The mission of Partners in Literacy is to create communities of readers in schools.
This year we fulfilled our mission in new ways.
We were happy to give two remote “workshops” for 5 elementary school librarians in Cortez Colorado. (Cortez is the gateway to Mesa Verde.)
Paralibrarians are required only to have a high school diploma. In the Cortez/Montezuma school district, there are a group of paras with various skills and they are assigned a job. Two of the library paras started in fall of 2020, and received some training. Three others were in the job for five months or less with virtually no training. None of them had being a school librarian as their first choice.
Despite all this, they were doing their best to have library lesson plans, checkout books, buy and input books as welll as doing recess and lunchroom duties. If only they got more support for what they do.
Most Colorado school libraries are run by paras.