{"id":34521,"date":"2022-02-03T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2022-02-03T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=34521"},"modified":"2022-02-02T11:26:48","modified_gmt":"2022-02-02T17:26:48","slug":"amid-noisy-controversies-oklahoma-school-librarians-do-their-best-to-create-informed-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2022\/02\/03\/amid-noisy-controversies-oklahoma-school-librarians-do-their-best-to-create-informed-citizens\/","title":{"rendered":"Amid noisy controversies, Oklahoma school librarians do their best to create \u2018informed citizens\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px; margin-bottom: 20px; border-radius: 6px; overflow: hidden;\"><iframe style=\"width: 100%; height: 200px;\" src=\"https:\/\/player.captivate.fm\/episode\/bd091b77-c8ff-485a-8da9-767f77831fbe\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\" seamless=\"\"><\/iframe><\/div><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The books in Oklahoma school libraries don\u2019t end up on their shelves by accident.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the Bristow High School library, \u201cIdentical\u201d by Ellen Hopkins is certainly here on purpose, Librarian Allison Hilburn said. Several of Hopkins\u2019 young adult novels line the shelves here.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cBut they are about some hard topics: drug use, sex, suicidal thoughts,\u201d Hilburn lists off on a cold January day.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The book is thick. It might intimidate some students. But Hilburn, who as the librarian also doubles as the person who runs prom and as a substitute teacher, said her job is to show that the book &#8211; and many more like it &#8211; shouldn\u2019t be intimidating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWell, it doesn&#8217;t matter how many pages it is,\u201d she said. \u201cIt matters what the story&#8217;s about. If it&#8217;s about something that you&#8217;re going to enjoy, that you&#8217;re going to read it.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Simply getting students reading creates a love for it. That\u2019s the goal of a librarian.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhether we read a ton in our jobs in the future or anything like that, it&#8217;s not that aspect of that, just the aspect of critical thinking, of being an informed citizen,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The books in Oklahoma school libraries don\u2019t end up on their shelves by accident. Amid efforts by a few parent groups and legislators to limit what appears in school libraries, librarians go to great lengths to get more kids reading.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Becoming a librarian<\/b><\/h3><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It wasn\u2019t easy for Hilburn to become a librarian.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She did it almost a decade ago when her daughter was a toddler, and she was a full-time English teacher at Bristow High School. The time it took is a \u201cblur\u201d as she balanced classes at Northeastern State\u2019s Broken Arrow campus with her job.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">On top of that degree requirement, there\u2019s also an aptitude test that librarians must pass before they can take a job.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tiffany Neill, deputy superintendent of curriculum and instruction at Oklahoma\u2019s State Department of Education, oversees <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/sde.ok.gov\/sites\/default\/files\/Standards%20for%20Accreditation%20of%20Oklahoma%20Schools%20-%20Standard%20VII.pdf\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">library regulations<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> in the state. And there\u2019s a lot of qualifications for good reason.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThe librarian, they work with every subject area in the school, every teacher in the school,\u201d Neill said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Librarians don\u2019t just sit and read books all day once they move into the role.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s a difficult job. Maintaining a collection of books on a shoestring budget is hard enough. But librarians also have to be ready to help any child in the school when they get inquisitive.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cThey have a lot of skills in helping students understand how to conduct research,\u201d Neill said. \u201cThat&#8217;s a major skill for students, for college and career readiness. And so they help design programs within their schools to help students gain those skills and work really alongside other teachers in the building.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There also aren\u2019t enough librarians. Oklahoma\u2019s teacher shortage gets <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2021\/05\/27\/oklahoma-continues-to-battle-teacher-shortage-but-pandemic-hasnt-caused-a-mass-exit-yet\/\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">many headlines<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. But the librarian shortage is a real challenge, too.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So far this school year, Oklahoma\u2019s State Board of Education has approved a waiver for 23 library media specialists who don\u2019t meet all the requirements. That\u2019s a similar number to years past.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Neill said the good news is that those are temporary, and the people who are filling the role are often working toward meeting all the requirements for the job.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hilburn has poured herself into curating the book selection inside Bristow High School\u2019s Library. She\u2019s thrown hundreds away. But that wasn\u2019t about censorship. Some of those books were decades old and hadn\u2019t been checked out in years. Much of the nonfiction collection was from the 1990s.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI wanted that to be up to date because I wanted when teachers came in with their classes, I wanted them to be able to have that information to research. So it&#8217;s kind of been my focus,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">She\u2019s carefully added hundreds of books to the library in the last three years. And that\u2019s what made it so surprising when she faced a challenge.<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_34524\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 672px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-34524\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-672x345.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"672\" height=\"345\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-672x345.jpeg 672w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-1920x985.jpeg 1920w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-768x394.jpeg 768w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-1536x788.jpeg 1536w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-2048x1050.jpeg 2048w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-150x77.jpeg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-300x154.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2022\/02\/IMG_7945-620x318.jpeg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 672px) 100vw, 672px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Robby Korth \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Bristow High School&#8217;s library. In 2021, a community group challenged a number of titles inside the library, which led to a handful of books pulled, but most were retained.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h3><b>An effort to ban books<\/b><\/h3><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Bristow has a process for reviewing books that parents don\u2019t like.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Parents can turn in a form that\u2019s reviewed by librarians, school leadership and ultimately the district school board. It\u2019s similar to policies many districts have across the state.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the last three years, Hilburn has slowly been replacing hundreds of titles. She knows her library well, so she was surprised when a community group called on Bristow to remove almost 50 titles from the district.\u00a0<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some on the list weren&#8217;t even in the library. But Hilburn and a group of librarians and teachers read every single one that was challenged. Ultimately, they kept the vast majority of the books, but got rid of a handful that she says frankly had little to no literary merit.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cOverall, we just decided, hey, maybe those shouldn&#8217;t have been there and not necessarily anything that I bought. But, you know, past librarians, had them in there,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A handful were given a content warning, so if specific students who aren\u2019t allowed to check out 16-and-up books try to, they\u2019ll be prevented from checking them out. There are only two such students at Bristow High.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe&#8217;ve seen challenges for centuries to items in libraries,\u201d said Cherity Pennington, President of the Oklahoma Library Association and longtime school librarian. \u201cSo that is nothing new. There is an uptick nationwide in challenges to reading materials in schools, both school libraries and classroom libraries. We are just seeing more of that.\u201d<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The uptick has gotten attention from both <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2022\/01\/27\/1076180329\/tennessee-school-district-ban-holocaust-graphic-novel-maus\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">school boards<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.oklegislature.gov\/BillInfo.aspx?Bill=SB1142&Session=2200\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">state legislators<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Pennington said she\u2019s troubled by some of the legislation, like a proposed measure to get rid of LGBTQ-themed books from the library and other moves to restrict student access to books around the state.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But in the end, she said, librarians are open to conversations about what\u2019s in school libraries. It\u2019s through those talks, whether with parents or school board members or state legislators that a better understanding will come.<\/span><\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWe want an educated Oklahoma,\u201d Pennington said. \u201cWe want students being given appropriate resources. And we want our legislators to understand that school librarians are the experts in developing those collections.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The books in Oklahoma school libraries don\u2019t end up on their shelves by accident.In the Bristow High School library, \u201cIdentical\u201d by Ellen Hopkins is certainly here on purpose, Librarian Allison Hilburn said. Several of Hopkins\u2019 young adult novels line the shelves here.\u201cBut they are about some hard topics: drug use, sex, suicidal thoughts,\u201d Hilburn lists [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"featured_media":34522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[17],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34521"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34521"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34521\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34525,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34521\/revisions\/34525"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}