Alot of school districts these days want to hire librarians but either can't afford them, can't find them, or both. Finding themselves in that quandary, administrators at the Detroit Public Schools turned to the federal government for help. And guess what? They got it.
Last month, the district learned it had received a $164,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The money will be used to send 20 Detroit teachers to Wayne State University to become certified school librarians. IMLS funded the program through its National Leadership Grants for Libraries (www.imls.gov/grants/library), which go to projects that can serve as national models.
"Detroit is a wonderful place for IMLS to put funding. It's a place where kids really need help and support," says Dian Walster, professor and director of the library and information science program at Wayne State and co-author of the IMLS grant proposal.
Detroit is not the first school district to work with a university to train librarians. Similar programs are running in Chicago and Providence, RI. But in Detroit, the library trainees will not only take classes, but will give something back to the district while doing so. In the summers between semesters, the students, working in pairs, will perform a collection analysis on each of 10 closed school libraries. They'll develop plans for creating new collections to match the school curricula, then they'll write grant proposals seeking money to pay for those collections. All the work will be done under the supervision of Wayne State professors and Detroit library media specialists.
The ultimate goal, says Walster, is to re-open the 10 school libraries that are studied.
Starting this fall, the district will begin interviewing teachers interested in library certification. Candidates will also be screened by Wayne State to make sure they meet the university's admissions criteria.
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If things go really well, Detroit will have 20 new media specialists, who will each reach about 500 students per school. |
There are plenty of teachers interested in the program, including those already working in libraries, says Angela McKissic-Samuels, the district's supervisor of library media education and co-author of the IMLS grant. Of those chosen, 50 percent will come from minority groups, in an effort to reflect the Detroit district's predominantly African-American population.
Besides training librarians, a big part of the project is evaluating every aspect of the program, a process to be overseen by Walster and Wayne State Professor Carol Doll. The researchers will look at issues such as how well the students do with their school-library evaluations, whether the library trainees get the support they need to succeed, and, ultimately, how the project affects Detroit's schools.
The librarians-in-training are expected to graduate in the summer of 2002. If all goes well, they'll have master's degrees in library science and endorsements as school library media specialists. And if things go really well, Detroit will have 20 new media specialists, who, says Walster, will each reach about 500 students per school.
"We're both very, very excited," says Walster of herself and McKissic-Samuels. "We both have a real strong commitment to kids and schools, and we figure if we could have 20 [new] media specialists, we're talking about affecting the lives of 10,000 kids."--Andrea Glick
