BISD librarian inspiring more students to read

Breckenridge ISD District Librarian Abby Moore spoke to the school board and those in attendance of the regular scheduled meeting Monday, Nov. 14 about the efforts being made throughout the district to increase reading amongst students.

Moore began her presentation by expressing her excitement about the program.

“This is my job. This is my passion. So I’m super excited to (...) share with you what we’ve been doing in the libraries and how we have been working towards some goals over the last few years and how we’re making some headway now,” Moore said.

Moore is the only certifi ed librarian within BISD and is working full time on the Breckenridge High School campus this year, with regular visits to the other campuses. She is assisted by full-time paraprofessionals Amanda Wright at East Elementary, Chantal De La Cruz at South Elementary, and Charla Marin at Breckenridge Junior High School.

“When we started this year, we have really been trying to work towards building a culture of reading in the district. We’ve been thinking about what does it look like to have a culture of reading in the district? (...) If we can create readers who truly love to read, that will increase test scores. It will make them more empathetic. It will make them thinkers. It just makes somebody a real well-rounded person,” Moore said.“Also looking towards the future of making sure that they are successful beyond school, because that’s in our vision statement, going beyond the classroom. We want to create a culture of reading here, so that we create lifelong readers in the future because we need adults to continue reading. It is very, very important. So that’s my goal and I get to spend every day doing that. It’s the best thing ever.”

Moore said they came up with a program called LARIAT, which stands for Literacy And Reading In All Things.

“I’m really trying to push this K through 12 with our staff, just making sure that we understand that reading is not isolated to a library and it is not isolated to an ELA (English/Language Arts) classroom, either. It’s everywhere.” Moore discussed. “(...) So three things create lifelong readers: access, choice and response. So access to books, the ability to choose your books and the ability to respond to what you read. If you don’t consider yourself an adult reader, you probably missed something there. A lot of kids don’t have access to books at home. They don’t have it. A lot of kids are not given the choice to read what they want, they’re made to read certain things. And a lot of kids don’t have the opportunity to talk to somebody about books because there’s nobody else around them that reads. My goal would be to have those three things within the district, just constantly trying to make those things come together so that we can have lifelong readers, kids that love reading.”

Moore stated that while students do not have a library day every week, it is semi-regular being every- other or every three weeks. While in the library, Moore supplements what the students are being taught in their classrooms. A new online catalog was purchased for the district which allows students to search for and place holds on books.

As of the time of the meeting Monday, Nov. 14, the school district had circulated 9,887 books from Kindergarten through 12th grade. In the previous six weeks alone, BJHS students placed holds on 106 books, with high school students placing 61 holds. In previous school years, there were zero books placed on hold.

“We have never done holds. We have never even had an online catalog for them to search. A lot of those holds are actually books that are in the library. So I’m doing a, I call it Door-Dash for books,” Moore said. “They basically put a hold on it, and it’s like Walmart pick-up. They’re making an order, I go pull it from the shelf, and I go take it to them. A lot of times I put candy with it.”

Moore expressed her pride in the high school students’ willingness to participate in the program and their interest in reading books.

“I’m pretty proud of them at this point, it’s a big deal,” she said. “If we can get high school kids to read, we can change the world. Think about the competition that we have with books. Just their time alone, they’re very, very busy. On top of that, they have a lot of really exciting things on their phones and video games.”

In the previous 15 years, the yearly average for books checked out by high school students was about 1,600 each year. During the current school year, BHS has already surpassed 2,000 books checked out. Moore said if trends continue, she estimates that high school students would reach 4,000 books by the end of the school year.

She continued by touching on the importance of choice in reading, saying a lot of times students aren’t given a choice in what they can and cannot read.

“Choice is a huge deal. If we take that away from them, they start to hate it. I’m trying to get choice back into some of our priorities. (...) Our books are grouped according to the genre. So when a kid walks into the library, all the scary books are together. All the funny books are together. All the mystery books are together,” Moore said. “So it’s not your classic Dewey (Decimal System). I did that about 10 years ago, and upped our circulation by 30% just by relabeling the books and shelving them differently, because a kid can get really intimidated by the library, especially if you’re a struggling reader. If you’ve already narrowed it down to funny books, then that takes that intimidation factor out and they get that autonomy where they can actually make that choice and it makes all the difference in the world. I love to help kids, but a lot of times they just need to do it on their own too, and they don’t want to ask for help, so that helps.”

At the East and South libraries they have a similar method of organizing books they call “binning” where superhero books, princess books, and specific character books are grouped together.

Moore said with the new online catalog, students are even looking at the catalog and placing holds on books over the weekends.

Reward systems are in place at BJHS and BHS, which gives students found reading on their own certificates that they can take to the library and exchange for candy. Books are now being ordered based on student recommendations and requests. If a student requests a specific book and it is approved and ordered, the student who made the request is able to check it out first.

Students are now being given the opportunity to give their response on books they’ve read. The district has partnered with a company called Beanstack. Students track minutes read, pages read and at the end can write reviews and suggest books to each other.

As of the time of the meeting, students and teachers Kindergarten through 12th grade have logged 230,000 reading minutes since the program was launched in late September/early October.

Teachers are encouraged to participate and log their minutes in order to encourage students to read and foster a culture of reading throughout the school year.