Sorry I actually should have said that I did weed some of the weeds. The
first of the two schools I weeded was 99% African American in its student
body and nearly 50% of the staff. I had the support of three African
American women -- a Social Worker, a Nurse, and a SFA Facillitator in
culling. Some books went to the SFA Facillitator's collection as sensitive
but appropriate for use by the fifth and sixth grade African American
teachers putting them into historical context. Others were claimed by the
nurse for her personal history collection. But for most the Social Worker
found her own "special" way to guarantee we NEVER saw them again.
Fortunately, the Encyclopedias were regualrly replaced (just about the only
thing that had been). As far as the out-dated information went with average
reading levels way below grade level and books that were generally at or
above, we decided that it would be worth having to correct a few wrong ideas
in science and social studies to just find out that the kids had really read
the books we gave away. But I also, don't think that we would have had kids
presenting reports without a previous conference with a teacher to assure
that we knew what wa going to be said.
Dorothy Tissair
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joanne Ladewig" <shatz1@earthlink.net>
To: "Dorothy E. Tissair" <dtissair@snet.net>
Sent: Tuesday, August 06, 2002 11:25 PM
Subject: Re: GEN: Weeds - Justification for trashing them
> Dorothy,
> Granted, there are some areas where there are literally no books in the
home, and a child will bring home almost anything, ecause anything is
> better than nothing. And there may be a few books worth adding to the
> classroom collection - I used to put out boxes of discards at a previous
> school -sometimes they were snatched up at the first recess break, but
> normally there were only about one or two of the thirty in the box that
> were actually taken by teachers. Most really were junk, and were more than
> a turn-off than anything fun to read.
>
> I think it's a close call though - suppose a deleted book went into the
> home of an ethnic minority family and the book was culled due to its
racial
> insensitivity/obsolete stereotypes? Or a nonfiction book that ended up
> being used for a report when it was hopelessly out of date? Like the gal
> who used an old set of encyclopedias (which her mom purchased at a yard
> sale) to do her U.S. history report in the late-sixties and reported to
her
> class that there were now 48 states?! I would definitely "weed the weeds"
> before giving them away!
> -Joanne
>
> > [Original Message]
> > From: Dorothy E. Tissair <dtissair@snet.net>
> > To: <shatz1@earthlink.net>
> > Date: 8/6/02 6:57:55 PM
> > Subject: Re: GEN: Weeds - Justification for trashing them
> >
> > May I add a differing opinion for getting rid of the weeds, especially
if
> > you are in a poorer neighborhood, where the kids have few books at home.
> In
> > two years I was charged with weeding 50 year old collections in two
inner
> > city schools in preparation for automation and amalgomation into a union
> > catalog with the city public library. These are kids who were hungry
for
> > books. I put out the weeds after removing the date due slips and
pockets
> > and stamping Discard in at least three places I gave the books away.
The
> > younger teachers got the first look to build their classroom libraries,
> but
> > the bulk of the books went home with the kids. Instead of checking out
> > books while we were paying for an outside firm to do help with the retro
> and
> > get as many books as possible catalogged, I let each child pick a
> "forever"
> > book. I made sure that I explained that these were special books that
> were
> > NEVER to be returned and then ceremonily wrote this book belongs
to -----
> in
> > each book before sending it out the door. The only stuff that ended up
in
> > the dumpster were ancient chapter books that the custodians gladly took
to
> > the dumpster at the end of summer school.
> >
> > Dorothy Tissair
> >
>
>
>
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