LGBT History Month: The Library celebrated LGBT History Month by displaying the fiction and non-fiction titles selected by the school’s LGBT group. The titles were chosen as part of the LGBT SLIF-funded project. Pupils used homemade bunting as well as resources from the TIE campaign website.

Purple Friday was celebrated in the school’s Fuel Zone with live music and a bake sale. The Library marked the occasion as well by implementing our new Pride section that features fiction and non-fiction books about LGBT and equalities themes. The school’s LGBT group have decided on the criteria for the section. Double copies are placed within the relevant genre sections throughout the Library in order to cross-promote LGBT stories and authors.

We’ve created an LGBT reading list that includes the titles chosen by the pupils: LGBT+ Book List

Blind Date with a Book: Our amazing pupil Library Assistant, Sharia, created her first Library display. To coincide with Valentine’s Day, her ‘Blind Date with a Book’ display featured books wrapped in paper. She wanted pupils to take a chance on a book they may otherwise not have chosen themselves and participants were told they had to read at least one chapter of the book before returning it. The display was a hit! One hundred books were issued from the display and the students had a lot of fun guessing which book they were matched with. Great job, Sharia!

Senior Participatory Spend Consultation: The Library will be dedicating a portion of our 2020-2021 budget on books for our Senior Section. This will involve engaging with S4 and S5 pupils through discussions and surveys in order to identify the authors, genres, and subjects that interest them the most. So far we’ve visited five S5/6 English classes and received some interesting feedback from the students. Throughout March we will work with S4 PSE pupils. Our findings will be published o the blog in April.

October was a very eventful month here at Shawlands Academy Library. Catch up with our highlights or keep scrolling to find out more info!

National Poetry Day: National Poetry Day – an annual UK-wide celebration of poetry now on its 25^th year. This year’s theme is ‘Truth’. We’ve handed out FREE official National Poetry Day postcards. As it’s the UNESCO Year of Indigenous Languages, the featured ‘truth’ poems are written in Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Scots, and Gaelic alongside their English translations.

Black History Month: Black History Month is observed in the UK during October to celebrate the achievements of African and Caribbean people at home and abroad. It is an opportunity to honour those who fought for equality and civil rights against racism, discrimination, and colonialism as well as to highlight the societal contributions of black individuals and communities. Black History Month works to ensure that Black History is included in History and recognised in mainstream education throughout the year.

For Libraries, BHM is another opportunity to spotlight and promote some fantastic literary talent and books. Shawlands Academy helped support BHM by facilitating pupil-led information sessions and activities throughout October including BHM presentations by S4 pupils, a bake sale, and a pupil curated display in the library. The students involved created beautiful posters to be used for the display and throughout the school. Books were selected by the students. Click here for a full list of BHM + Beyond books available in the Library. Black History Month and Beyond 2019 Reading Lists

Shelf Help in the Library: October is Mental Health Month and  World Mental Health Day is celebrated on the 10th to raise awareness, education, and advocacy against the social stigmas attached to mental health matters. To coincide with these observances, the Library has launched a new non-fiction collection relating to mental health and welling as well as books about physical health topics. With a reported 1 in 8 children having a diagnosable mental disorder (NHS,  2017) as well as a significant increase in the number of specialist referrals  (22% between  2013/2014 to 2017/2018) (Audit Scotland, 2018), it is vital that Young People have access to relevant information.

The School Library can play a role by providing reliable literature to pupils. This year, we are promoting the Reading Agency’s Shelf Help and Reading Well Books on Prescription programme who supply a list of reliable, well-researched mental health literature endorsed and/or written by experts. We have invested part of our budget to purchase the remainder of the titles from the list that will be arriving later on in the year.

The Shelf Help and Books on Prescription Fiction titles are found in the Fiction section.

