Article in Reading Teacher

[Belinda Holbrook <holbrook@NETINS.NET>]

I was just reading an article in the April issue of Reading Teacher that made
me burn. It is entitled "Expanding our views of family literacy." The authors
are from Arizona State University. One premise is that teachers must help
families be teachers of their children, a great idea, but they really put
school libraries down. I quote" Most public schools have libraries, but children 
are generally restricted to borrowing only one or two books a week. Although
this may be appropriate for older children who can read chapter books, this
quantity is insufficient for young children who are learning how to read. Primary 
children should have at least one new book an evening." Their solution is
to establish a classroom lending library. They also suggest that a teacher
check out 30 to 40 books from the public library and lend those to their
students. Why didn't they suggest that teachers request that their students be
allowed to check out books daily from the school library? And I get steamed,
too, at all the suggestions in teaching magazines today how important classroom
libraries are. I agree that having books readily available in the classrooms
are important, but why don't they just check out collections from the IMC? That
way they can have new libraries whenever they need them.

When I first began teaching (a number of years ago!) the school had only
classroom collections, no media center. It was horrible. There was no way of
telling what book was where in the school. What if a second grader wanted to
find out about frogs, but the only book on frogs was in the third grade class-
room. I think individual classroom libraries are such a waste of resources.
Books cost a lot and I think having in the IMC where they are available to all
teachers and students makes the most sense. (Oops-forgot the word "them" in
the last sentence.)

Getting back to the article, are we so set in our rules for check-out that
teachers assume we would never let beginning readers come each day to the
library? I hope not.

Belinda Holbrook
Madison School
Davenport, IA
holbrook@netins.net