Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Our Children's Librarian Is Going to New Orleans!

Well, we're not giving her up totally...like forever!!! No indeed! She's been asked to be the Brooks County Public Library's "storyteller" for the national program PRIME TIME Family Reading Time, which is sponsored by the Louisiana Endowment for Humanities. She'll be going to New Orleans for special training for the PRIME TIME program.
PRIME TIME and bilingual PRIME TIME provide a six-to-eight week program of reading, discussion, and storytelling at public libraries and other venues. A discussion leader and storyteller conduct weekly book discussion and storytelling programs for children 6 to 10 and their parents. Pre-reading activities are also provided for younger siblings.
Other team members in the program are a community organizer, a program coordinator, a scholar who is a professor in humanities, and a preschool coordinator, along with the storyteller (which, in this case, is Norma McKellar, our children's librarian).
In each 90-minute session, a storyteller demonstrates effective reading-aloud techniques, and a university professor then leads discussions about the texts. Team members or translators help facilitate the discussion in both Spanish and English in bilingual PRIME TIME programs. These discussions are centered on humanities themes, such as fairness, greed, and dreams. The syllabi include award-winning children's books and incorporate culturally diverse titles. They span fairy tales and folk tales from around the world, stories about problems most individuals encounter, and tales from history.
Each session also includes a five-minute "library commercial," which allows librarians to introduce families to library resources, such as other books, homework aids, ELS and GED materials for parents, books on parenting and healthcare, and local and international newspapers and magazines.
Norma will go to Brooks County Library every Thursday for six weeks and be their storyteller. The first book she will present is "Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears," a book about justice and
fairness.
Now, here's my suggestion...come visit the Moultrie-Colquitt County Library and see our famous storyteller for yourself. She's here all day most every day, except for the times she visits schools to tell stories to the little kids or has a meeting to attend. And she has the most fantastic programs for children here at our library all during
the year.
Brooks County Public Library has Miss Norma for only a little while. We have her all the time!!! And we'd never, ever let her think of staying in New Orleans!
(Source: www.leh.org/html/primetime.html)

1 comment:

Ann said...

Congratulations! Norma! What a wonderful thing to be so involved! I know everyone will enjoy your story telling as we have here at the library for years.
Ann