For immediate release
April 16, 2018
NC Schools Celebrate National School Library Month
Schools across North
Carolina this month are celebrating National School Library Month to highlight
the critical importance of school library media centers and their specialists
to enrich student learning.
The State Board
of Education at its April meeting endorsed a proclamation recognizing the key
role of school media centers play in supporting all students with a wealth of
print and digital resources and instruction to develop literacy and help
students access, evaluate and use information.
“The school
library media center is certainly a place that serves as a safe haven for many
students in our schools,” Deputy State Superintendent Maria Pitre-Martin told
board members.
Crystal Joyce,
the school library media coordinator for Old Richmond Elementary School in the
Winston-Salem/Forsyth school district, called attention to the connection
between strong media centers and student learning.
“The highest
achieving students do attend schools with well-staffed and well-funded school
libraries,” Joyce said, and that students nationwide make nearly 1.3 billion
visits during the school year – four times the numbers of visitors to U.S.
national parks.
“But the
downside is that cutbacks in school librarians may be yielding unintended
consequences,” she said. Research by Stanford University, she said, “found that
more than 80 percent of middle school students cannot tell the difference
between sponsored content and real news.”
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