Greetings! Let me introduce our school of approximately 600 Pre-K to 5th Graders! Our school has an extremely high English as a Second Language population with more than one half of our students coming to the United States from Asia. Many speak little or no English and face the challenge of adapting to our language and our culture. Our school has a growing population of high-need students who are at-risk for school difficulty as well. I am a Reading Teacher with more than seven years experience working with Grades 3, 4 and 5. However, this year, I am splitting my time between teaching reading to struggling students and acting as the School Librarian.
Most of our students come from working class families that are struggling to make a new life for themselves and their children. Often, both parents work in a small-business setting putting in long hours including weekends. This limits the opportunity parents have to support their child's education. Because our school did not have a School Library until this year, students were limited in their access to reading and research materials. This certainly made school work and projects more difficult because there were too few resources in classroom libraries.
Beginning this school year, our school will have a Library! In the past, parent volunteers ran a lending service of donated books. However, with the severe budget cuts in our city and shifting enrollment, we found ourselves with "the perfect storm" to be able to open a Library - since one of our larger rooms became available. Now, we are trying to accumulate a wide variety of literature for our Library but also to preserve those materials so they can last and last.
With your help, we can protect the paperback books we have in order to extend their life beyond one or two borrowers. I find that today's paperbacks, although relatively inexpensive, take a beating when children take them home. Lamination supplies will fortify the covers, spines and corners so more children can stretch their imaginations as they venture on the road to becoming a life-long reader!
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