It’s National Library Week, and to celebrate, Library Manager Mr. Mitch Milam created a series of library-themed games for students to enjoy: a scavenger hunt, a team game of book-related Trivial Pursuit (Who is the heroine in Pride and Prejudice? What is the best selling book series ever?), and a clue-driven game of Find the Book!
The Gregory School is fortunate to have our library, which offers over 14,000 print and digital holdings, spaces for quiet studying and for group activities, sophisticated research databases such as JSTOR, and Mr. Milam as a fulltime manager.
“The TGS library brings our school community together in many ways,” Middle School English teacher Ms. Beth Cain said. “It is at the center of our campus, literally and metaphorically, and its doors are open all day for learning, collaborating, reading, relaxing. For a small school, we really have an amazing collection in the circulating part of our library, and having these books available for our students is priceless.”
Mr. Milam’s dedication to making Library Week playful and engaging is a reflection of his overall vision for his role in The Gregory School library. “I want to be the person students can go to when they want to read or they need to read for a class, whether they are looking for graphic novels or juvenile fiction or academic nonfiction texts,” he said. “I want to be an asset to the students.”
One of Mr. Milam’s goals is to deepen his work helping students learn to do research. Next year, he plans to begin visiting classes to connect with students on this topic. “I want students to learn how to have good research strategies, how to find quality sources such as peer-reviewed articles and how to gauge the academic consensus of what they are reading.” He also plans to start polling students to learn what they would like to see more of in the library.
“I've always viewed a library as a repository of what we value as a culture,” Ms. Cain said. “It's a place of safe-keeping for books and ideas, and as a Middle School English teacher in the 21st century, this is more important than ever before as students grapple with the vast digital world of information. Grounding my middle school students in important texts brings us together as a class and as part of a larger community.”
