It's summer!
And along with freetime, popsicles, picnics and pool time, many of us will also be involved with PCS moves to new installations --- transition time. The notion of summer rotations and relocations have long been part of the military lifestyle for military families.
Susan Kleinsmith, a military spouse and important part of a retired Army family, is now with a Northern Virginia school district on their library staff. She has put together a wonderful transition tool that school and community libraries can offer to help families thru these transitions -- MFHS LIBRARY TRANSITION SHELF. As MFHS "team" members, you can offer this program to your own schools and installations. They can provide these titles and information for their patrons and allow military-connected children the chance to access books and titles which strengthen them thru this process. Until libraries can assemble these shelves, the information is available for families to draw from the titles she recommends as a printable handout.
You can share these ideas and this information with your community to broaden the impact of our Transition Guide. Simply sharing the link will offer library staffs all that they need to either put together a shelf at their building or to offer the information as the handout. Sharing the link with your Units or families will offer them the same materials that can be checked out from any library or card catalog.
Additionally, the titles can be purchased should that be a family's preference. An indication of the cost for each title is included. This also allows groups to purchase the titles for their library or to fundraise in order to make them available. With a small investment ($169 entire), a group, individual or PTA can provide the titles and create the shelf. Pulling the titles from the card catalog can offer them grouped as a display shelf. Highlighting the titles she has researched can be displayed as the handout that highlights each book for each grade level.
What a wonderful opportunity to serve our military-connected children from one of the special spots that receive them at their new school or community---- the library! This is a welcoming Hello and a strong list of material to help ease them into new surroundings, situations and habits.
Share this information widely and offer our families the chance to settle into their new surroundings successfully! The MFHS LIBRARY TRANSITION SHELF even has bookmarks included for each grade level that help students search out the titles according to their interests and needs and make sharing this information simple.
Click here to explore the MFHS Library Transition Shelf today!
Happy summer!
Christi M. Ham
Chair
Military Families for High Standards