For a more detailed list of mental health-related literature available in the section as well as a wider range of fiction dealing with mental health topics and/or containing characters experiencing mental health issues, click here: Mental Health Book List. For more information about the Reading Well with Books on Prescription titles, click here. Many of these titles are also available from the Community Libraries and can be reserved on the catalogue

Find more mental health information for Young People on the following websites:

Glasgow Association for Mental Health, Mentalhealth.org.uk, Mental Health Network Greater Glasgow, SAMH , See Me Scotland, Scottish Children’s Services Coalition, Support in Mind, Young Minds

Sources:

Audit Scotland (2018) Children and young people’s mental health

NHS Digital (2017) Mental health of children and young people in England, 2017

Scottish Government (2018) Children and young people’s mental health taskforce: delivery plan

Author Visit: Shawlands Academy Library has invited author, poet, and Bafta-winning scriptwriter Michael Lee Richardson to deliver a series of poetry workshops to the school’s LGBT+ group as part of a project between Hillhead and Smithycroft secondary schools as part of the Scottish Library and Information Council (SLIC) school library improvement funding. Michael introduced himself and his work to the group and very generously donated copies of Proud, compiled by Juno Dawson, which features one of his short stories.

Our first exercise involved Michael displaying a lemon, three stones, a pair of plastic hands, and a Pride flag along a table. Unbeknownst to the group, each item represented an emotion. Pupils were instructed to write descriptive words about the objects relating to senses. The result…..

JOY (Lemon)

Joy is softish and round with no smell.                                                                                                    Joy looks like a lemon, yellow, tastes sour, feels lumpy, and smells questionable.                         Joy tastes of acid and citrus, and joy smells fresh.                                                                                Joy is round with a bumpy texture, smells very potent.                                                                        Joy is a luminous yellow baseball-like plant with a soft nip surrounding the Satanic, squishy, radioactive emblem stood there with a grace like 1,000 red angels.

ENVY (Stones)

Envy feels cold, it has nice colours and interesting shapes. It smells like absolutely nothing.       Envy is hard, round, flat and shiny.                                                                                                        Envy is disformed shapes smooth but gritty.                                                                                       Envy is vinegary, cold and smells like salt.                                                                                            Envy makes the sound, ‘thunk!’                                                                                                               Envy is calming seabed quartz it lights up the room with a relaxing aura.

FEAR (Plastic hands)

Fear smells like rubber feels like rubber it has a cool shape and details.                                           Fear is squishy, rubbery, and creepy.                                                                                                     Fear wouldn’t really make a noise.                                                                                                          Fear is a smooth plastic baby hand.

LOVE (Pride flag)

Love is a flag.                                                                                                                                                 Love is colourful it feels like fabric and smells like Skittles.                                                               Love is plastic and smooth. and smells like air.

Instagram: Some of the School Librarians are using the Glasgow Life School Libraries Instagram account to highlight some of the work they do. Over the course of the week, I’ve been asked to show what we get up to over my two schools: Shawlands Academy and St. Margaret Mary’s Secondary School.

Hurricane Book Club: The Library is one of three participating Glasgow secondary schools piloting a Young Adult version of Hurricane Book Group. Hurricane Book Group was originally started as an adult book group in Orkney Libraries that gave an opportunity for readers to connect with each other remotely and chat with the author online. This term we’re reading the 2019 Branford Boase award-winning book I am Thunder by Muhammad Khan which questions how far you will go to stand up for what you believe in.

“Fifteen-year-old Muzna Saleem is used to being invisible. So no one is more surprised than her when Arif Malik, the hottest boy in school, takes a sudden interest. But Arif is hiding a terrible secret and, as they begin to follow a dark path, Muzna faces an impossible choice: keep quiet and betray her beliefs, or speak out and betray her heart”.

Our first meeting was a chance to discuss our thoughts on the book so far and come up with questions to submit to the author for when we meet again in November and chat with Muhanmmad on Twitter. Pupils engaged in lively conversation and debate about the themes and the book and how they apply to our everyday lives.