I was asked to speak on behalf of the library for the first day of school teacher assembly for the Centerville Community School District this morning. I wasn’t nervous at all! (Ha!) It went pretty well so I thought I would share my speech to the teachers and staff with you.
“Good morning everyone! I’m JeNel Allen Barth and I am now the Director at Drake Public Library after being Children’s Librarian for the past 7 years.
I don’t want to keep you long because I know that you have many things to do in preparation for the upcoming school year. But I do want to be sure to share a few things with you.
First of all, I hope that you had a relaxing, restful summer because you deserve it! The more time I spend working with teachers, the more I realize how hard this job is and I don’t need to remind you how important your job is….but I will, time and time again.
Over the summer vacations, evenings and weekends, the Drake Public Library is the library available to school children; and for babies through preschoolers, it is the only library available. Our library is a unique and valuable resource and we strive to be a lifeline to our community.
Our staff has worked very hard to update and mark the books that fall under the Accelerated Reading Program. If you’re struggling to find titles that will inspire success in this area, send your students our way!
Our new Children’s Librarian, Kristin Craver, is planning for our after school programming. Mondays at 4pm the “Rising Readers” will meet for story time, round robin reading, book chats, intros to new books and homework help. Thursdays from 4-5pm, “After School Adventures” in puzzles, games and special crafts will provide students with social time and an opportunity to get to know the library and other kids better. And, of course we will continue with our story time for Babies through Preschoolers with “Little Listeners” on Wednesdays at 10:30am.
Kristin is available for hosting classroom field trips and would love to visit classrooms for special guest story times and chats with your students. And, by the way, I am still available for visits too. You know I love spending time with students and visiting classrooms.
Junior High and High School teachers, don’t forget that Drake Public Library offers computers and free wifi access for students working on homework and research projects. We host a free, online research data base, EBSCO Host, that offers a broad range of full text and bibliographic databases designed specifically for academic research. The sign in is simple and our staff is happy to show anyone around the site. Oh, and printing for school work is free for students.
So, go help kids learn, smile and belong. Ask hard and interesting questions. Try new things! We’ll continue to work at providing services to help you and to inspire a love of reading in your students. It’s time for a great year of learning…so go be awesome!”
JeNel Allen Barth
Library Director
