SPOTLIGHT: A Mather School Librarian’s Take

As the librarian at North America’s oldest public elementary school, Deborah Foley spends her work week trying to squeeze a public school budget for all it’s worth. As the Mather School only orders new books for the library once a year, Deborah does everything she can to make the most of the books that are available to the kids, including working with On the Same Page Boston. Programs like these give her students access to new titles that they wouldn’t otherwise have on their shelves.

Deborah was a children’s librarian at public libraries for many years, but has only been working at the Mather School for the past three years. Growing up, her father ran boys’ clubs that she helped out with, and she quickly found that she thrives around children. After working at a library while she was in college, she realized that children’s library sciences would be the perfect combination of her love for kids and her love for books.

Now, as a school librarian, a big part of Deborah’s job is teaching information literacy and developing library-based lessons to go hand in hand with the curriculum. Her lessons teach kids as young as 3rd grade how to start identifying books that are good for research. She encourages them to ask questions and discover for themselves how to answer those questions. Through the library, she introduces them to all the high-quality information that is readily available to them and the importance of differentiating between fact and opinion.

This is the Mather School’s first year offering 6th grade education, in line with Boston Public Schools’ district-wide shift to K-6 elementary schools. However, due to it being the first year of the new grade level, none of the books in the library are applicable to the brand new curriculum and the current reading level of the oldest students.

Deborah’s biggest goal for new library additions is to stock books that represent diverse stories that the kids can see themselves in.

“There have been diverse books, but kids don’t want to necessarily always see themselves in an adverse situation. They just want to be a kid in a story where something fun happens… Just kids going through kids stuff,” she says. “I know that when children are looking at books, they’re just looking for a great story. They want [to see] themselves in a fantasy novel, they want to see themselves in a realistic fiction [novel] that is just about friendship.”

Historic stories about young people overcoming hardship are important parts of young students’ academic lives, but at the same time, she wants them to have fun and love to read. When kids fall in love with the stories they’re reading, they become lifelong readers.

She says, “It’s just a blast working with kids. Just seeing them connect with books––it makes your heart happy.”