Jan believes that getting the kids into the library is a great way to get them to read. There are always contests going on, new displays, and books, books, books! One of her students just won a $50.00 prize for a Great Scavenger Hunt Contest ( http://www.kaycassidy.com/hunt/ ) that Jan found out about on the library resource called lm_net. (Library Media) (http://lmnet.wordpress.com/subscribe ).

Juan Diego’s library also wins because they will get a library tote filled with other Great Scavenger Hunt books. Other resources she uses are Naomi Bates, Follett, VOYA, and the Utah State Library List Server.

Once every week she meets at 7:30 A.M. with her student Library Committee. They talk about books and share their reading adventures on Goodreads.com. This year they took a field trip to Barnes and Nobel where they enjoyed a beverage while perusing books to help Jan spend her library budget. After the new books were entered into her system, Library Committee students had the first opportunity to check them out.

For entertainment, Jan enjoys reading several genre; non-fiction, dystopian fiction and science fiction. Specific titles she has enjoyed include, Outliers, The Tipping Point, The Dead and the Gone, Hunger Games, Bone Chiller, and I Am the Cheese. About every ten years she re-reads John Gunther’s Death Be Not Proud. Currently Jan is reading the young adult (16 – 18 years) novel, Acceleration.

Juan Diego is a beautiful place adorned with statues and paintings. Jan’s library has 40 foot ceilings and 250 feet of windows facing east. Ornamenting those windows from one end of the library to another are gorgeous and unusual plants. Geraniums and a myriad of others in cheerful bloom add to the comfortable ambience of the space. A puzzle for students to contemplate, chess set and checkers, welcome students to browse the books and enjoy the calm.
Garage and yard sales capture Jan’s interest as well. That’s where she got her suit of armor and the stacks of puzzles in the back room. She has a trip to Rome planned for this spring.

Jan and her “Two very best part-time assistants” handle the job of preparing, assessing damage and loaning textbooks for the whole school. This is a huge job taking weeks but it helps keep things orderly.

Three of her classes will be doing a “book dating” activity. The books will be arranged by categories on several tables. Students will move about the tables in three minute blocks of time. During that three minutes, they write down the title and author, read the back cover and enough of the first chapter to indicate on their paper whether they might like to read the book or not.

Jan is very proud of the students at her school and the school itself. She finds the students are good, respectful people. “It’s a great place to work.”