Crazy? All the Best People Are

Crazy, disorganized chaos... and a lot of smiling faces! I started my book box project today! 

When I was in elementary school, my best friend was my librarian (Ms. LuAnne Knobbe). She was instrumental in inspiring and guiding my love of reading, and ever since then, the idea of being a librarian has been at the back of my mind. This may be a slightly unconventional way to go about it, but that doesn't make me any less excited! 

It will get more organized as time goes on, but for today we began with 107 books and ended the hour with the same 107, so I'm going to call that a success! 

At one point we had 63 pupils inside looking at the books and about 20 more watching through the window, interested but not quite brave enough yet to go inside. I asked them "Ikoitos yesi aisiom toma?" (Do you all want to go inside and read?) and they said "Moi!" (Tomorrow!)

The children are all very excited to see books! Many of them were reading out loud to themselves, and some of them were even reading the same book out loud, together in groups. This was wonderful to see, because they'd organized it themselves, and it meant that even if they didn't know all of the words on their own, there was a group there to help them figure it out! As you can imagine, our library is nowhere near quiet, and I've made sure to tell all of the teachers that, personally, I don't want it to be a quiet place. Reading should be fun, it can be loud, pupils can be excited about it! (Hopefully, once we have a lending system, that'll take care of the slight issue of the pupils who might need a quiet environment to read. No one has complained or mentioned it yet, though!)

I outlined our library rules last week at assembly on Friday morning. I made sure to put them in English, Ateso (one of the P2 teachers translated it for me), and as descriptive of pictures as possible. Because, as one of my friends pointed out when I was running my ideas past him... how are they going to know that it says they're welcome even if they can't read, if they can't read...? Which was an extremely good point. 

So, here's my best effort! It's currently taped on the wall outside of P7, which is nowhere near the classroom we use for our library. However, it's right in front of the space where they hold assembly every day, so I figure that it'll be looked at by the pupils whenever their attention wanders from assembly. That should be a great way for all of them to get familiar with it! (I haven't, of course, explained my reasoning in that regard to the administration, since they're the ones speaking at assembly...)