Category Archives: CMLE

CMLE, Guest Blogger, School Media Specialist

Scott Eskro Extended CMLE Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Scott Eskro, Media Specialist at Elk River High School. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program. This program was only available during the FY21 school year.

In the 2020 – 2021 school year, Elk River High School had a student population of around 1500. Like all schools, that number fluctuated in terms of students in school and students in distant learning situations.

But no matter where the students were, everyone was dealing with the stress and strain of living in a pandemic. Some believe we are on the verge of a social emotional crisis which further impacts the mental health of teens. The pandemic has exacerbated this issue and every school in the country has seen a huge impact on the mental health of their student population.

So we were looking to add contemporary fiction and memoirs that deal with the topic of mental health.

In the classrooms, English teachers have projects where students read contemporary fiction and memoirs. Students examine what the author is trying to address and/or affirm about a problem or issue in society. What issues, concerns or struggles do the characters face? How does the author address the issue and are the characters successful at tackling the issue?

We already had some books on a variety of contemporary issues. However, we were lacking books on the issue of mental illness and were hoping to add books in that area. 

Mental health is an extensive field. We were trying to improve our collection in two areas in particular.

We were looking to add books that look at the role gender plays in mental illness – examining the role that gender identity has on mental health. We were also hoping to buy memoirs and books on the topic of PTSD. Students are very interested in that topic and we have a significant portion of our student population that join the military. 

With this grant from CMLE, we were able to buy over 80 books dealing with a variety of mental health issues. Thank you CMLE for helping our students learn and tackle these issues through literature.

We will use three sets of data to examine success. First, we will look at checkout data on the books. Second, we will be giving the students a Google Form to fill out, gathering their thoughts about the book, and their understanding of the mental health issue. Third, the teacher will be examining the papers the students write.

Thank you once again, CMLE for helping us support our students and community through this grant.

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Amy Cox Extended CMLE Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Amy Cox, Technology and Media Specialist at Meadowvale Elementary School in Elk River. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

Meadowvale Elementary School in Elk River, Minnesota was so excited to receive grant money from CMLE.  We used the funds to purchase $950 worth of new library-bound books, focusing our purchase on recent award-winners. 

Many of these are books that we are unable to purchase through our book fair program, which has also been less profitable than in past years.  With budgets being practically non-existent this year, these funds allowed us to put high-quality, new, and exciting books into the hands of our students, and they were SO excited to preview and check out these new books. 

We feel so fortunate that in this trying year, we were still able to purchase quality literature for our students, thanks to CMLE. 

Fifth graders showing off some of the new books:

CMLE, Guest Blogger

Ellie Radaj Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Ellie Radaj, Library Media Specialist at Pinewood Elementary in Monticello, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

Pinewood Elementary says a big THANK YOU! to the CMLE for their Mini-Grant program.

When schools shut down in March of 2020, our library, like everyone else, was a bit unprepared.  Our large elementary school was caught with almost 2,000 library books checked out to students and staff. 

Over the course of the spring and fall, our library staff took concerted efforts to regain as many books as possible, but we knew for certain that we did not want students or their families to be burdened by paying for lost books during such a time of chaos and uncertainty.  Instead, in October we wrote off the remaining 80 unreturned books as a loss.  

Unfortunately, nearly half of those unreturned books were from our most popular topics and series – Minecraft, Pokemon, Marvel, Wimpy Kid, Dog Man, Raina Telegemeier – and while they were a small portion of our total collection, the loss hit hard, and the students noticed many of their favorite books missing.  

This spring, we reached out to CMLE to inquire about the Mini-Grant, and received funding to replace many of these popular books!  We were able to purchase over 60 brand new books for our collection from Barnes and Noble using their educator discount, and the students noticed as soon as they started to hit the shelves! 

As we processed the books a few at a time, the excitement was palpable. These are the books that make our students love the library, that spark their attention and pull them into reading.  We love being able to provide students with books that fuel their passions and open the door for life-long readers.

Our students say a huge THANK YOU!

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Karen Gfroerer Extended Mini Grant Report

This is a guest post from Karen Gfroerer K-5 Media Specialist at Prairie View Elementary Middle School in Otsego, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

*Note: scroll to the bottom to watch a fantastic video Karen put together to show her students the new books!!

To the Central MN Libraries Exchange,

I want to start off by saying THANK YOU! I received my nonfiction book order today and it was so much fun unpacking the books. With every book I pulled out, I knew exactly the group of students that was going to go crazy for them and that made me so anxious to get pictures and put together a video for them showcasing the books.

As stated in my grant application, the target for my purchase was balancing out a need for gaps in our nonfiction section, particularly for the younger readers. All of the books I purchased do just that while also being high interest. Knowing this I feel certain that all of the books will have a high circulation rate.

As we prepare for students to return to school in two weeks, we have had to rethink how we operate our library. Since I have to go to the classrooms for their media time it will prohibit students from browsing shelves.  However, I have come up with a way for them to still get books THEY want. I have created a request slip where the students in K-2 can circle pictures of topics they like to read about and then our media assistant and I will pull their choices and deliver their orders to them, just as they would utilize a grab-n-go at a public library. The 3rd-5th graders will use our Destiny Discover catalog to put choices on hold. One of the nice features of Destiny Discover is it highlights new books at the top, with pictures of the covers too!  Navigating our book checkout this way leaves me pretty confident that there will be no lull in circulation. 

This grant gave me such hope this year when nearly all funding sources for purchasing new books were giving poor returns or none at all. The students at my school truly love choosing library books and I know they will be very excited to access the ones purchased from this grant opportunity.

CMLE, Guest Blogger

Michelle Buettner Extended Mini Grant Report

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This is a guest post from Michelle Buettner, librarian at St. John’s Area School in Foley, MN. Read more about our Extended Mini Grant Program or fill out one of our applications. This program is only available during the FY21 school year.

St. John’s Area School is a small rural school community in Foley, MN. The school has 74 students in Kindergarten through Grade 6, along with 14 faculty and staff.

St. John’s Area School is very thankful to the CMLE Minigrant Program. Without the Minigrant, I would not have been able to replace more than 150 books that were damaged in our school library.

In the middle of October 2020, a second floor pump valve broke on our school’s boiler system. This breakage caused gallons and gallons of a water/oil mixture to leak through the ceiling down into the library, soaking and damaging several shelves of books, and worst of all, closing down the school library for about three weeks to clean up the mess. The students were very disappointed to have the library closed for that long.

Once the library was opened back up, they were sad that many of their favorite books were no longer available because they were damaged. I talked to the students about which books and series they would like to see replaced and added in our library.

Thanks to the CMLE Minigrant Program, and generous donations by several families and individuals in our school and community, I was able to replace every book that was damaged. I was also able fulfill many of the students’ requests and purchase books to complete several series.  Many of the new books that were ordered came in just before Christmas and during Christmas break. The students were not able to see the new books until the middle of January due to Christmas break and two weeks of distance learning (due to COVID-19 health concerns).

Once the children returned, each class came to the library that first week back and the students were very excited when they saw all the new books waiting for them to check out!

Thank you CMLE!

Michelle Buettner
Librarian
St. John’s Area School