Tuesday, August 21, 2012
The library project moves forward
In the past few months, I have had quite a bit of fun with the Sheryl Pillay and Sharm Natalie in putting together a usable library at Sparks Estate Secondary School. A Grace mission day to the school in February along with a generous donation from St. Thomas Anglican Church helped spur on this little project. We started with i) scheduling a compulsory library period each week for grade 8 learners and then ii) getting the resources we needed. The kids unfortunately were sitting on tables and on the floor for the first two months of the year but it was necessary to secure users of the library before resources were spent.
As the months have progressed new books have been bought, tables, chairs and fans installed. We have even had an internet connection installed in the library with three laptops for learners to access non-fiction resources. The grade 8's have finally been able to take out books in the past 3 months as we purchased a library management software system to control the movement of books in and out of the library. Two things have emerged from this:
i) For the first time some learners are taking out a book from a library, actually reading it and coming back to class to tell others what they have read.
ii) There are illiterate grade 8's at the school who have had to secretly reveal to our volunteer librarian that they actually cannot read at all and need some help.
The library experience is therefore a dichotomous one: expanding the world of those who have the tools to read while increasing the frustrations of those who stare blankly at the reality of many books they cannot personally access.
There is one particular positive and unexpected outcome of the library project. In the course of trying to expand the current library facility, a generous move was made by the neighbouring bursar. A hole was bashed through the library dry wall into her office to extend the library by 2 metres. Our finances for this little extension were limited and the quotations we received from professional builders did not match our limitations! In response, Sham Natalie - an admin support staff at Sparks - exclaimed that he had the skills to undertake the renovation at half the price. I put him up to the challenge on the condition he submits a quotation as a sole-proprietor. Well what followed is the creation of a new start-up renovations business "ShamRok Trading"!
