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Dogs, Books and Beanbags - the Perfect Mood-boosting Combination!
Libraries are non-judgmental, welcoming places and school librarians have always known that one of the important roles of the library is to support the mental wellbeing of all our library users. In a school library that encompasses everyone -from the early morning cleaners to teachers on late duty, from students dropping in for a chat to Y9 English lessons coming to choose a good book and spend an hour reading. At Wellington it even includes toddlers dropping in with their parents to browse the picture books and listen to a story on a beanbag. One of the joys of a school librarian's job is the daily interaction with people from all parts of the organisation.
A whole school priority for the current academic year is to support the mental health of our students and staff. There has been a real focus on kindness and inclusivity, and the library has an important role to play in this. The activities and events I describe in this article took place before COVID-19 radically changed the landscape for schools and libraries. Since then we have used creative solutions to develop safe ways of connecting and offering services as the crisis continues. We have an extensive e-Library which came into its own along with the e-book and audio book provision and the use of the Access-IT catalogue app on mobile phones and laptops.
Firstly, let's look at some data on the benefits of reading on children's mental wellbeing. The National Literacy Trust (NLT) undertook research and published their report: Mental wellbeing, reading and writing 2017-2018 (available online at https://literacytrust.org.uk/research-services/research-reports/mental-wellbeing-reading-and-writing/). It explores the relationship between children's mental wellbeing and their reading and writing enjoyment, attitudes and behaviours and is based on findings from the eighth Annual Literacy Survey of 49,047 children and young people aged 8 to 18 in the UK. It was the first time the NLT explored the link between reading, writing and wellbeing so they developed two new measures:
* A Mental Wellbeing Index: children's responses to questions on life satisfaction, coping skills and self-belief were quantified on a scale of 1 to 10, where 10 is the highest level of mental wellbeing.
* A Literacy Engagement Score: children's...