Once upon a time, (last year) each high school ran a nationally recognized chapter of Project LIT, a grassroots community of school book clubs committed to bringing culturally relevant diverse books to our students. Then the pandemic hit… and the whole world went virtual.

Armijo’s library is one of the go-to places on campus where students can collaborate during the school day as well as after school. Typically, the library hosts massive book check-outs in August and September as English classes schedule opportunities for students to select reading material for independent reading as well as assignments. The Project LIT chapter here was beginning to grow, being populated by talented students with diverse reading taste and some literary aspirations.

When the pandemic hit, our book platform went digital with the new Sora platform that could be accessed right from a student or staff member’s Clever portal, along with all the other distance learning resources. The district librarians have worked diligently to expand the content to include non-fiction, poetry, biographies, graphic novels and manga, college and career titles, as well as health, nutrition, philosophy, religion, and Spanish-language materials.

Districtwide use of Sora has been a hit with most students. The software provides usage statistics for each school. The big challenge facing libraries post-pandemic has been getting students to come on campus to return overdue books and check out some new ones.

This fact was the game-changer for high school book clubs. Students have expressed both a desire to read what they want – rather than the whole club reading one title and discussing it – as well as exhibiting fatigue with the virtual environment. The high school book clubs have had to evolve with the ever-changing times.

At Armijo, we’ve experimented with a blog, but students didn’t seem interested in participating on the Google Blogger platform, and, since students wanted to expand out of a set reading list, we evolved into the Armijo Royal Readers, paying homage to our new mascot.

We created a Google Classroom for the club, and have been trying to encourage students to come on campus and browse the collection. The library has a drop box in the cafeteria during food distribution on Wednesdays so that families can return any library or textbooks, regardless of school. Materials will get checked in and sent on their way to the appropriate site.

The book club promotes events and news through the library website, email, the Google Classroom, and the weekly newsletter, which also highlights digital books in Sora.

Armijo is participating in the community read with Solano Library of Just Mercy and is promoting that. Ms. Hill’s freshmen classes are participating as is the Black Student Union. There are a few copies still available for anyone who wants to participate!

Over at Rodriguez High School (RHS), librarian Ms. Traci Pratt said that they have had consistent participation in their fully virtual book club and have had staff participate as well. RHS also decided to expand beyond the Project LIT reading list, and had students nominate the books for this year:

RHS relies mostly on word of mouth and email to promote the club, along with promotional flyers around the campus.

The Public Safety Academy (PSA) actually has two virtual book clubs – one for middle school and one for high school. Ms. Yung Ahn said that the middle school book club is thriving, but the high school students feel “overwhelmed” by coursework and feel negatively impacted by the pandemic. She said that many high school students feel that a book club is too much extra work right now. Despite that, these are the books that were selected for this year:

Ms. Ahn promotes her book club at the Student Activity Nights, Back to School Night and with English classes. The middle school book club has expressed an interest in keeping their books, so Ms. Ahn was able to run a successful Donors Choose campaign this year along with a club grant to achieve that goal.