INNISFAIL – Kirsten Strand-Gnam is in her second year of teaching at Innisfail Middle School and she has a special passion for reading.
Sure, most if not all teachers want their students to seize reading and excel at it.
But not many teachers take the time to create a classroom library for their kids.
Strand-Gnam, who taught English and social studies at Hugh Sutherland School in Carstairs for eight years before heading north to Innisfail to teach Grade 7 students, successfully applied last spring for funding from the American-based Book Love Foundation.
She received a Classroom Library Grant of $1,500 U.S., which turned out be about $1,900 in Canadian dollars.
Founded by Penny Kittle, an American writer and teacher, the goal of the Book Love Foundation is to increase access to reading materials for students and boost their love for reading.
Strand-Gnam believes there is an additional goal to create passion and engagement among young readers because she also believes it’s an area many schools struggle with.
“One of the things that they found is that a passionate teacher with books immediately available can have a really big impact on students’ engagement with reading and their enthusiasm,” said Strand-Gnam. “If I have a kid in my classroom who is not reading it's much more productive for me to say, ‘Oh, have you thought about this? And what about this book, and I think you would really like this’, as opposed to, ‘OK, go for a walk to the library and figure it out by yourself.
“So having the classroom library there with great books at our fingertips just makes it more accessible for kids.”
After hearing she was successful with the grant, Strand-Gnam spent two months last summer compiling a list of books she felt would be seized by her Grade 7 students.
“Because there's so many books, and because some of them are out of print and being printed or new books that are not yet released, it takes a couple months for them to get them all together. And then they just arrived last week,” said Strand-Gnam.
That was close to more than 130 new books she received from the American foundation on Nov. 4 for her Grade 7 class.
“There's a range of reading levels and stuff like that but that was one of my goals,” she said. “And why I applied for the grant was to widen the availability of middle years books. There's kind of a gap there between kids books and adult books but that was my goal with the grant.”
The new books belong to the teacher, and not to the school. They are hers to loan out to students, which is the whole purpose for the acquisition.
“I do have a fairly impressive classroom library in my classroom right now. I think we have five bookshelves full of books. They are all aimed at Grade 7 students,” said Strand-Gnam, adding there is also a wide range of genres; from fantasy science fiction to romance, to overcoming obstacles and dystopian literature. “It’s all organized by genre and the kids helped organize it. They know where the books are.”
But what are the other benefits of a teacher establishing a class library instead of directing them to the larger school library or even the Innisfail Public Library?
Strand-Gnam said one benefit is that there is a personal connection that will motivate students to share their favourites with each other.
“It makes it really easy for them to access those books, as opposed to making them kind of jump through hoops to find something that they're interested in or excited about,” said Strand-Gnam. “For someone who doesn't read or for someone who's overwhelmed by reading or intimidated, to go into a big library can be really daunting and overwhelming and they don't know where to start.
“Having a classroom library that's curated specifically for them, and for their needs, and having a person there to guide them through it, is really important.”
