meet their potential, and we have not forgotten about them.

With this in mind, we were proud to design and fund a new tutoring center that will allow us to meet our remediation and enrichment needs. It is not every student who can sit through a traditional class and learn everything they need to know within the scant fifty minutes that they spend with a teacher. Just so, there are some students who have mastered entire concepts long before their teacher even begins class prayer. It is for those students that we have created our tutoring center.

The tutoring center will consist of a number of teaching tools. Twelve new computers, loaded with the latest software, will flank the walls of the old parish offices. We will convert the two current meeting rooms into one larger space that will offer tables for students and their tutors, teachers or parents to meet. A Smartboard will hang from one wall, and a high-definition computer monitor (to be used for video and image editing) will hang from the other.

Students will be able to also use individual TVs, CD players and MP3 players for a variety of projects, ranging from researching news shows, watching videos that allow them to further explore topics, explore classical music and jazz, and listen to books on tape. Another part of our tutoring center will be a digital media library that will house everything from music to photos to videos. Yet again, all of these materials will be in place not only for our students who need extra help, but also for our students who want to further enrich their educational experience.

In the same way, our students who require additional challenges will have access to our new language lab, a software based, self-study area where students will be able to become conversational in eleven different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Latin and Vietnamese. This will also be housed in the tutoring center.

Keeping in mind that we are a church school community, we will be allowing adult and student members of both the parish and the school to use this language learning lab after school hours should they have the desire to do so.

We are also making a commitment that these changes will not languish after they have been undertaken: we have decided to increase the library budget by 690% for next year, and have pledged to keep that level of funding from this time forth. We are also going to add at least one aide whose sole job will be to work individually with both our struggling and advanced learners. We will be keeping the tutoring center quite busy over the coming year.

What you can do to help

There have been many other library projects throughout the city in recent memory, ranging from those at public schools to those at private. This is not an inexpensive undertaking by any means, and I know that any capital improvement can be daunting. The good news is this: we have decided, because of many factors, that we will make our library functional before we make it elegant. We will not have hardwood floors with solid oak tables and chairs, but we will have a massive number of books, hundreds of resources for students to use, and state of the art technology that will help them learn languages, enrich their experiences and refine what they have already learned.

Similar projects, due to their infrastructure costs, have run upwards of $100,000 – and that has not included language labs or dedicated tutoring centers.

What we propose can be done for under $60,000, language lab included, and will feature more resources than these other programs can boast. We are offering twice the library for half the cost, and the best part is that due to some very generous donations, we have already raised just over a third of the necessary money to fund this project. Our grand opening will coincide with the first day of school for the 2008 – 2009 school year.

We have the drive, the plan, and the need. The rest will soon follow, as do all things, in Christ.