Author Archives

• My Summer Stack

  By Sarah Letts on 05/23/2019 • ( 1 )

  

  Often when I tell people I am a school librarian, they tend to believe my job entails sitting at a desk reading all day long. As many of you know the fantasy of what a school librarian does and the… Read More ›

• Gallery Walk, A Novel Idea!

  By Sarah Letts on 04/24/2019 • ( 0 )

  

  During the last six weeks of school, the ELA department has a novel of choice unit. Each English teacher does novel of choice differently; while some allow their students to simply choose whatever book they want, others want to create… Read More ›

• Reaching Students & Teachers through Videos

  By Sarah Letts on 03/01/2019 • ( 0 )

  I work at a relatively large high school with about 3,000 students and over 200 staff members. I also only have a part-time library aide and we work on three different bell schedules to accommodate student lunches. So although I… Read More ›

• To Weed or Not to Weed?

  By Sarah Letts on 01/28/2019 • ( 3 )

  I’m sure that every librarian at some point has questioned whether to weed a particular book, but what about an entire section? Just a couple of weeks ago I became the librarian at a school that was opened in 1979;… Read More ›

• Read Alouds in Secondary School Libraries

  By Sarah Letts on 12/21/2018 • ( 1 )

  Students sitting on the carpet in a semi-circle listening to a captivating story is what comes to mind when I think of read alouds. Unfortunately, this is a rare sight in secondary schools; why do we stop reading aloud as… Read More ›

• College Resources in the Library

  By Sarah Letts on 11/29/2018 • ( 0 )

  

  One of my favorite parts of working in a high school library is helping students figure out what they want to do with their lives–what do they want to be, where do they want to go to college, or, if… Read More ›

• Little Libraries

  By Sarah Letts on 10/25/2018 • ( 4 )

  

  As school librarians we are constantly giving book recommendations; in fact once I’ve read an incredible book I can hardly wait to tell everyone I know about it and put it in their hands too! However, there have been times… Read More ›

• Authors to Grow With

  By Sarah Letts on 09/26/2018 • ( 0 )

  One of our goals as school librarians is to create lifelong readers and by extension lifelong learners. There are many ways to instill and inspire a love of reading in a child. Think back to when you were young; who… Read More ›

• YA: To Label or Not to Label?

  By Sarah Letts on 08/22/2018 • ( 2 )

  Last year a book was pulled from middle and high schools, after a parent of a 6th grader complained about the “vulgar” language within the book. The book, which is authentically relevant to the current climate of our country, a… Read More ›

• Personal Book Shopping

  By Sarah Letts on 08/21/2018 • ( 1 )

  

  This year in our high school library we initiated a personal book shopping service with the goal to appeal to students who don’t have time to browse the library due to their packed class schedules, students who may be too… Read More ›