Giant Step Award- Lindbergh Takes Off

The first thing you notice as you enter the Lindbergh Middle School's library, this year's winner of the SLJ/Gale Group's annual Giant Step award and its $10,000 prize, is that the place is teeming with adolescents. It's only 7:30 in the morning, a half-hour before school begins, and already there are kids everywhere—cruising the shelves, poring over books, and surrounding the librarian, Helen Cox. The 46-year-old Cox is at the center of this quiet storm, calmly handing out passes so that the kids can return later in the day. Cox is into repeat business big-time. So it's not entirely surprising to learn she had the foresight to establish a flexible schedule that encourages students and teachers to use the Long Beach, CA, media center—better known as "The Reading Room"—throughout the school day, whenever a need arises.

When Cox took over the library six years ago, the place was literally a shambles. Few teachers or students dropped in, let alone hung out here. Now, thanks in large part to Cox, many students love to visit the library and, more important, they are discovering the joys of reading. To help that process along, Cox has created a Distinguished Scholars program, a voluntary project designed to lure kids into the library and introduce them to the basic principles of research. Any student willing to visit The Reading Room before or after school and read for 90 minutes (in 15- or 30-minute increments) can become a Distinguished Scholar. This year, the program, which features field trips, a culture club, and a book club, is 100 students strong. The Distinguished Scholars project has inspired many of Lindbergh's former Scholars, who are now in high school, to pursue a college education—making some students potentially the first in their families to do so. Cox also has created a group called Story Advocates, seventh graders who have been specially trained to read aloud to sixth-grade classes. And, in the mornings, there's an outdoor Les Literati Café, which encourages kids to snack on muffins and read books and magazines before the school day starts.

As far as the physical layout of the library, it's the next best thing to a Barnes & Noble. Comfy couches and velvet-upholstered chairs are arrayed throughout the room. Interesting objects abound—mobiles, banners, posters, calligraphy, teddy bears, chessboards, folk art from around the world, and, of course, books. Books are everywhere. Cox was not only the driving force behind all of these innovations, but she did it in a neighborhood not traditionally enamored of reading and academics.

Most of the 1,435 students who attend Lindbergh are the children of hard-working, economically struggling parents. That means four out of five kids in this insulated, urban neighborhood receive free or subsidized lunches. Many are the children of recent immigrants, and 30 percent of the students speak a primary language other than English. Much of the student body, which is more than 90 percent Latino, African American, and Asian (Long Beach has one of the largest Cambodian populations in the country), has never set foot in a bookstore.

Although numbers never reveal the entire story, Cox's, nonetheless, are impressive. Since she became school librarian, circulation figures have climbed steadily. During the 1999–2000 school year, book circulation doubled compared to the previous year, 1998–1999. And in 2000–2001, circulation increased from roughly 6,000 books to more than 9,000. Perhaps not coincidentally, students' test scores have also risen steadily. In the past two years, the average score of a Lindbergh student taking the SAT 9, the state's standardized achievement test, has risen by 71 points. That hefty increase represents the largest average gain in its school district, Long Beach Unified. Cox says it's difficult to put an empirical finger on the precise role the library has had in that success, but it's safe to say The Reading Room has played a significant part.

It's a typical Tuesday morning. As Cox guides a boy over to a shelf of ever-popular Harry Potter books, it's tempting to think that this immaculately clean library has always been a hopping place. But nothing could be further from the truth. When Cox took over as school librarian in 1995 (replacing the last of a series of temporary librarians), the library barely had a pulse. It was seedy and rundown. "The books were so filthy that you could tell which ones had been handled by the amount of dust on them," recalls Cox. "It was very bad. The main room here was used more as a storage area than anything else. It had old metal filing cabinets, several broken teachers' desks, and odds and ends of furniture. The place smelled like mildew." So, why in the world would Cox—who, at the time, was an art teacher —want to take over such a ramshackle library?

Before Cox arrived in 1992 as Lindbergh's art teacher, she had taught art in Boston's South End. There, in the 1980s, she used the visual arts—painting, drawing, sculpture, and crafts—as a vehicle to teach kids about reading and writing, as well as multicultural understanding. Cox became so taken with the link between literacy and the arts that when she later attended nearby Lesley College, she took courses in reading development and, as part of her graduate studies, developed a plan to raise money for a Boston high school library. In other words, Cox was seriously smitten with school libraries and the power of books to transform disadvantaged kids' lives. Still, few individuals would jump at an opportunity to manage a library as decrepit as Lindbergh's was.

Fortunately, Cox has an entrepreneurial spirit and a visionary's perspective of the world. "I just saw the potential in the place," she says matter-of-factly. "The room itself is actually a very large, spacious, and airy room with windows all along one side. I looked in there, and I thought, 'This could be really beautiful.' And I had all of these ideas about how a library could promote literacy within a middle school."

As it turns out, most of those ideas were instinctual, derived from Cox's own love of literature and bookstores. "I kept thinking: Why is it that when you go into a bookstore, the books are shouting at you to be picked up? You can't stay away from the materials; they're absolutely seductive," she says. "Whereas, why is it when I came into this library, I just wanted to turn around and go out? How can I bring some of those seductive qualities into the school library?"

But before Cox could begin transforming the place, she first had to convince her principal, Adelmo Martinez, to hire her as a librarian. To ensure that Martinez would take her request seriously, Cox submitted a detailed proposal, spelling out what she intended to do. She also agreed to seek state certification as a school librarian. Since then, she's taken courses at California State University-Long Beach and is now very close to earning her certificate. Martinez, perhaps persuaded by Cox's obvious passion, decided to roll the dice and give the art teacher a chance.

