Creating a Culture of Literacy: Planning, Leading, Supporting, and Curating an Elementary Library Program to Support a Diverse School Community

As a full-time elementary librarian, my project involved utilizing my role and expertise to develop a campus culture of literacy plan to support the diverse needs of our school community. Tom Green Elementary has a library that serves a multilingual population of students, staff, and families. The purpose of this project was to develop literacy goals, ensure activities and events promoted effective literacy skills and strategies for students and families, and foster an overall love of reading. By serving as the leader of our campus literacy committee, I was able to implement my plan and set up a couple of events to support the goals of this plan. The first event was a literacy night that allowed me to collaborate with grade level teachers and our Parent Teacher Association to plan and run stations that reinforced various literacy skills. Another priority was that each station offered differentiated activities to meet the language and learning needs of all students and families who attended. The other event was a Read-a-thon fundraiser to promote reading at home while raising funds to purchase more diverse books for our collection. As a result of these events, we have been able to build and strengthen relationships with the diverse members of our school community and raise almost $4,000 to purchase more multilingual books to develop a library collection that is more equitable and meets the needs of our diverse learners.