Connect Canyons
Learning is about making connections, and we invite you to learn and connect with us. Connect Canyons is a show about what we teach in Canyons District, how we teach, and why. We get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great: students, teachers, principals, parents, and more. We meet national experts, too. And we spotlight the “connection makers” — personalities, programs and prospects — we find compelling and inspiring.
Connect Canyons
Ep 75: National Library Lover’s Month – How Canyons Students are Drawn to District Libraries
Ever wondered about the hidden gems that ignite a lifelong love affair with reading? Anyone who is fond of books knows that feeling of walking into a room with floor-to-ceiling books and taking in a deep breath. There have been a number of studies looking into that smell of old books – Is it vanilla? Grass? Maybe a hint of leather? Whichever smell comes to you first – Bibliophiles can all agree – It’s a wonderful feeling to step into a library and wonder at the possibilities hidden in thousands of pages.
Within Canyons School District, from August of 2023 to January, Canyons students checked out more than 370,000 printed library books. Adding to that, roughly 8,000 students checked out over 75,000 ebooks and audiobooks. In a recent episode of Connect Canyons, we celebrate of National Library Lover’s Month, and hear from some of Canyon’s biggest book lovers about what draws our students to our libraries.
Welcome to Connect Canyons, a podcast sponsored by Canyon School District. This is a show about what we teach, how we teach and why we get up close and personal with some of the people who make our schools great Students, teachers, principals, parents and more. We meet national experts too. Learning is about making connections, so connect with us.
Speaker 2:Anyone who is fond of books knows that feeling of stepping into a room full with walled ceiling books. There's a smell, right? Is it vanilla? Is it grass? It's a little bit of leather. Whatever you smell, any bibliophile knows the pure joy of walking into a library. Welcome to Connect Canyons. I'm your host, frances Cook. February is all about love, all kinds of love, and it also happens to be about library love. It's National Library Love Month, so in honor of that, I'm joined by three of Canyon's probably biggest bibliophiles in the district. First, gretchen Zeitziff, our library media specialist for the district. We're also joined by Rachel Diaz-Avedo, canyon's parent and bookblitz coach at Willow Canyon Elementary. Yes, Wonderful.
Speaker 2:And we have Kylie Arben, teacher librarian at Draper Park Middle. Yes, thank you all so much for being here. Talking about books is one of my favorite things, so I have a feeling we're all going to get through this pretty quickly. We'll get along.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we'll get along just fine.
Speaker 2:So since it is National Library Love Week, let's start with that very question why do we love libraries so much? Gretchen, start us off.
Speaker 3:I can't think of a place that is more a microcosm of like everything people love and like than a library. A good library collection has something for everybody and it has books from like Ninja Turtles to my Little Pony and from, you know, cars to cats and dogs. I mean, if you love it, you can find something about it in a library.
Speaker 2:Rachel, how about you?
Speaker 4:I just love that. Libraries are a collection of thoughts of all of the humans that are on this earth and things that they like and dislike and how they see the world, and you walk into a library and you can just access any of that and it's calming and you feel smarter when you walk into a library. They're just peaceful places to be.
Speaker 2:I love that. A collection of thoughts yeah, that goes deep. Can you follow that up?
Speaker 5:I think I just like the potential for things you can learn, like I'm always excited when I walk into a library, like what am I going to run into? What stories Am I going to find? Like my new favorite book, am I going to find my new favorite genre? I don't know. It's just this potential for newness, discovery. Yes, I'm going to learn something, I'm going to connect with something. I love it. There's just so much freedom and fun to be had and you just have to find it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I love reading, but I'm all about numbers too, and so I have to share these with you guys. So within the Canyon School District, from August to January, our students checked out more than 370,000 printed library books. That's just printed physical books to hold in their hands, right. Add to that, roughly 8,000 Canyon students checked out over 75,000 ebooks and audio books, which is about 81,000 hours of reading time Wow. That's a lot.
Speaker 4:I can't even put too many but, they're useful.
Speaker 2:Our kiddos get it so clearly our Canyon students love to read. They're finding things that are intriguing to them, that they can. You know you get that. You dive into a book and a couple hours later you come out.
Speaker 3:What year is it when am?
Speaker 2:I but Rachel. I'd like to hear from you as a parent. Why is going to the library at such a young age so important for our students?
Speaker 4:I think it's really important for young kids to see what you can access in a library and to kind of almost build the habit of going to a library and having at your fingertips just anything you want and learning how to find what you want. So I think it kind of takes practice. I feel like you can get out of the habit of going to libraries and just checking out stuff that you might not pick up otherwise.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I think yeah, can I help you? What have you seen that students are really taking away from libraries?
