It Takes A Village! Extending Deep Appreciation To All Who Help Me Help Students

Recently, Mrs. Ruggles and Mrs. Romanowski extended an invitation to collaborate on a Bless Me, Ultima project for their 10th grade English classes. I always love working with our teachers and was excited to gather a mix of print and electronic resources that students would need.

To complement the core novel, many topics challenge students to read thematically-related texts, most of which are not freely accessible on the general web. While several books were available in the West Hills library, I certainly did not have enough copies of key books - nor all of the titles - in our collection alone.

Fortunately, since our school is networked as part of a district-wide online library catalog, we have the ability to search the collections of sister schools. After sending out an all call email to my fellow GUHSD Teacher Librarians and Library Technicians, they immediately stepped up to help, just as they always do. They found requested books on their shelves and packaged them up for delivery.

Bless Me, Ultima Project Books

From there, our GUHSD warehouse department ensured safe delivery of the books from the lending sites to West Hills, just as they always do. Knowing how this adds literal weight to their loads, I want to express extra appreciation for the critical role that they play in enabling me to support student learning.

In general, once at West Hills, student office aides are responsible for getting packages sorted into my personal mail cubby. Then, to notify students that books are available for pickup, I rely upon library student aides to deliver notes to classrooms, where teachers kindly accommodate passing them along.

Inter-library loan (ILL) - as this is called in the library world - is a wonderful thing, because it allows for efficient resource sharing, something that is not only practical, but also essential given limited budgets. ILL only works, though, because of the help of many different people who work in concert to help deliver knowledge into the hands of our students.

This is just one example, among countless throughout the year, that illustrates how it indeed takes a village to successfully support our students! Thank you to everyone above - and others who help in big and small ways year round - for contributing to student learning!