Storytelling Experience

Every now and again, some life events have a way of just taking your breath away. For some that could be a good or bad thing, but for me it’s definitely a good thing! Around mid-February, I met a woman named Lillian McGhee who worked at Priest Elementary. Mrs. McGhee taught a reading program to students who scored lowly on the MEEP. Upon getting to know one another, she asked me if I would be interested in coming and reading to her students. I agreed and a few weeks later in March, there I stood reading The Lorax to her seven third grade bilingual students.

The children seemed to really enjoy the story and a visual board that I created. Mrs. McGhee suggested that something be created to help the bilingual students have a “visual idea” of what a word/object was in case they didn’t understand it in English. This technique of creating a visual board worked a couple of times and then I decided to switch things up.

Next, I had a research proposal to write for my Research in Libraries class. Since I was volunteering at Priest, it was decided to write my proposal on engaging bilingual students through storytelling and comprehension exercises. The third grade students at Priest were the focus of this proposal. As the weeks continued, I began to explore other ways of teaching the students vocabulary.

Lillian McGhee suggested to me to use Ed Helper, which is a very helpful educational website for teachers and students. Due to log-in issues, I didn’t use Ed Helper but I was able to re-create material on that website through Microsoft Word. Through Word, I put vocabulary words in multiple tables and put clip art images next to each of those words. Images were placed next to the vocabulary to give the children a better understanding of what the words meant.

Well, it has all come to an end as today marked my last day going to read to the students at Priest Elementary. Next week is their last week of school and Mrs. McGhee is leaving and re-locating to Pennsylvania. Words can never express the satisfaction I got from going there and reading to those students. When they saw me today, they immediately started waving and smiling, saying “that’s Ms. Jasmine,” and “Hi Ms. Jasmine.” Shortly thereafter, they presented me with letters and cards that they made to say thank you. In one letter, a student thanked me for coming to read, because I taught them how to read and he said that he would never forget me…I fell apart as I read their letters. It was so touching to see that in coming there to read to them I had in some way impacted their very young lives…I will never forget any of those students and I will never forget their appreciation of my reading. Personally, volunteering at Priest was such a blessing, but as a library student it has been an inspiring hands-on experience that will impact me as a future Children’s Librarian.