10 Reasons to Know and Use Your Child’s Texas School Library

By Dorcas Hand, School Library Advocate, Students need Libraries in HISD

As the TLA and TASL Awards season gets active, I’d like to talk about a project that developed from my service for the TASL Legislative and Advocacy Committee a few years ago. Some things just take awhile to come together. The Shirley Igo Award goes to a PTA in a Texas school that collaborates with it’s school library. There are two key words in that sentence: collaborate and school library. And PTA: the award is intended to raise awareness in PTAs the benefits of school libraries, and to inspire collaboration to build stronger libraries in as many schools as possible. While Susi Grissom and I worked with TASL and TLA leadership to rebuild the relationship with the Texas PTA, we also realized that the TASL website and the TPTA website could benefit from access to information that can be handed directly to parents about school libraries.

With that in mind, Susi and I have pushed forward - and can share today one result which you can find posted to the TASL Advocacy page and linked here. In two forms.

First, a generic flyer that can be used by any school library advocate to remind parents anywhere in Texas why they should “Know and Use Your Child’s Texas School Library.” This will be posted to the TASL Advocacy page for easy access.

Also posted there will be an CUSTOMIZABLE version. Texas school librarians will be able to add their school logo at the top, their contact information at the bottom. There will also be a spot to add the TexQuest login details.

Both flyers are one page only, easy to print, even in only black and white if that’s what is needed.

Please download these flyers to put them to use in your school as soon as possible. You might even share with your local public library for display in the children's and YA areas.

https://txla.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/TASL-10-Reasons.pdf