Outside our library we are lucky to have a very large bulletin board. We want to use this to welcome patrons, entice them to step on in, and keep people up to date about what's going on inside. I would love to use this board for fun author and book trivia, reading tips, new books in our library, interesting websites to check out, and more.
Our first bulletin board display is to welcome people to our library. We are so blessed in international schools to engage with students and faculty from around the world because it enriches us as people - we get to learn about new ways of life and gain new perspectives. We have over 25 nationalities at our school - USA, India, Korea, Japan, Mexico, France, and Italy just to name a few, so we wanted to honor the different places we all come from by putting up "Welcome" and "Library" in different languages (of course some countries speak the same/more than one language, so the number of languages is not necessarily 25). We went on Google Translator to get many of these (usually OK for single item vocabulary, but not necessarily for phrases or sentences) and then tried to verify with staff and parents as much as possible. Although we don't have students from Hungary, I put up the words in Hungarian too since that is where I was working last and I am bringing those experiences with me. Of course we have Tamil (60,000,000+ speakers) up there too, which is the state language where our school is located in India.
Welcome = வரவேற்பு. (Varaveerpu)
Library = நூலகம். (Nuulakam)
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| The first of many bulletin board displays outside our library. This one welcomes patrons in their home languages. |
Our first bulletin board display is to welcome people to our library. We are so blessed in international schools to engage with students and faculty from around the world because it enriches us as people - we get to learn about new ways of life and gain new perspectives. We have over 25 nationalities at our school - USA, India, Korea, Japan, Mexico, France, and Italy just to name a few, so we wanted to honor the different places we all come from by putting up "Welcome" and "Library" in different languages (of course some countries speak the same/more than one language, so the number of languages is not necessarily 25). We went on Google Translator to get many of these (usually OK for single item vocabulary, but not necessarily for phrases or sentences) and then tried to verify with staff and parents as much as possible. Although we don't have students from Hungary, I put up the words in Hungarian too since that is where I was working last and I am bringing those experiences with me. Of course we have Tamil (60,000,000+ speakers) up there too, which is the state language where our school is located in India.
Welcome = வரவேற்பு. (Varaveerpu)
Library = நூலகம். (Nuulakam)
Putting up children's languages shows that we honor their mother tongue. We of course are advocates for literacy in every language, not just English (one of my goals is to strengthen our mother tongue collection). Kids feel pride when they see their language on a bulletin board or on the shelves of our library, and know that they are an important contribution to our learning community. ESL students, especially the ones who have very limited English and have just arrived, have another place they feel comfortable in school when they see their language honored. For this reason, the bulletin board of course will need to be updated over the next couple weeks as we discover other languages that students speak which have gone undetected.
Because I wanted to make sure the board had something ready and welcoming by the time school started, this is how we decided to do the board this time around. However, if we do a similar bulletin board next year, I may decide to have students make the signs in their languages, with student handwriting adding an even happier and welcoming element to the board. Their signs could then be laminated to use in another part of the library inside once we change the display.
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