Written by Tenzin Yangkey, LEC 2022
Being a language teacher, I have often felt the need for reading as the most important activity for young minds. I believe that reading is the core of every language skill and I have witnessed students’ rapid movement with language by building a strong reading foundation.
I work at Sambhota Tibetan school, Lobersing, Odisha. This year I was appointed as a library in-charge of my school in addition to my main responsibility. To encourage my students to build a reading habit I started modeling reading with passion, myself. Soon my students joined me on the journey, and to my delight, I found that for some of them books soon became their best friends.
Meanwhile, I have also tried to make reading a fun and exciting activity unlike our usual cliché of reading as a solitary scholarly activity. Some of these activities were bookmaking, poster making, reading log/reading records, book reviews, and storytelling. The children participated with full enthusiasm and passion. I was amazed to see how students treasured these times with full concentration and effort.
But still, in my heart, there was a longing to do something better in this very new field. I still needed to figure out and learn lots of things regarding how the library functions and manages as I have never received any training in this field. Amidst the quest of this journey, I stumbled upon a circular regarding the LEC Course of Bookworm. I instantly knew this was the course I had been looking for. I applied right away, and much to my surprise, I was chosen. My voyage on the LEC Course officially began!
This course has become even more valuable for me because of the exceptional facilitators and my fellow participants, who come from varied geographies in India. I never previously had the opportunity to experience such a varied culture. And I was so grateful to decide to enter into a completely new position for the first time after letting go of my familiar surroundings. This reinforced my belief that you can only truly progress if you step outside of your comfort zone.
The course contacts were productive and significant. Finding oneself in the company of amazing people who are all dedicated to library work and who promote thought-provoking readings, discussions, implementation, and the conversation was the best part.
This course is the beginning of fulfilling all of our needs, whether they pertain to private libraries, community libraries, or school libraries. Because of the LEC teams varied teaching methods, learning became largely experiential. The team worked together in several intriguing ways that gave adult learners a completely different perspective on how to approach libraries and reading.This enabled us to consider and investigate our inner world through children’s literature. I never thought one could utilize children’s books as one of the main resources in such an intensive course.
Now that I know how to set up my school library, I have a lot of creative ideas. My knowledge of book genres was previously limited, but the LEC Course has given me a wealth of knowledge in this area.
Overall, I’m extremely grateful to be a part of LEC 2022. Numerous library learning tools and strategies are made available, and I am thrilled to use them to help each child in our community develop a love of reading.
If you wish for something from the bottom of your heart, the world will bring all the manifestations to make it possible. I sincerely wanted to encourage my students to develop reading habits, and the universe has truly answered my prayers. So, miracles do exist!
Lastly, I want to express my sincere gratitude to the Department of Education (DOE) for providing such a great platform for my professional development. I would like to acknowledge Bookworm & LEC team from bottom of my heart for their tireless contribution to evolving our world into a safer place to live.
Beautifully written👏🏻👏🏻Amazed!!!