Transforming Lives at the Blackstone Elementary School Library

by Kate Reynolds

On Sunday, May 9^th, 2010, Liz Steinhauser, minister at St. Stephen’s church in Boston’s South End, came to the Parish of Epiphany in Winchester to preach about the important work she and Vicar Tim Crellin were doing.  Liz challenged Reverend Thomas Brown and parishioners at Epiphany to help re-open the library at the Blackstone Elementary School, labeled a “Turnaround” school, meaning that its leadership had been replaced and all staff had to reapply for their jobs. 

               The Blackstone library was located a block away from St. Stephens in a school attended by over 70 of the underserved students in their B-READY Afterschool Program. At that time, the Blackstone was the 2^nd worst performing school in the Boston Public School system.   St. Stephens reached out to the newly appointed principal as a community partner and offered to take on the library project as a visible symbol of change.  

               In order for Epiphany to create a library from scratch, they needed cleaners and painters to transform the dark and dreary space, haulers and sorters to organize the books, and people with library knowledge to catalogue and shelve the books. And, they needed books!  Betsy Walsh organized the effort scheduling the first work day for Saturday, September 11, 2010.  Throughout the summer and fall, volunteers from Epiphany and other churches collected new and gently used K-5^th grade level books.

               Four and a half years later, the library has grown into a formidable resource for the children and teachers at the Blackstone Elementary School, now labeled an “Innovation” school.   Under the leadership of Eileen Marks, Pat Hitchcock, Judy Cotton and Meg McDermott, School and Community Partnership Organizer from St Stephens, and others, over 9,000 books have been barcoded and entered into a Library World online cloud system.  Over 400 students and teachers from 23 classes have been assigned sequential numbers to check out books at the library.  Most classes visit the library weekly. 

               Volunteers from Epiphany, Winchester, Friends of the Blackstone Library, Simmons Library School and from 4 other St Stephens partner churches, serve a day or two each week.  In a world where suburban children from affluent communities are exposed to up to 3 million more words by the age of 3 than underserved children, library books open up new worlds of opportunity. 

               Readers share a book with each class, help children find books at their reading level and 1^st-5^th graders check out books for 2 weeks.  At the Blackstone library it’s free to travel the world from a magic treehouse, cast spells to help Harry Potter navigate peril or learn about the true meaning of Christmas from Dr. Seuss’s Grinch Who Stole Christmas.  Sharing the gift of reading, turns out to be a simple and rewarding way for volunteers to help underserved children begin to overcome the challenges of being born into poverty,  by building literacy skills together.