Standing in front of a committee of parent critics, the student members of the Student Library Advisory began their pitch for a challenge unlike any that the Brookline Education Foundation had ever been offered before. With their grant secured, they stepped forward and commenced the first year of the BHS Reading Challenge.
The BHS Reading Challenge is a new program at BHS, pioneered by the members of the Student Library Advisory, a committed group of library volunteers with their minds set on reigniting the joy of reading in all students. The group of students developed the project with only the necessary involvement from teachers.
The challenge works as such: each month, a theme is chosen, ranging from a book with blue covers to a mystery or psychological thriller book, and students have the opportunity to log books they read that also fit into the theme during that month. Each book read adds a raffle ticket into a main draw which occurs at the end of the year. The challenge also results in a pizza party and an auction.
The initial idea of the Reading Challenge stemmed from conversations in the Student Library Advisory, where many students agreed that they missed the excitement of reading for fun, instead of reading for school. Librarian and founder of the Student Library Advisory Molly Wallner said she wanted high schoolers to rediscover their fondness for reading.
“The problem we were looking to solve is how we encourage high schoolers to find that love and joy in reading. And this [program] was born out of that, because who doesn’t love to win a prize for reading, right? It’s a good incentive to get people back into the habit of picking up books for recreation,” Wallner said.
The next step for the advisory was to try to get a grant to fund their innovation. They presented their idea to the board members of the Brookline Education Foundation. Brookline Education Foundation Executive Director Kim Barnum noted that their pitch stood out to the board because of the passion the students possessed.
“The students came and told us their idea of wanting to get students to read more, and they had an idea of how to do this for fun and to build community,” Barnum said. “The committee was very impressed with how articulate the students were, how focused they were about what their intent was, what they wanted and even what the prizes would be”.
After getting the grant, the team collaborated to make the project the best it could be. Student Library Advisory member Joan Zipursky said that a challenge faced in the process was a debate on the number of times a student could log a book to get a raffle ticket.
“We had a big discussion right at the beginning on if we should have a limit on how many books per month there should be. I was a proponent for having a limit because we have basically money prizes and it would give people with more free time … a monetary edge,” Zipursky said.
The advisory member came across another roadblock when discussing the most effective ways to spread news around a big high school like BHS. Wallner said the two most useful ways were library displays and one-on-one conversations with library goers.
“We have been doing monthly displays with books that match the theme, so that has caught people’s eye. And when we see people looking at the books, it’s a nice way to kind of segue into the Reading Challenge. Or if someone’s checking out a book that’s on the theme of that month, we can be like, ‘Oh, did you know you could win a prize for reading this book?’” Wallner said.
As the reading challenge continued throughout the year, the creators began to see results as people logged book after book. Zipursky, who also worked to manage the spreadsheet where books are recorded, said their favorite result from the challenge was noticing people’s literary habits.
“I think seeing people’s reading history is really fun. There’s one person who reads two books every month, no fail,” Zipursky said. “There’s one person who reads one and then one and two and then two. That is like a little peek into people’s reading lives. And that’s sweet.”
Barnum explained that he believes that the Library Advisory’s courageous pitching experience should be used as an example to all students who want people to hear their voices reflected in the school environment.
“I’d like to see more educators involving their students in the planning from the very beginning,” Barnum said. “I think student voices are really important.”
