Thanks to grants from the Renee B. Fisher Foundation, the Friends of the Library can give teachers in high-need schools $100 in vouchers to purchase books for their students. So far, over 300 teachers from 31 Seattle Public Schools have selected nearly 20,000 books for their Seattle classrooms, ranging from kindergarten through 12th grade. Teachers want to spend their voucher money wisely; they know their students, but they don’t always know which titles are the best fit. Claire Scott, a children’s librarian in our Northgate Branch, suggested to Friends volunteer Joan Abrevaya that children’s librarians staff the teacher book sales.

The key elements were providing a new service within the context of something we’ve done for years – special book sales for teachers. The idea was to build bonds between librarians and teachers, provide teachers with expert help selecting books and be available to promote Library services to this unique, high-value audience. We added a little something extra to the book sale that went a long way!

“It was the perfect partnering,” said Friends member Joan Abrevaya. Some teachers shopped not only for their own classroom but also for their fellow teachers so it was particularly helpful for them to be able to consult Robin Rousu and Blythe Summers, our children’s librarians who worked the sale. It also was instructive for our staff to see how very much the teachers loved books that others had chosen to discard. Blythe reported that she did everything from help the husband of a teacher pick books for the classroom, to recommend books that would engage teenage boys, to comb easy reader titles for leveled readers. Lessons learned included making sure that librarians staffing the sale understand or have a cheat sheet that explains the levels that schools assign readers. Next time, the children’s librarians plan to set up a desk to make them highly visible to the teachers, give the teachers booklists, bookmarks that promote the Library’s “Next 5” service to get a customized list of recommended books from a librarian, and fliers that promote our online and in-person Homework Help resources.