Bedford Hills Elementary’s Library Lovers Lunch Bunch Takes Pride in Their Volunteer Work
Fifth grader Jheel Patel walked up to the library counter at Bedford Hills Elementary School with a stack of twelve books in her hands. She and a friend had pulled them off the shelves using a list of books that hadn’t been checked out in ten years.
“I put them over here and then I keep finding more!” Jheel said enthusiastically as she deposited books to be sorted through. Library Media Specialist Susan Bretti would take them from there and decide whether to put them on display to encourage readers to check them out, put them on a take home donation cart or donate them to a local organization.
Jheel and the other students in the library that day comprise a group of volunteers called the Library Lovers Lunch Bunch. The group is made up of twenty students who are split into two groups that help out in the library during lunch on alternate Thursdays.
Students take their responsibility very seriously, in part because of the process they went through to become volunteers. All of the students answered a help wanted ad which listed the job responsibilities (shelving returned books, checking for damaged books, preparing new books and more) and qualifications. They each wrote an essay on why they wanted the position, were interviewed and took an assessment to see if they had the skills required for the job. The assessment asked students to do things like put a list of author’s names in alphabetical order and explain what spine label “FIC APP” indicates (for those of us who aren’t expert library volunteers, the “FIC” means the book can be found in the fiction section and “APP” means the author’s last name begins with those letters).
“I’m the type of person who likes to keep things clean,” Cecily Hagedorn said.
“I like organizing!” said Olivia Ortiz.
After eating lunch and listening to a few reminders from Bretti, students headed to the shelves.
“You can’t just put the books anywhere you want, right?” Bretti asked. “Your job is to put as many books as you can on the shelf and in the right place”
One of the major jobs volunteers tackled on a recent Lunch Bunch day was reshelving graphic novels after the “Graphic Novel Fairy” sent them on a little vacation so they could take a rest. Bretti hoped that taking them out of circulation for a little while would lead students to explore new genres.
As students dug through a bin filled with books, they used critical thinking and problem solving skills to figure out how books should be shelved. Was a particular book part of a series? Was it in Spanish? There were many factors that students had to keep in mind.
They also got pretty excited about some of their finds.
“Oooh, I love this book!” a student said as she reshelved “When Stars Are Scattered.”
In another section of the library, students holding clipboards with lists of books on them searched carefully through the shelves for books that haven’t gotten much attention in recent years.
After locating one and pulling it from the shelf, one student read the back of it.
“Wait, I want to take this one home,” she said.
At the same time from across the library, one of her peers shouted, “These are all out of order! Who did this to the poor books?!”
Bretti laughed. “Having extra hands has been a huge help in managing the collection,” she said. “They’re finding that kids don’t always put things back. It’s also helped them with things like alphabetizing and number order. They really take the initiative to fix things themselves.”
The pride students took in their work and in the library as a whole was clearly evident.
“I like helping out,” Macy Rothschild said.
- BHES