Giant Step Award: Shaking Things Up
When Shelley Worman arrived at Emma Elementary, many kids were reading far below grade level. It was time to do something drastic.
By Debra Lau Whelan -- School Library Journal, 6/1/2004
WEMMA was first broadcast over Emma's airwaves in 2000, when the ever-resourceful Worman found an unused Sony video camera in a library closet. The school was already wired for closed-circuit TV and each classroom had its own set, so all that was needed was a $19.95 converter switch from Radio Shack and a thumbs-up from the principal and teachers. The students were game from the get-go. "These are intelligent kids who—because of limited funds or challenging lives at home—need to be pushed and challenged a little more," says Matthew Lathan, a fifth-grade remedial reading teacher whom Woman recruited to coach the kids after she learned he'd studied film. "The most amazing thing this program does is give these kids a chance to be responsible and to show that they can be role models to younger students."
Opportunity is the most precious gift that Worman gives to Emma's kids—and a prime reason her library is cowinner of this year's SLJ/Thomson Gale's Giant Step Award, honoring a school and public library with the most improved services to children, each with a $5,000 prize. (See "Picture Perfect ," pp. 48–50, for a profile of the public library winner and a list of the runners-up.) During Worman's six-year tenure, she's helped network the entire school, doubled the number of library computers, added Russian and Spanish books to the collection, and formed more partnerships with local universities and businesses than most librarians do in an entire career. Worman is also big on professional development, often hosting technology workshops for teachers in the library or at the district office on subjects ranging from PowerPoint to how to use the Follett online catalog she installed on each classroom computer. And whenever an interesting conference comes up, Worman doesn't hesitate to bring along her colleagues. It's no wonder that she was recently named North Carolina's Media Specialist of the Year. But one of Worman's most significant accomplishments was convincing then-principal Susanne Swanger and other teachers to let children come to the library on their own whenever they felt the urge. "I opened the doors," she says. "I really meant it when I said, 'Send your child to the library every day.'"
Although Emma is nestled at the foot of the lush rolling hills of Asheville, NC, it's a far cry from the bustling downtown cafés, galleries, and antique shops or the tranquil bedroom communities that dot the Blue Ridge Mountains. The school is in a neighborhood that's surrounded by trailer parks and poverty, and 72 percent of Emma's kids receive free or reduced lunches. When Worman arrived in 1999, the school ranked as one of the worst schools in the Buncombe County School District. More than 30 percent of its student population frequently failed the North Carolina End of Grade standardized tests, and the school's name was unflatteringly portrayed in the local Asheville Citizen-Times and the evening news. Now more than 86 percent of its students perform at or above grade level in reading and math.
Looking at the 2,500-square-foot library jam-packed with students, it's hard to imagine that Emma's kids didn't always love to read. "When I came here, no one would have checked out Harry Potter, and there was never a sense of excitement that you see here now," Worman says. "The children were not inspired to grow as readers." That's when Worman knew she had to shake things up. She'd drop by classes or place notes in teachers' mailboxes about helpful Web sites and resources. She'd even corner them on their way out of the bathroom. "I'd grab teachers in the halls, send them e-mails and Post-its to ask them what they were working on," says Worman, who still runs from room to room to announce any new software purchases. "These kids were at-risk for failure, so I didn't want to waste a lot of time."
Today, the library's circulation is an astounding 105,000, up from 28,800 in just four short years. And Worman hears children sharing tips on authors and titles with each other all the time. "The children read in the halls, whenever there is downtime in the classrooms," she says. "They read while standing in line at the cafeteria and while waiting for buses." Thanks in no small part to the library's success, in 2001 the school was given the U.S. Department of Education Blue Ribbon award for demonstrating dramatic gains in academics, school climate, and professional expertise. Emma is now a high-performing school with such an incredible reputation that the new principal, Candie Sellers, often turns down transfer requests from parents whose kids attend other district schools.
But Emma has an interesting twist: with 18 countries represented and seven languages spoken—including Russian, Moldavian, and Ukrainian—it is the most culturally diverse of all the district's 43 schools. How did a modest Asheville school become a mini–United Nations? Many local churches sponsored families from the former Soviet Union, and those people subsequently invited their relatives. Other ethnic groups were drawn to jobs at nearby factories or to opportunities created by the town's huge tourism trade. As a result, about 36 percent of Emma's 467 students attend English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. The school also has its fair share of kids who suffer from hyperactivity and learning or attention disabilities.
"We serve a low socioeconomic group, [and] often there's not a lot of support at home," says Gail Buckner, the district's head of media services. "Many kids have non-English speaking parents or single parents, and most come from homes that are not print rich, where they're not read to, where there's no instruction on how to read, or where they may have never been exposed to reading."
That's why the transformation at Emma is so remarkable.
It's 8:15 on a Thursday morning, and the library is already buzzing with activity. Shirley Young's first graders are engaged in a lesson on North Carolina's state symbols, displayed prominently on a white board. On the other side of the room, Laurin Buchanan's second-grade class is researching how environmental changes affect pond life. By 9:30 a.m. Diane Livingston's fourth-grade class is in the library practicing vocabulary with encyclopedia flash cards, and Jane Arnaud's third graders are scouring the Internet for information on endangered animals. The decibel level is high—not because the kids are unruly or bored, but because they're completely engaged in what they're learning. By noon, Worman has already hosted six classes and several dozen kids have strolled in to return and check out books. Connecting the classroom to the library is a part of everything she does. "Information literacy permeates the school," says Worman, who hands out monthly curriculum-planning sheets to teachers so she can get a head start on collecting materials.
Whether she's hooking up with the local American Kennel Club to create a reading program on pet care or celebrating the works of a popular author like Marc Brown, Worman has developed dozens of projects to transform her students into enthusiastic learners. Her kids can expect at least one new reading activity each month. In April, students took part in a library-sponsored book fair, and in May, the kids received free books from a Reading Is Fundamental literacy program. "Some people only have one good idea, but Shelley has them all the time," says Michael Waschel, director of the nonprofit Buncombe County Schools Foundation, which awarded Worman $500 last fall for her flags-and-banners project. (For the details of the innovative program, see "A Banner Year.")
Sure, Worman has the same problems that many librarians face. This year's budget was slashed in half to $10,000, forcing her to cut back on book and technology purchases. There are still a few holdouts among teaching colleagues who are either afraid of technology or see it as a threat to the status quo. And she'd love to see part-time library assistant Bonnie Phillips become full time. Still, Worman doesn't have much to complain about. She gets all the support she needs from the district office and her principal. And the partnerships she's made with most of the school's teachers form the foundation of her successful library program. "We all work together," she says. "It takes some coaxing, but the teachers jump right in when you show how you can help them."
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