Anatomy of the Perfect Book

High schools AND COVID

The effect of covid on high-schools and their libraries

BY AVANI GANNE

Picture of students in the beginning of the school year decorating a banner that now hangs from the wall in the front of the library, courtesy of Elizabeth Switek.

The school year has just begun and the world is still struggling, contrary to the thoughts of many when the world was first notified of this tragically life-changing event. Students walk the halls feeling overwhelmed by the sudden resume of their life, as if they have been dunked into ice cold water and immediately put onto the track to run. They’re still suffering from the shivering cold while the competition goes on without care for the students.

Since the year of 2020, COVID-19 has impacted those who attend school (especially middle and high schoolers), and are in the most important part of their lives when it comes to discovering and creating their future, personalities and identities. Even though they may not be the first people that most think of when talking about the isolation and severe disconnection with other students, librarians have seen it first-hand. Many of them work to help these kids, from scheduling weekly arts and craft projects, to installing a slide in the middle of the library.

Elizabeth Switek has been the librarian of the Liberal Arts and Science Academy for around two years, but her career as a librarian started 17 years ago. She is a core member of the LASA school and staff. As someone who has been here even when the majority of students stayed at home, she knows first-hand how important the reintegration of students into school is; especially when it comes to their interpersonal relationships with the other students.

“It was their one place that they could be before school, and it was the one place that was open after school,” Switek said. “So, you’re going to sit here. Maybe you’re more likely to check out a book. I feel that last year for whoever was on campus, the precedent was set that it’s a safe place. It’s hopefully a welcoming place.”

To combat that issue, she has been hosting arts and crafts every week for students to have fun in an artistic way and make friends. It’s a new tradition that started in the year of 2020-2021, and still continues this year because of the positive effect it had on students in the previous year.

“Ninth grade is when you’re going to make a lot of new friends that are going to be your friends for the next three or four years or even longer.” Switek said. “So how do you do that? Plus, you’re stressed about all this stuff, and having that crafting table where it was chill and quiet and, we would just sit and people would just chat and talk and have conversations. And this group, these two girls came and there’s these two boys, and they don’t know each other. But by the end, they’d be talking about something now, whether they ever talked again, I don’t know.” school librarian and is on the frontline of tech support at the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, and has been for 15 years since the school opened in 2007. They said that due to the harmful effects of COVID-19, students should be given room to breathe and help to cope with the extreme changes their whole world has suffered.

“As far as our approach to the kids, I’m really proud of our faculty,” Mauser said. “They really worked hard to keep the wellbeing of the students at the forefront of their mind, and the kids might disagree, but the reality was that there were a lot of discussions about how much leeway we needed to give because everyone was in their “grief brain” and when you’re involved in grief, which we all were; this experience has triggered grief and PTSD for a lot people, your brain does not work at its optimum.”

Mauser said that while many people have spoken about the “acceleration of learning” for students to catch them up on what the Coronavirus has made them miss, it is much more imperative to focus on the mental health and overall wellbeing of these students who have gone through the trauma of a pandemic.

“I know there’s been a lot of stuff on the news lately about “How are we going to accelerate learning?” and it’s that we’re not worried about accelerating learning right

A group of students taking a picture in the main part of the library for Hispanic Heritage Month, courtesy of Elizabeth Switek now, we’re worried about taking care of kids and making sure they’re okay, so that they can move forward and learn.” Mauser said. “You can’t force those things because grief won’t let you, and trauma won’t let you. You have to deal with those things when they come about. And if that means that you’re not a straight-A student right now, then that’s okay because your brain needs other things in life, so I was really proud of that.”

Ann Richards has been focused on the re-introduction of students into their life resembling previously in the

one they had before the pandemic while still keeping the students’ mental health in mind.

“There’s been a lot of discussion and a lot of figuring out how we could give the kids a sense of normalcy,” Mauser said. “Yes, we expect you to do your work to a point where it was comforting that this was going to happen on this day, but also having the flexibility to go ‘Okay, your world just completely melted, so let’s take a step back and it’s going to be okay.’”

Many other schools like

Anderson High are also doing what they can to re-integrate students back into the school environment.

Librarian and Tech Support at Anderson High School, Shelby Counts has worked at the school for five years, and is passionate about the students there and how she can help them.

Counts said that throughout most of the 20202021 school year, she acted as a “virtual librarian,” always there doing her best even when it was over a screen.

“Through Zoom, I facilitated online book clubs, research lessons, library orientations, online resources review, programming events like March Book Madness, etc,” Counts said. “I also spent a lot of time as tech support via email for password issues, chromebook issues, online resource questions, etc.”

In addition, Counts said that she noticed that the Anderson High library is as popular as ever, averaging around 300 visitors a day and having implemented interesting activities, and even the smaller details to ensure that students feel comfortable in the library. The library in the morning in the front of the room with the cart holding the books for Banned Books Week ready for students to come and take a look, courtesy of Elizabeth Switek

“We offer self-directed makerspace activities that also bring in students to the library beyond just checking out a book, getting tech support, studying, doing research, or needing to print,” Counts said, “Last week we just put out beads and cord and that brought in a lot of students who might not usually come to the library as often.”

All three librarians said that they noticed students reading books that they had read before and enjoyed; reporting that the kids were going to familiar stories for that sense of comfort they had been missing during the worst part of the pandemic where they weren’t able to attend school or see their friends.

“One thing I noticed upon the students’ return to the school is that many of them are seeking out books they remember from before the pandemic (the last time they spent in the school library)...”

Counts said. “It seems to almost be a comfort to them. So for our 9th graders, that added books they asked for l like Amulet, Bone, and Raina Telgemeier to our shelves in a continued attempt to make the transition back to face to face learning even smoother.”

As COVID continues to be a large factor in both the lives of students and the decisions of the schools they attend, each librarian mentioned things they had achieved and will continue to make their libraries safe spaces for these kids in the foreseeable future. Well, even more so than they already. were, of course. The book was better, Austin Edition | 13