When I first began studying for my MLS, I wanted to be a Media Specialist. I wanted to work in schools, especially elementary schools, teaching children to read, promoting the use of the library and how to use it. Unfortunately, job stability within schools are not the greatest at the current time and brought me away from the field. Recently, Librarians and I am hopeful other community members came together to sign a petition to make sure that children have access to a school library program. The had until Feb 4 to have a minimum of 25,000 signatures. Today they reached 25,878!! Neil Gaiman was even someone who supported the petition and promoted it on his tumblr! What this petition entails is that the government while reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), that they ensure that proper funding is still available to school libraries. Without funding, it makes it harder and harder to keep school libraries afloat and provide the necessities students need.
I remember when I had visited a couple of media centers here where I live. Many of them spoke on how library positions are being taken away from the libraries, where the teachers access everything. Well to me that made no sense. Yes, teachers are trained to well..teach, I understand that. However, librarians are also taught that in a sense. We are trained to do the research, and have the skills necessary to teach students how to use the library properly. Take that away and a teacher in all honesty can only do so much.
These days schools should have proper libraries. Teachers are also not getting enough funding but having a library accessible for materials and such is a great asset. We of course know they are so much more, with teaching literacy, technology, how to research and much more. The school librarian, also may be the first librarian that a child meets. Sometimes their parents unfortunately do not take them to a public library. There is just so much that a school library can do for a child. I am so happy that we managed to get this many signatures. I myself signed it and I hope that many of you signed as well.
“Libraries and librarians have definitely changed my life — and the lives of countless other Americans…they deserve the support and patronage of every single one of us who values education.”
— Former First Lady Barbara Bush
(information and picture cited from https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions)
We Need Libraries 