Speaker 5:I feel like students are finding themselves in libraries and kind of figuring out what they connect with, what they respond to, making connections with other people, different kinds of people. I think when you're a child you are really locked into your location, your home, you meet, you're kind of around the same people all the time and I think they really get to discover how different the world is, how different people are and how valuable it is to experience those differences, and they can do that through books. At this age, I think that's one of the best options for them to explore that. They just don't have a lot of traveling options.
Speaker 2:Sure, they're a little limited.
Speaker 5:Yes, they just get to explore a lot, I think, with books and libraries.
Speaker 2:But you can also travel a little farther than you probably can with a train A little bit, a little bit.
Speaker 4:Yes, you're visiting different dimensions, absolutely so.
Speaker 5:I just I don't know. I think they get to meet new people and learn new things that way a lot easier.
Speaker 2:So clearly our kiddos are going to our libraries. Kylie Gretchen, for both of you. What is it that's making our libraries so appealing to our young people?
Speaker 3:Well, in my opinion, it's Kylie.
Speaker 2:Yes, true, well done. And the other?
Speaker 3:teacher, librarians and library staff that we have in the district. I mean. So a classroom is only as good as the teacher in it, and the same with the library, like the library doesn't exist without a librarian and a librarian can actually exist without the space. But it's that person that makes it so wonderful, that makes that human connection with the students and serves as kind of a pathfinder to help them find the things that they're looking for.
Speaker 2:That's so true, you don't really remember the room per se. It's, oh, I remember Mr So-and-so or Miss. You know, miss Smith, have you experienced that as well as a librarian?
Speaker 5:I think with people Absolutely. I think I mean we have the students who visit, just you know, with their class, we have the students who visit on their own. We have our student aids. I feel like we connect with kids that maybe. I mean, I was always kind of the one that blended in a classroom, which was what I wanted. I didn't necessarily want to be like the show, Finally great. I think we kind of can connect with some of those kids. Maybe they blend a little bit. We get a chance to talk to those that maybe are the more quiet ones or you know they just they're not as loud, whatever that means, you know, Sure, and so I think a library is an awesome place for us to make connection like that and build relationships with those kids and and I just talk to them I think people, humans, just want to be talked to, they want to be seen you know like anybody else.
Speaker 5:So yeah, I think libraries bring us together that way a lot in middle schools.
Speaker 2:And, like we've mentioned, it's more than just books. Now, right, I mean back in my day, when I was going to my school library, that was it. It was books, maybe a few magazines, but now we have so many other resources in our libraries. Can you speak to what's what's in your library that's really drawing your students in?
Speaker 5:We I don't know what happened or when it happened exactly, I think it was last year we have had kind of a real trend toward audiobooks, but specifically playaways, these little. They look like little mp3, like old iPod kind of sized devices and they just have the audiobook on it. That's it. And I've had a lot. I've got groups of kids that come in and they go through them so fast that we can't keep up. They just go through the whole you know shelf of them. So I feel like that's really picked up in our library or the audiobooks, and maybe it's just the novelty of it I don't know exactly what it is but they're really digging those audiobooks, specifically the physical ones that can hold and I think that's really great because most of the adults I know right now are consuming content because they're listening to it.
Speaker 1:Yeah on their.
Speaker 3:Peloton or, you know, driving to work driving to work, and so just that idea that you know this is accessible for our students and this is the next step and they don't have to stop. You know, like in in some future day they may not be able to like walk down the hall and go to the library, but they can access an audiobook online that that brings the same joy, the same learning, same experience, and some of the audiobooks right now have just amazing production values. They do.
Speaker 2:You get almost you have full cast plays or authors reading their own audiobooks. That's always kind of a draw for me. I love having the author of the multiple voices in there, gretchen. What are some of the other ways that our Canyon's libraries are sticking out and kind of leading the charge when it comes to finding new ways to get kids reading?
Speaker 3:Well, I think part of it is just making them feel comfortable in the space. So not only you know do we have this large collection of resources, but it's a space where kids feel really safe. So a lot of our middle schools have just started maker spaces, so they have these so many different types of things that students can do. At one of our middle schools they spent their lunch period building things out of these Kiva planks they're like long, flat Lincoln log type things, but and then making the Lego figures like zipline between their structures and you know, all of that creativity and STEM learning is also happening in the library.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Rachel, have you seen any of your kiddos, you know, kind of going beyond that, just cracking a book from their libraries, are they? Are they bringing home extra goodies or extra knowledge?
