Here's a big part of The Answer for what ails public education: the library as the best reason to come to school.
It is a very big deal, the new library at P.S. 105. A new library feeds a boy's dreams. "When this library first opened," said Isaiah Ross, a fifth grader, "I promised myself I'd read every dinosaur book here."Posted by Alan at February 23, 2005 12:14 PMA new library makes you feel like a million bucks. After Quindell Bowers, a first grader, checked out "Hey Al" by Arthur Yorinks, he skipped out of the library.
A new library smells good.
"When I come into the new library it smells like wood," Tyrone Irving, a fourth grader, wrote in his essay expressing thanks for the library.
The new library at P.S. 105 has a full-time certified librarian and a full-time aide, meaning it can be open before school, every period during school and even after school, for parents to come in with children and check out books. It is big enough that two classes can use the library each period.
Throughout the day, children leave their classrooms to visit and get books. The single-day circulation record at P.S. 105's new library is 167 - meaning 30 percent of students checked out a book that day.
When the Robin Hood Foundation, a nonprofit agency that fights poverty in New York City, was looking to help the schools, it decided on libraries, because a library is the one academic place every child in a school uses. Since 2002, 31 new Robin Hood libraries have been built at some of the poorest elementary schools citywide, and they are spectacular to behold, every one different and all worthy of an Architectural Digest spread.
The new library at the 110-year-old P.S. 106 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, was built on the fourth floor, in an attic space, and features a stairway that leads to two large windows with a perfect view of the Manhattan skyline. And those padded stairs double as seats for library classes.
When a library is the most beautiful room a child has ever seen, it sends a message. "One of my kids, a third grade boy, said to me, 'I want to be a librarian,' " said Concetta Ritorto, principal of P.S. 10 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. "I said, 'You're kidding.' " If you've seen the new library at P.S. 10 it makes sense; the wood-paneled room feels like a Midtown Manhattan law library.
But just as important as a beautiful space well stocked - Scholastic and HarperCollins donated a million books each for the libraries - are the people who run them. Robin Hood required that each new library have a full-time aide and a librarian with a master's in library science.
At P.S. 105, Mrs. Feldman, the librarian, has time to coordinate classroom lessons with teachers. For a kindergarten class studying transportation, she read, "Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus." "Is this fiction or nonfiction?" Mrs. Feldman asked.
"Fiction," said a girl. "A pigeon can't drive a bus." More.