Shared Foundation II: Include

Malinda Schurlknight is the librarian at William Reeves Elementary. When I first accepted the position at my school, many people suggested I reach out to her to get insight into the program at USC. Malinda's been a school librarian for 4 years. I've discussed lessons she's done for the self-contained special education classrooms, so Include seemed like a perfect competency to discuss with her.

Malinda strives to provide books featuring characters with different gender identities, family structures, disabilities, and perspectives. She uses reports from Titlewave to assess her collection periodically. She showcases different family traditions, customs, cultures, and languages on the school's morning show throughout the year. This provides students opportunities to learn about each other and also connect with each other.

One of the things I found interesting from our discussion is her goal to help classroom teachers diversify their classroom libraries. She's created a list of guidelines to help teachers evaluate their class libraries and links where they can find other titles. I plan on adapting this for my school to help the teachers evaluate their collections.

Obviously because of the current climate surrounding book collections, this can be difficult at times. She continues to work updating her collection and using her budget wisely. Even though there are challenges, Malinda knows how important it is to her school community for everyone to be included.

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