Speaker 4:I mean I know that my kids have all really enjoyed at our school at Eastmont. They can go to the library at lunch and all of my kids, I think, have just loved going and being in that space. Yeah, I don't know that they bring them home, but I know they bring in the experiences home and the connections that they've kind of made and you know just the relief and knowing that they have a safe space at the school, that that they belong always is kind of huge. So yeah, it's so important.
Speaker 3:So one of the things I know about Eastmont is that during lunch they have chess sets out. Oh well, and so kids who might not be in the same classes with each other or the same social groups spend time playing chess with each other. So it's very equalizing in that way. Is that if you need somebody to play chess, you're willing to play chess with people that you might not ride the bus with or would have eaten lunch with, but you have this connection through this game.
Speaker 2:It's great to have those memories too. As they're coming home, they're sharing that with you. I remember as I was a kid I'm probably dating myself the Pizza Hut bucket where you had to read a certain number of pages or hours, and then you can get your own personal fan pizza.
Speaker 4:I clearly remember doing that Right. Clearly I probably lived off of personal pan pizzas for months. I kind of wish I still did Right.
Speaker 2:But we've changed that up now and it's now book blitz. Can you tell us what is book blitz? What are you hearing from parents and students as a coach of book blitz?
Speaker 4:Yeah, book blitz is a reading competition where you come out with there's a list of books that we receive and the kids get on teams with each other and they kind of divvy up the books and they read the books and the parents at the school I run it at Willow Canyon. The parents just love it. The kids always find new books that they would have never otherwise picked up and I mean I just can't even tell you how many times we've picked up a book from that and then gone down a rabbit hole of like six books in the series and I'm like, yes, I'll buy them all Done.
Speaker 4:Yeah that I mean, I just that's. I think what people love most about it is just between that and then really it kind of helps with comprehension. You're reading and kind of paying attention to details and they're talking about it with each other at school or amongst their teams and yeah, it's just I don't know, I don't have sports kids and I just I love that. That is and teaches kids all the things that you can learn in sports. With reading, you know how to work as a team and how to be competitive and get along with each other but like how to find new connections with characters and books.
Speaker 4:Yeah, like it's just it's. I love it. I think it's such a great program. One of my favorites easily one of my favorites.
Speaker 2:And it's teams within the schools, but then the schools compete at the district level, right.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. So the winner of yeah. You kind of compete at your school and then your school pushes on your champion to the district, which is it's fun. I think it's. You know, it's good for kids to experience that.
Speaker 2:I think that Pizza Hut challenge for me was like that oh, I am competitive. Yes, I know I can be competitive in reading.
Speaker 3:Okay, yes, I win, winning, winning Well one of the stories we heard last year at our book Blitz Junior, which is the elementary version, was that you know we put out this list every year. At the elementary level it's 12 books, but at the middle school it's 20.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:And so one parent said you know, my son said, oh, there's only two books on this list that I'm gonna read, and then he ended up reading all 12. Oh, wow, Because once he got started he was like this is not so bad, but again like it was books he might not have picked up because he was, you know, safely in one genre. And Book Blitz allows students to safely move between genres and try books out that they might not have otherwise chosen. And we take a lot of time and effort to make sure that we have really high quality books so that they are engaging for the students and that they help engage in that, Because nobody wants to spend time reading something that's not actually enjoyable?
Speaker 4:Yes, totally.
Speaker 3:But Kylie works really hard on the middle school side and they have a longstanding individual competition.
Speaker 5:Yeah, we do. It's a competition where we invite the students that have read all the books to compete against each other to see who can score the best.
Speaker 4:Best of the best, best of the best. They're really competitive kids. Yes.
Speaker 5:Definitely, which I think is really cool, because we always have kids that are like I read them all, like I read them all. I read them all twice, you know. So we love giving them that opportunity as well, with their team and on their own. So we have that portion as well, and I think that's been really amazing for them to try that.
Speaker 2:So that brings up a good point. You know we get almost stuck in a genre, like you said, gretchen. You know you get comfortable with it. You know you're gonna like books. Within that realm, I'm curious, both, Rachel, as a parent, what you have experienced and, kylie, what you're seeing as a librarian, connecting parents and librarians together to be able to find the right fit for your kids, right? Every kid has a different reading level, different likes and things. Do you have some some tricks up your sleeve to help parents out in that realm?
Speaker 5:I guess for me. I use all sorts of things. Some of it's really logical stuff, like start with the book you like and go shopping. Like I like this book, I'm going to go on Amazon and see what they suggest and start there and then just keep going down the rabbit hole Like, okay, well, I liked that one, let me search on this one. I know that some people don't do social media, but there's because there's so much on social media right now that's, I think, another tool.
