Everyday Advocacy – Mom Read It

It’s Everyday Advocacy Challenge time again!

Posted on January 11, 2017January 11, 2017 by Rosemary Kiladitis

It’s Everyday Advocacy time again! I joined the ALSC’s Winter Challenge, because one of my professional goals this year is to increase my advocacy efforts. This first week’s challenge is to craft another elevator speech – a quick response to “what do you do?” that gets the point across and hopefully, generates some interest that could lead to some help, be it with donations of books, materials, or funding. This time, though, the elevator speech is aimed more at the folks involved in the decision process: an alderman, mayor, local government staff members – you get the drift.

I decided to address the 30 million word gap in my speech. That’s the difference in the number of words that children from lower-income families are exposed to, versus children from high-income families. This isn’t over the stretch of a lifetime, either. This isn’t even before Kindergarten. This is by AGE 3. Thirty million words. This is why reading to your kids, singing with your kids, TALKING to your kids, is crucial. Don’t know what to sing? Hell, I started singing ’80s ballads to my eldest when I ran blank on lullabies and nursery rhymes. Sing anything. Talk lovingly. Play. It matters.

So here’s my little elevator speech: “Hi there! I’m Rosemary, and I’m one of the children’s librarians at Queens Library. My colleagues and I are working toward closing that 30 million word gap by providing a chance for babies, toddlers, and their caregivers to sing, talk, play, and listen to stories together. Want to visit one of my storytimes?”

I’m hoping that the mention of a 30 million word gap will get whoever I’m speaking with to want to hear more. If I’ve only got 10 seconds, I want that in the other person’s head, so they can look it up, learn, and act.

Go read to your kids! Read to the neighbor’s kids! Just read!

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Take Action Tuesday: Spreading the Everyday Advocacy Word!

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

My ALSC Everyday Advocacy challenge this week is to champion the efforts of school librarians. I have a lot of teacher and librarian friends; one very close friend is a teacher-librarian. Today, I had a class visit for a school that has no school librarian. As common as that’s sadly becoming, I can’t wrap my head around it. I had a fantastic school librarian in my elementary school; I can’t imagine a kid not having that now. She taught us how to use a library, how information is organized, and most importantly, how to respect books and the information in them. I see my friend, N, taking time from her vacations and breaks to decorate her library and get it ready for every school year; the love and yes, frustration, that goes into lesson planning when your position is considered disposable by elected officials and a lot of the population.

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“You can find all that on the Internet now.” Riiight.

So for this Take Action Tuesday, I made sure to give the teachers at my class visit my contact information, and offered to come visit the school to booktalk, conduct storytimes, talk about citing sources and how to use library databases for their older students – anything they’d need. They seemed enthusiastic, so here’s hoping we can work together and show our community how vital libraries are INSIDE the schools as well as within the communities.

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Everyday Advocacy: Take Action Tuesday!

Posted on March 1, 2016March 1, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

My first Take Action Tuesday challenge has been to write an elevator speech: a brief opportunity to tell someone what you do, and why libraries are so important. You know, when someone asks you that question, “So, what do you do?” And you kind of grimace internally for a second, bracing for the look and the answer you’ll get when you say, “I’m a librarian.”

My elevator speech will help head off those inevitable responses: “They still have those?” “Hasn’t the Internet put you out of business yet?” You know, the greatest hits. So here’s my elevator speech:

I’m a children’s librarian. I encourage a love of reading, learning, and creating at the library by making sure my collection has books that kids will love, available in the languages they need. The world is a big place, and having books that speak to kids’ interests and experiences, in their languages, make it even bigger and brighter.

What’s your elevator speech?

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Everyday Advocacy Challenge: I’m IN!

Posted on February 23, 2016 by Rosemary Kiladitis

I’m excited to be part of the ALSC’s Spring 2016 Everyday Advocacy Challenge! Over the next few weeks, I will:

Commit to completing four consecutive Take Action Tuesday challenges on advocacy topics/themes;

Collaborate with EAC cohort members over the four-week period, sharing successes and troubleshooting issues via ALA Connect;

Write a post for the ALSC blog about their EAC experiences; and

Contribute a reflection for the April 2016 issue of the Everyday Advocacy Matters e-newsletter.

I’ve been spending the first six months of my full-time librarianship getting my sea legs, learning about my new community, and acclimating to full-time public library work, including storytimes and programs for infants, toddlers, school-age kids, tweens and teens – the whole range! This year, I’ve made it a priority to get involved with the profession; really dig in – and the Everyday Advocacy Challenge offers a great chance to do that. I’ll be journaling here, in addition to anything I write for the ALSC, about the Challenge, so please follow along and chime in with any questions or anecdotes you’d like to share.