Congratulations me! I am now officially a Literacy Specialist Intern at S.M.A.R.T. here in Portland. The acronym stands for Start Making A Reader Today, and the program is actually pretty simple.
There are 260 sites in schools across Oregon that use volunteers to read to children who are having certain literacy issues. Each student meets with a reader one hour a week and is given two books a month to take home to build up their own library.
*Quick Note: Not being able to pass up the opportunity to give away free books I have decided to become a reader with SMART as well. If anyone else is interested just follow the link above. It’s only one hour a week and reading to kids is super fun!
Anyways, back to the professional part of this. The internship is exactly what I am looking for to start my research into being a Youth Librarian. (For any of you wondering or doubting, YES there will still be a coffee shop; but an outside career with help with financing). So, here are the basics of what I will be doing at the SMART state office downtown.
Working under the Program Support Manager, I will be:
– Creating, organizing and housing a database of literacy prevention research and resources.
– Assisting with inventory, management and distribution of the internal book collections
– Packaging book orders for schools.
– Researching publishers and children’s books trends in order to increase SMART’s book list selection
– Working with literacy committees to increase our Spanish language collections, and
– Researching literacy data on Oregon schools, educational organizations, etc.
When I met with my supervisor today we set up ways to tailor the internship toward my educational needs and interest in children’s literature. So starting tomorrow, I will be sorting through piles of new and old children’s books in order to distribute them out to appropriate school sites. From there I will start to research children’s literature trends and hopefully begin cataloguing a database of relevant information.
My heart races just thinking about this stuff, I’m super excited. Wish me luck on my new adventure guys!
Amorous Librarian 