Post #7: Creating Multi-Lingual / Multi-Cultural Libraries

    

This post is in reflection to the two articles I read this week from my Google Alerts set to: 

English As a Second Language in Classrooms 

and

ESL in Education

    Three years ago I started work as an elementary librarian for two elementary schools.  One of the elementary schools had our Spanish Emersion program for students in the 1st through 4th grades.  A section of this elementary library was created for Spanish and Spanish / English books called "World Languages".  The ESL teacher provided me with a list of languages that are spoken in the homes  of her students and we got to work ordering a variety of books written in Vietnamese, Mandarin, Chinese, Korean, and Arabic languages and we added them to our collection.  Our thinking was that the students could check out these books and continue to explore their first language with real literature at home. My initial reason for expanding the collection school library with the Spanish Emersion classes was to support the Spanish Emersion language learners in that school,  but what became clear to me very quickly was the fact that we needed to support all language learners. I quickly moved to create a similar section in my other elementary school library for students and families.

 

    My second year, I undertook an even deeper look into my collections.  The collections at both schools were lacking in books representing cultural diversity.  Students were able to find books written in different languages, but finding books with characters and families that represented their diverse culture and heritage were lacking.  For this project, I again reached out to our ESL teachers to gain an understanding of literature in different cultures.  I also looked at different literature awards through various websites and ALA awards lists.  This work provided guidance for our next book order. 

    This is my third year.  The first two years were spent analyzing the collections and ensuring that procedures are in place for further collection development.  This year, we are working on ensuring that our collections are culturally diverse,  have an up-to-date "world languages" collection, and represent our diverse school community.  My job as an elementary librarian is to ensure that all students have access to resources that are reflective of the student population to which we serve.  I rely on the collaboration with the ESL teachers of both schools to help ensure that all students are represented within the collection.  The proof in our efforts will be in our collection analysis check-out statistics.