Speaker 5:Just quick little videos that you can watch on your phone and just get some ideas. There's people that specifically look at middle school books readers, librarians, teachers. You can follow blogs, I mean there's so much out there. Just don't be intimidated, don't be afraid. Like just little baby steps, start following a couple people. You'll be recommended more and keep shopping. I mean, just don't be afraid to go to the store Barnes, noble, whatever and just grab something. Maybe the cover interests you. Try that. Start there. I mean, you never know, yeah.
Speaker 2:Judging a book by its cover. In a number one role I'm like judge it. Pick it.
Speaker 5:Completely on the cover alone.
Speaker 2:They say never do it, but everybody does it 100% every time I would imagine you have a bit more experience with the books that your children are seeing in our school libraries. Any advice for parents who may not have had an opportunity to set foot in their kids' libraries?
Speaker 4:Oh, absolutely Go do it. I think you can step into any library. I've emailed librarians at the high school, middle school and elementary school. They always get back to me. They're always so welcoming. I think it's fun to kind of go with your kids. I think attending a book fair if your school does it is a nice way. It's usually in the library. I think you're able to kind of show your kids that that space is important. It's kind of like walking in their classroom. Show me where you sit and show me where you can do that in a library Show me where your favorite books are that kind of stuff.
Speaker 4:So yeah 100%. And then you see kind of how amazing they are. I mean I know Willow Canyon got a ton of new books this year and it's inspiring and I think you know it's cool. It's their little world.
Speaker 2:So I would like to know what you all want people to know about reading, about loving a library, about libraries here at Canyon. What if you could sum up? One final thought on the importance of reading. What would it be?
Speaker 3:Well, if a child can read, they can learn anything, like I don't care if it's math or science. If they struggle with reading, then everything's going to be a struggle, and reading is a muscle, and so you have to practice reading to get better. And I always say, like when you're reading fiction it's like running you know kids can go really fast. But if you read nonfiction, it's like swimming. Like it uses the same muscles but there's more drag. And learning to do both and be good at both. Like helps you with everything else. It helps you with standardized testing, it helps you with college admissions, helps you just be a more informed person. So I just think that you know, whatever it is that you like to read, you should read it and you should find it, and you can probably find it in your school library.
Speaker 4:I don't know one thing about libraries would probably be something similar that find what you love, like whether it's a graphic novel, whether it's a story about camping and hatchets, or whether it's a fantasy, whether you know. Just read what you love, because I think that is the most important thing is that you fall in love with reading and it makes that practice just a lot easier. And you know it's a gift you'll carry forever so you might as well fall in love with it. You know whatever that looks like for a student, yeah.
Speaker 5:I agree. I think definitely read what you love. It's reading as a connector. I think you connect to people when you read. You know they're reading the same book or, oh my gosh, you have to read what I just read. This is crazy. We need to talk about it. It also connects you to characters and stories that you would not hear about any other way. I think there were a lot of times where the thing I was most excited about every day was getting into my book whatever I was reading and just figuring out what the next thing was, and it just, I think, brought a lot of color to my life.
Speaker 5:I love that. I truly believe there is a book out there for every student. I mean, I think there are students and just people who don't believe that reading is their thing, it could never be their thing, but I think everyone has something out there. They just haven't met it yet and the readers are just those that have. But anyway, I think it's such a magical thing books and reading and we should all be doing it.
Speaker 2:Just a matter of finding it and asking your librarian to help you, or listening to it.
Speaker 4:Listening fills that If you're not a sitter and a reader, I'm kind of a mover.
Speaker 2:If.
Speaker 4:I can move and listen. That's helpful.
Speaker 2:The number of books I've read in the past five years has grown substantially thanks to audiobooks. Oh, absolutely Substantially, me too, so whatever your medium is just do that.
Speaker 3:Do it, yeah, totally, or do it all All the time At the same time.
Speaker 5:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Ladies, I want to thank you all for being here and joining us today. I could talk about reading for hours and hours on end. I hope that this discussion brings even more readers into our libraries and parents come in and ask you for help finding their child's next fantastic series, and maybe we'll get some more kids competing in that book. Let's competition to thank you all so much for being here.
Speaker 1:Thanks and thank you for listening and watching.
Speaker 2:If there's something you'd like to see discussed on Connect Canyons, send us an email to communicationsatcanyonsdistrictorg.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of Connect Canyons. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook or Instagram at Canyons district or on our website, canyonsdistrictorg.
