Parents of elementary school students have begun to notice a disturbing trend in local schools. This is a trend that strikes at the very core of my focus in schools, which is the teaching of reading. With that said the school library is crucial for students to implement and practice the reading skills learned in the classroom.
I began to notice this when the library at our neighborhood parochial school closed, and the library itself morphed into a computer center. The “library“ class period was eliminated. Future students lost the emphasis on reading provided by the beloved librarian.
Teachers have tried to compensate for this trend by providing bookshelves in their classrooms, but the joy of going into a book filled room, with a teacher who could recommend books to students, read aloud and promote discussions about content in a book had disappeared. In order to overcome the drop in reading test scores since Covid, school libraries should be reintroduced as an important part of our student's school life.
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