In Support of Elementary School Librarians

Dear Community Members,

It’s half way into our first school year with no full-time librarians in Bedford Central School District’s elementary schools. How is it going? Are your children reading just as much? Are the ESL students thriving in reading and writing without the the intimate guidance of the librarians? Are all of our children excited about the latest trends in literature?

Because librarians do more than stack books -- they create a culture. My grandmother, the late Madeleine L’Engle who wrote A Wrinkle in Time as well as 60 other books was the librarian and artist-in-residence for 35 years at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City. It is not enough to have a library without a librarian. In her 1998 Margaret Edwards Award Acceptance speech she said: “To be a librarian, particularly a librarian for young adults, is to be a nourisher, to share stories, offer books full of new ideas. We live in a world which has changed radically in the last half century, and story helps us to understand and live creatively with change.”

I, like all of us, have witnessed firsthand the power of well-funded public education, as I have three children in Fox Lane Middle and High Schools who all reaped the benefits of having an elementary school librarian. I am an author and an educator; I run the Westchester and Connecticut chapters of a national writing non-profit program called Writopia Lab, where our mission is to spread joy, literacy, and critical thinking to all children and teens through creative writing. Kids learn critical thinking through exposure to all kinds of reading and writing - this is how they become problem solvers, this is how they learn about humanity, and this is how they find their own voice in the world. For example, over 95% of Writopia parents say their children and teens have more joy in their life because of their involvement in writing workshops; over 74% of the parents of reluctant writers report that they feel that their children’s grades and test scores improved because of their positive immersion in reading and writing.

Elementary school librarians can fill that gap: reading and writing skills not only help our children grow as critical thinkers, but they help them achieve academic excellence as well. They pull students from classrooms who need extra support or enrichment, and teach all children the language and love of books.  They are also the stewards into which kids learn how to research, and how to separate fact from fiction. Which, these days, seems like a more and more important skill.

More kids than ever are reaching high school and applying to college with no idea how to write an essay, and with no tools for critical thinking other than regurgitation for the Common Core tests - our children are woefully unprepared. Don’t our kids need and deserve more nourishers in their lives? Isn’t this what opportunity and top education is all about? Our children are only in elementary school once; and we have the power to create something wonderful for them.

Our support of librarians sends a clear message to our children: we, as a community, value the pursuit of intellectual curiosity.

Please consider reinstating elementary school librarians for the 2017-2018 budget, and for years to come.

Sincerely,

The Tooth Fairy and other 'What if's'

Yesterday I took my kids to see hunky Dwayne Johnson as The Tooth Fairy - wait! Don't navigate yourself away from this page!

I can see you cringing. She's not really going to write about The Tooth Fairy movie, is she? I think I'll go visit another blog, thank you very much.

Actually, I am, because I made a commitment that I would "blog" every other day, and I haven't "blogged" since Monday, and the kids are out of school on winter break, so this is what I have to write about. I will try to be interesting.

(Although that wasn't part of the promise, I don't have that much chutzpah, besides, what's interesting to me might only be interesting to another couple of people, so I'm writing this for YOU, you couple of people!)

Let's couch this then in terms of STORY. We are all story-tellers, right? In this I'll show-you-mine if you-show-me-yours world, we all know something about spin, and perspective, and variances on that ubiquitous word, TRUTH.



Let me start again - I took my kids to see said movie - and my expectations were so low, that I was pleasantly surprised. Besides the fact that Dwayne Johnson is easy on the eyes and that Stephen Merchant (from Ricky Gervais' EXTRAS) is hilarious as the fairy case worker, it played with my favorite philosophical question: how do we choose to perceive the world?

Is there room for dreaming, imagination, growth? Dwayne Johnson's character Derek is a nice guy, but quite literal minded. He thinks that dreams are bad, that believing in anything other than the literal world is unfair. He is summoned to fairy land for tooth fairy duty kicking and screaming. His crime is being a crusher of dreams. Derek's vision of himself and the world is so narrow, we are subjected to many scenes of slapstickery (I know, not a real word), but we know what is coming. As his girlfriend (played by Ashley Judd) confronts him before his predictable change of heart, she tearfully accuses him of not being able to ask the question "what if."

I loved that. That's what we do as story-tellers, we ask the question, "what if," we revere the world of imagination. We all know and love people who are afraid of the "what if's," and I don't blame them. The "what if's" are scary, because there are no guarantees, and they can be negative as well as positive. What if I can't do it? What if I can? What if the moon was really made out of green cheese? What if I change my perspective from the glass being half empty, to the glass being half full? What if I could actually find my own voice?

I have struggled all of my life with issues of faith, what to believe and what not to believe. My grandmother, the writer, taught me that the impossible sometimes is actually possible. My father, Alan W. Jones, the Episcopalian priest, generously encouraged me to find my own belief system.

The "what if's". What if Santa Claus is real? What if I really matter? What if you really matter? Belief in the fantastical is FUN. Belief in love and the resilience of the human spirit is REAL.

"What if we get married?" Derek asks his girlfriend at the end of the movie. What if indeed!