Shona Phillips, librarian at The Royal Blind School, has been highly commended in the 2008 SLA School Librarian of the Year Awards. She tells Madelyn Travis how she has transformed the library to cater for pupils with a range of special needs.
How did you come to work at The Royal Blind School?
I was a qualified librarian when I graduated. I knew I wanted to work in a school library and this job came up and it was really interesting.
There was no library when you joined the school. How did you go about planning it?
There was a room where the books were stored but it wasn’t a library as you or I would know it. I was involved with the planning and set-up of resources. The space was designed before I had arrived. We had to conform to certain requirements. We’re in a listed building so we had to conform to that as well. When they designed the library it was designed with that in mind. We have a flexible workspace. Most of the resources are on the walls.
What sort of activities do you run in the library?
Book groups are held weekly. They are a timetabled event in the library. We have book groups for first year and six years and are currently shadowing the Carnegie with the fifth and sixth. We have a lot of academic pupils in years 2, 3 and 4 and their timetables are very busy. They have to attend. If they really don’t want to participate we can find them something to do. I know at the beginning of the year who will be coming.
We start with a book I feel is appropriate and then they will determine how the book group will go. We do a lot of talking about the books; some of the older pupils do some paired reading. We do activities alongside the books, looking at the context. Our fifth years have enjoyed looking at Ruby Red and looking at Soweto and what happened at that time. We make it much deeper than just the story.
We’ve had a regular author visit every year and we’ve been very lucky to have had Ian Rankin, Alexander McCall Smith, Anne Fine, Catherine MacPhail and JK Rowling.
Most talk about how they became an author, not necessarily their books. Most of their books would have been read by the time they come. The pupils are curious as to how someone makes a living writing stories.
We also run library and information skills sessions. It gets more intense as young people begin to write up for the higher courses so it’s graduated within age range to what information skills they would need.
We have a homework club after school and the library is open before school.
Your story sacks are your most well known project. Could you explain a bit about them?
Story sacks are common in nursery and primary schools and in other special schools such as Linden Lodge in London. They are tactile resources. You have a story book with resources to go with the story. The aim we had was to encourage reading for pleasure and reading at home. So our story sacks go home or to the young people’s residential areas so they can read outside of school.
We found that commercially produced story sacks were too visual so we decided to create our own. The artefacts that feature in the story are as real as possible. We have a Katie Morag story sack because she’s (Mairi Hedderwick) a Scottish author, and quite a few of our pupils at the time came from the islands and the North.
So we created a story sack to go with it. In this story her granny drives a tractor. So we have an intricate toy metal tractor and information books that go with the story explaining about islands and farms - Braille, audio and large print copies as well as the printed version - and an audio tape with the sounds of the tractor.
They were so successful that we found that the primary kids went to secondary and still wanted them, so we devised book bags, which are the same idea but for a more age appropriate story. I have a team of volunteers to help me, and support staff help. We have had classes taking on a bag as a project. They will source the materials and help with the budgeting. We make two story sacks and two book bags every year.
Now the school includes students with multiple needs. What sort of additional needs are you catering for and how do you meet those needs in terms of supplying appropriate technology and book formats?
We cater for children with multiple disabilities and MDVI. We have a very wide range of students. At the moment we have students at the Scottish equivalent of A-levels through to nursery school. It tends to be that books are applicable across any age arrange and across any disability. Literature can be adapted to what we need it to be. We have children reading Shakespeare and Malorie Blackman right through to Eric Carle.
For blind and visually impaired children there are large print and Braille books, but there are fewer books that cater for, say, older children with multiple needs.
ClearVision produce tactile books and the Living Paintings Trust produce tactile resources. We’ve had Harry Potter and we get science and maths materials. It can be difficult but it can always be found, even if we have to make it ourselves. The Living Paintings Trust have been invaluable to us with maths.
All of the computers have access technology. They have voice software and if the students require Braille Notes or MP3 devices like Bookports or Victor Streams, then they are provided with that.
You must have to be learning and adapting all the time in a job like this.
You don’t sit still in this job. You have to keep abreast of the new technologies; anything that can make books more accessible to young people is something to keep an eye on.
What have been your greatest challenges and how have you tried to meet them?
I’ve been trying to find fiction in as many formats as I possibly can. We have the same age-old problem, which is that many young people find reading difficult or are reluctant to do it. I try to find as many formats of particular books as I can so they can access it in as many formats as they choose. If you sit and listen to it, that’s reading as far as I’m concerned.
I made a point when I created the collections of ensuring that they don’t move, so the pupils are able to map the library out in their head so they don’t need my help to navigate their way around the bookcases.
You have a Reading Champions project going on now?
With this year being the National Year of Reading, I thought it would be nice to have a year-long reading event. We looked at the Reading Champions. We’ve adapted it slightly for our young people. The focus isn’t on boys or reluctant readers. There are certificates and prizes for reading the books on the reading lists. In Scotland we are free to choose our resources how we see fit to best match the clients.
How has the library evolved over the years?
It changes and evolves with the needs of the clients. We have a number of very academic students here so we cater for them. We do have a cross-section of the population and they lead the development of the library. The main aim of the library is to make it as accessible as possible. I want every child, student and staff member to be able to access it to the best of their ability and as independently as possible.
