The library that Pueblo a Pueblo recently opened in the ChukMuk School has already progressed by leaps and bounds in the last month, thanks to a lot of work of the Johanny (Library Coordinator), Lidia (Librarian) and Montse (Program Manager). The shelves are slowly but steadily being filled with more stories and textbooks, the walls are decorated with bright colors to warm up the cinder block classroom, and the literacy activities are in full swing.

“The kids love to go to the library activities, their only complaint is they wish they could go everyday!” says ChukMuk teacher Gaspar Sapalú. Even on days when the children don’t have a scheduled library time, the books come to their classroom with “traveling suitcases,” which are full of the materials teachers need to lead literacy activities in their own classrooms. The children are also taking full advantage of our free hour each day,  where they often practice reading aloud in Spanish. Most of their parents speak only the local Mayan Tz’utujil language, so school is often the only place where they can practice their Spanish. The ability to communicate in Spanish can open many opportunities for them in the future.

This month we also organized a school-wide event that got everyone reading! To celebrate the Internacional Día Del Libro (International Day of the Book), we asked each teacher to read a story in the classroom, and then the students designed their own bookmarks based on the story they heard. At the end of the week, we selected seven winners and awarded prizes based on the children’s understanding and creative depiction of the story. Encouraging children to use their imaginations and make a story come to life stimulates their minds and fosters a love of reading!

One of Pueblo a Pueblo's sponsored children volunteered to paint the bookshelves with us.

We’re settling in to our new location in the Chukmuk school, and the children are so excited! Every day they ask our librarian, Lidia, “When are the library activities going to start?” We assure them that activities will be starting this month, but in the meantime, we’ve been moving, cleaning, and organizing.

Throughout February we were…

• Moving the library furniture to the new location
• Packing, unpacking, and organizing six hundred new books donated and purchased with donations over the past year
• Cleaning!
  

  Library Coordinator Johanny (l) and Librarian Lidia (r) hold the first three books catalogued for the library.

• Cataloging the library’s stock with the simplified Dewey
  decimal system and a junior color code
• Expanding our “library start-up” guide so that other teachers or schools who are interested in starting a library can model our work
• Registering and updating our existing inventory of 290 books
• Painting bookshelves in cheery colors to make the library more inviting to children and also to protect the books from humidity during the rainy season
• Holding our first training for teachers and library support group members
• Starting our ongoing training for teachers and the library support group.

We're off to a great start, but we could still use about five times more books!

We’re pleased to have come so far, but also know how much more we have to do.  For example, we need to grow our library stock. International guidelines recommend a minimum of 3,000 items in library stock, including books in Spanish, educational materials, etc.) to satisfy the needs of 250 students. And we still need to furnish three separate areas of the library: the investigation area, the story area, and the creativity area. In the meantime, we’re thrilled to be in our new space, and looking forward to watching our library—and the literacy and imaginations of the children—grow and grow.