One of Cox's first decrees as school librarian was to shut down the place for half the school year, four and a half months, so that she could clean and renovate it—not a popular decision with many of the school's teachers. Neither was an early decision to toss out the collection's focal point, an entire run of ragged National Geographic magazines, as well as the bulk of the old books, some dating as far back as 1903. Since local educators seemed to think the library wasn't important enough to waste scarce resources on, the average copyright date of Lindbergh's book collection was 1965. And 75 percent of those books were shelved on their sides so that nobody could tell what was what.

After drastically weeding the antiquated collection, Cox scrubbed the nearly empty shelves and refinished them until the wood gleamed. Some of the students helped her clean up the remaining books that still had value. Then Cox and her student volunteers used fine sandpaper to remove the grit that had accumulated on the books' edges. They discovered a stash of book jackets in the librarian's office and put them back on the books. And they adjusted the bookshelves so the volumes could be arranged with their spines facing out.

Although the book budget was small in those early days, Cox began to order titles that her culturally diverse students would enjoy. She also borrowed a page from those seductive bookstores and organized her collection by genres and reading interests. "We reorganized [the collection], much to the dismay of traditional librarians who did everything strictly by the Dewey Decimal System," she says. As a result, there are now big signs pointing to "Mysteries," "Fables," "Poetry," "Sci-Fi Fantasy," "Drawing," "Romance," "Self-Help" (a very popular category that includes medical books as well as books on drugs and alcohol and teen development), "Historical Fiction," and many other middle-school–friendly categories. The sports and recreation titles are grouped next to the sports fiction books, because Cox knew it would be popular. "Within each category, we follow the Dewey Decimal System," she adds, "so there's order in the shelves. But we don't adhere to it strictly."

Local bookstores donated reading racks that enabled Cox to face some of the books outward, attractively displaying their covers. The library was also offered a free television and VCR. Cox turned them down. "These kids need someplace in their lives without TV," she explains. "They get enough of that at home." But Cox agrees she went too far when she suggested painting over a 1940 Works Progress Administration mural that celebrates the history of flight (the school is named in honor of aviator Charles Lindbergh) and admits to having grown fond of it over the years.

With the collection makeover accomplished, Cox turned her attention to the dilapidated library's appearance. She designed and, with the help of her students, painted the wildly colorful mural that flanks the entrance to The Reading Room. She also created 12 stained-glass windowpanes for the library's large double doors. Each of the windowpanes took the former art teacher eight to 10 hours to complete. She reupholstered some chairs with plush, red velvet and paired them with matching hassocks. Her husband, William, painted chessboards on tables that were found at thrift shops. Cox dragged in a sofa that had been abandoned in the school district's warehouse and teachers gave her their old couches, too. Cox also managed to get her hands on a discarded Persian rug, some leather swivel chairs, as well as mission-style chairs and round wooden tables. All of these castoffs, for which the librarian begged, borrowed, or scrounged, have been carefully refurbished. The overall appearance is elegant, rather than funky or secondhand. As Cox puts it, she wants the students, most of whom are accustomed to doing without, to feel rich while they are in the library.

Cox has used her enterprising spirit to obtain money from outside sources. "We do a lot with a little," she says. "By thinking of ourselves as a nonprofit organization within the school, we seek donations for our programs, rather than vying for limited school funds." In the past three years, Cox has managed to attract money for materials and programs from a slew of local businesses, individuals, and foundations, including the Earl B. and Loraine H. Miller Foundation, Edison International, the National American Insurance Company of California, Verizon, and Toyota Manufacturing.

Even the library-stingy State of California has pitched in. After years of taking a laissez-faire attitude toward its school libraries, the State Assembly decided in 1998 to funnel some major money to its school libraries, marking the first time since 1965 that they had received significant state funding. Through the California Public School Library Act, Lindbergh has received $25,000 to $30,000 for the past three years. That money was used to beef up the library's collection—although there's still a long way to go. At present, there are seven books for every one of Lindbergh's students. The national average is 18 books per student, while California's average is six books per student.

Can Cox's remarkable success be replicated elsewhere? "Not many people are that energetic and committed," answers Avery Hall, Lindbergh's current principal, pulling no punches. Although Hall is especially pleased with the excellent services that Cox provides to teachers and an admirer of the librarian's entrepreneurial approach, the principal is skeptical when she considers the possibility of somebody else following in Cox's footsteps. As for the librarian's original detractors, the teachers who opposed Cox's initial efforts to revamp the library, they have literally vanished: since 1995, there's been an 80 percent turnover in the school's English department, Cox's most vocal nemesis. In fact, these days, Cox team-teaches lessons with one of the English teachers. And the others sing her praises because of the library's newfound emphasis on multicultural materials. "Thanks to Helen," says a teacher, "my students think it's a reward, not a punishment, to come to the library. In fact, they bug me to bring the class here."

What can we learn from Cox, who took a Giant Step and transformed a dingy, irrelevant school library into a vibrant place where adolescents and their books are celebrated? Perhaps she would tell us not to let a lack of money be an excuse for poor quality: you can find the money and the help if you look hard enough. She might inspire us to use our creativity and some elbow grease to create an environment where young people can feel welcome and comfortable, where reading and scholarly pursuits are valued. She might urge us to have the highest expectations for our students. She almost certainly would point to the sign hanging over the door to the library, the one that proudly proclaims: "The Reading Room, Where Scholars Are Born."