Developing literacy through village libraries

By Venessa Deosaran

Since May 2005, more than four libraries have been built in Yupukari, Rupununi. At present, even more are being created in surrounding villages with the aim of encouraging reading and making it fun.

The nursery school library is a large, one-room cinderblock schoolhouse that accommodates forty children and two teachers.

In May 2005, it was empty, except for tables and chairs. After about a month of three-way discussions between the Rupununi Learners Foundation (RLF) and schoolteachers, inspired by the influx of new materials, RLF began to carve eight learning centres out of the vast space.

A playhouse, furnished with a doll family, their hammocks, pets and miniature household tools, a dress-up centre, a place for water play, an art space, a math centre, science centre, store and a traditional “classroom-facing-a- blackboard” space were all created.

Fortunately, the school has a pair of storerooms, one of which became the ‘story room’. One mayu (community service) day, a group of village women scrubbed the space from top to bottom, and artist Combrencent Ernest painted the floor and walls in preparation for his mural, “The Story of Yupukari.” About 5,500 books, new and used, donated and purchased, were brought to Yupukari from the U. S. in May 2005.

It quickly became apparent that the books posed a significant challenge to the teachers, and that training with books and teaching reading were going to be needed. There is nothing new or exciting about this training, in fact it is a very pared-down version of very ordinary language arts activity.

But in these village schools, a broad selection of storybooks, unlined paper, and crayons numerous enough to occupy a whole classroom simultaneously, are stimulating for students and teachers.

The essence of the programme is building motivation to read by means of enjoyable story and art experiences that entail hearing, speaking, writing and reading of English on a daily basis. As suggested by a library survey, entertainment is a strongly felt need in the village.

And the challenge of learning to read in a foreign language, in which you are not immersed, is sufficiently daunting that motivation and ongoing support must be strong indeed for learning to occur.

Taking technology into the village library

The most successful multimedia curriculum has been the pairing of storybooks with matching video, generally Scholastic titles with matching Children’s Circle videos/ DVDs. The teachers reported that the stories children saw on film were the ones they most sought to read, and generated the most motivated bookmaking experiences. With more funds, RLF would focus on a core classroom collection of multiple paperback copies (enough for the whole class) of certain stories and matching DVDs.

Another experiment was the introduction of low-cost tape recorders, microphones and headphones to make read-aloud tapes. The teachers were trained on the equipment and permitted to use it at will.

The goal was to create an oral/aural programme that would motivate students to read aloud a favourite story to the recorder and swap tapes with their friends, thus reading, speaking and hearing English in a peersocial context. Teachers were not comfortable setting aside time for this activity during the school day, although they were encouraged to send small groups to the public library for this purpose.

RLF is currently engaged in outreach programmes to other communities, as it is the mission of the organisation to support community resource centres in rural communities.

Up mountainous trails and down treacherous footfalls, librarians set out to various villages to discuss the creation of libraries.

Guyana Times Sunday Magazine  will feature in subsequent articles, the development of this initiative.

Check out rupununilearners.org for more information on the Rupununi Learners Foundation. (Taken from Guyana Times Sunday Magazine)