What Works-Rock and Roll Library

I've worked in Public and School Libraries for 28 years. And one thing I've discovered is that success with students and teachers comes much more easily if you can find ways to connect with them on a personal level. For me, the key to this connection has been my longtime love of rock and roll.

It all started at Franklin Middle School, where I was a librarian for 13 years. As the teachers and I got to know each other, they learned that I loved to dance, that I was always spouting rock-and-roll trivia, and that I owned a lot of records. I also had some firsthand knowledge of the subject—after all, I was there when rock and roll first took off.

One semester, a group of seventh-grade teachers had planned a huge cross-curricular research project with the theme "changes." The teachers wanted the kids to be excited about the project, so asked me if I would teach the kids all those dances I'd been talking about. The plan was to show how quickly things could change—in this case, dance crazes.

At the time, I hadn't developed my material into any kind of lesson. It was just… dancing. I recorded the songs I wanted to use onto separate tapes and found a boom box to play them. We used the large open area near the school's entry hall, which had a raised area, almost like a stage, where I could demonstrate the dances and everybody could see what I was doing. I told the kids why we were dancing, and how this early rock-and-roll period was a time of great change. Then I just demonstrated a dance—solo or with another teacher—and started the music. The teachers and I dove into the crowd and got as many students dancing as we could. Believe it or not, most kids actually tried the dances, with much laughter all around. The teachers' warm, outgoing personalities definitely contributed to our success.

Some time later, one of our music teachers decided to cover rock and roll with a scavenger hunt in the library. I reminded her of the dance program and we decided to do a 45-minute "history of early rock and roll" in preparation for the scavenger hunt.

This turned out to be so popular that we did it for the next eight semesters, until I left to work at the high school. Of course, you can't cover everything in 45 minutes, so I focused on performers, songs, and events that I personally remembered. I consulted books on rock and roll to check my facts, including The History of Rock and Roll by David Shirley (Franklin Watts, 1977) and The History of Rock and Roll by Adam Woog (Lucent, 1999). I brought in a record player and some albums and 45s. I used video clips. I talked about how "teenagers" became a recognized segment of society, about radio stations in the '50s (and what they could and could not play), and about "covers"—white recordings of black music to make it "acceptable." We listened to parts of old records, well known and not so well known. And, we danced. First we did the stroll and the jitterbug, and then we moved into the early '60s with the twist, the monkey, the jerk, the mashed potato, and the pony. Again, the kids were fascinated, and almost all of them danced.

Now the program has graduated with me, since we opened a new high school last year. During the first semester, as I worked with various teachers, I kept my eye open for opportunities to use some of my favorite presentations. Sure enough, by December, two of the English teachers were studying The Catcher in the Rye and talking about how students lacked an understanding of the period. As they were signing up to use the library for research on the '50s, I risked mentioning my early rock-and-roll program. They jumped at it. I did the presentation just as I did for the middle school. The kids participated, asked questions, danced, and laughed.

I'm not saying rock and roll is the only way to connect with students. My point is to choose something you love and that you can have fun with. When students get a glimpse of your interests and your personality, they're much more willing to approach you for all kinds of information and assistance. Since I started my rock-and-roll lessons, students talk to me about music and other current issues more than they did before. They ask me a lot of questions and are actually beginning to believe that the library has information on almost anything.