We heard James Patterson speak, and he was entertaining. I have not read any of his books, but I probably will now that I have seen him in person. He spoke with such personality. Besides Patterson, I enjoyed the sessions where there was a forum of authors. We attended 2 of those sessions, one for scary books and one on romance. After the authors talked, the audience could ask questions. Then you could get in line to pick up a free book from each of the authors. I liked that better than trying to hunt for their books down on the vendor's floor.
It's funny how that goes. There were years when we went through the vendor's area 2 or 3 times a day picking up free posters and books. This year...not so much. We received a grant through the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) organization which gave us about 400 books; in addition, we have forged a bond with our local Barnes and Noble, and they sometimes donate books and prizes for our events as well. I guess we didn't need the "freebies" from TLA this year, and I did not miss hauling bags of books around all day. Who knows? Next year might be different.
Latrisa Davis, from AFT, organized a table for the t-shirts, bookmarks, flyers about AFT, and buttons. Her table was just about as popular as the snack table.
It's funny how that goes. There were years when we went through the vendor's area 2 or 3 times a day picking up free posters and books. This year...not so much. We received a grant through the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) organization which gave us about 400 books; in addition, we have forged a bond with our local Barnes and Noble, and they sometimes donate books and prizes for our events as well. I guess we didn't need the "freebies" from TLA this year, and I did not miss hauling bags of books around all day. Who knows? Next year might be different.
Speaking of our AFT grant, we had an exciting event on Friday, April 18th. Here's a little background first... The AFT organizations in both Duncanville ISD and Lancaster ISD wrote a collaborative grant to go with their campaign "Reclaim the Promise" that was funded by FirstBook.org. I'm not sure the monetary value of the grant, but we were able to purchase 4000 books. So that gave Duncanville 2000 books and Lancaster 2000 books.
We ended up with about 400 of those books to give to our students here at the high school. The rest went to the Elementary and Intermediate schools. So our library coordinator, Mendy Autry, circulated an email to ask us our distribution date for the books. She also mentioned that AFT would like to furnish additional materials like t-shirts, buttons, bookmarks, etc to help with our events. In a subsequent email, someone mentioned that National Library Week was coming and maybe we needed to distribute the books then. Great idea! I believe we all decided upon Friday, April 18 (since we were coming to school due to a snow day taken earlier this year.)
We ended up with about 400 of those books to give to our students here at the high school. The rest went to the Elementary and Intermediate schools. So our library coordinator, Mendy Autry, circulated an email to ask us our distribution date for the books. She also mentioned that AFT would like to furnish additional materials like t-shirts, buttons, bookmarks, etc to help with our events. In a subsequent email, someone mentioned that National Library Week was coming and maybe we needed to distribute the books then. Great idea! I believe we all decided upon Friday, April 18 (since we were coming to school due to a snow day taken earlier this year.)
Our plan was to advertise ahead of time and distribute the books at lunch. We have an open door policy at lunch anyway. Students need their ID, but they don't have to have a pass if they are in our library for lunch. So we advertised on the morning announcements, Facebook, Twitter, and made posters for the library. We said we were giving out free books and would also have arts and crafts, snacks, and a Declaration of School Libraries to celebrate the last day of National Library Week.
We weren't sure if anyone would come, but we were going to have fun regardless.
Boy were we wrong! We had just about 300 students and 50+ staff members come through the library at lunch last Friday...
and we gave out all of the books.
Latrisa Davis, from AFT, organized a table for the t-shirts, bookmarks, flyers about AFT, and buttons. Her table was just about as popular as the snack table.
Speaking of snacks, we provided individual bags of chocolate chip cookies...with encouraging words on them. They were fun to pass out.
Our Arts and Crafts tables had pictures of Easter eggs the students could color and Pokemon color sheets with lots of crayons, markers, and colored pencils. I was amazed to see 9-12 graders coloring.
Then the students could sign our Declaration for the Rights of School Libraries...idea stolen from TLA.
Then the students could sign our Declaration for the Rights of School Libraries...idea stolen from TLA.
However, the best was seeing students excited about books. That made my day!
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