The media center at Lilburn Elementary boasts more than 70,000 books. But when media specialist Valerie Dickey arrived at the Gwinnett school in 2017, she saw an opening to add more.
“When I first got there, I saw there were some books on CD, but they weren’t checked out to students,” she said. “I wanted students to have that option, so I digitized the CDs and used QR codes for people who don’t have CD players anymore. Once I started making them available, even the teachers said they prefer them.”
Audiobooks were important to the school’s diverse student body, many of whom are second language learners, Dickey said.
“We have many families who speak Spanish, Vietnamese, French and patois from Jamaica at home - 32 languages in all,” she said. “My goal was to have books available for those families so they could listen to them in English and read along. I also wanted books that were bilingual.”
Last spring, Dickey started digging for grants that would fund the purchase of more audio and bilingual materials for the school’s 1,300 students. “I really wanted to build on what we had, which wasn’t sufficient, and only a few of them could be checked out. They were hot items in the media center, with kids on wait lists and parents emailing me about when they could get one. I just couldn’t keep them on the shelf.”
One of the sources Dickey contacted was the Dollar General Literacy Foundation, established 30 years ago by the company to support literacy and education initiatives by nonprofits, libraries and schools within a 15-mile radius of a store. Dickey requested $5,000 to digitize audio books with QR codes for any device, and earlier this school year, she got the email naming her a recipient.
“When the team came out to present me with the grant, they told me the life passion and mission of Dollar General founder’s was to help anyone with literacy,” she said. “I thought the $5,000 would start a collection of bilingual books.”
Dickey was shocked when the team presented her with a check for 10 times what she asked for.
“When I saw it was $50,000, I was floored,” she said. “The principal had to tell me to breathe. But I’m so glad I got that amount. It allows me to get audio players that students can check out. I can buy bilingual books and read-along audiobooks for our students.”
Now Dickey’s “Awesome Audiobooks” initiative is in the ordering stage.
“I’ve already created the list,” she said. “By the end of August, I should have enough books for students this fall. It will be a whole collection.”
Information about Lilburn Elementary is online at gcpsk12.org/LilburnES.
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