Three of our teachers in 2023 and two students share the impact Living Libraries has made on them so far:
From a Living Libraries teacher, Jessica Ramirez:
Good afternoon! Well, the benefits that I have found [with Living Libraries] are multiple, but the most important is that we understand the texts that we read through strategies that we did not know about or that perhaps were there but that we did not apply. We always said, “you have to read to understand” and then have to respond to these questions, but we were going to the end result without seeing the beginning, and how we generate that understanding, what processes we can follow. The fact of making predictions, collecting our prior knowledge, asking questions, Posing literal, inferential, criterial questions, improve our vocabulary All of this, all of it makes it very interesting, the act of reading and the satisfaction of understanding what has been read. I have seen these achievements not only in my children. I have seen that how they manage texts, they respond and make their connections.
That part is the one that I love the most, connections, even for myself. When I do my personal readings, and now when I read and I remember another or another text or I relate it to some other situation I already know that they are connections. But before I didn't use those terms, I mean I said “Oh yes I remembered this” but now I know that now they are connections that remain with me as a professional and with my students. I believe that all these strategies that we are learning and developing with our students make us achieve the final purpose, which is the understanding of the text, That is, we do not read because the teacher says that we should read or because I have to read because I know that it is good to read, No, I go through this whole process with these strategies to understand what I read. And, well, in the end there is the satisfaction that well, yes, I understood.
I understood. And everything that was new: vocabulary, everything new that I understood, and learned in this text, also helps me in my life, it doesn’t only stay here in the classroom, but I can also take it home, because I know that my children discuss it at home and I myself, I share in my home what we have done, we did it like this, when you read also do this or I comment with my son.
So for me it is a very active way of working, it’s very nice. I love the fact that our our school has been privileged with this opportunity because here I feel that not only our children learn but also we are. We are outlining this capacity for understanding that we must all develop properly. Now, we know that we read to understand but also how we can understand what we see.
Living Libraries Student, Andrei:
Nice to meet you. My name is Andrei, I am at the solaris school and, well, what I learned or what I like most about this program is the way my classmates express themselves. We participate in learning, we have to discover, or you have to think about something so that you can answer. That’s what I like the most, to participate.
Living Libraries teacher, Ricardo Yucra:
Well, Living Libraries, since it has come into our institution, has helped quite a lot. I see the students as it has supported them a lot and remember to see the importance of reading, because as you can see before we did not have the books that we see here, or even the space.
Before, you could tell that we didn’t give reading much importance. Because many of us did it in class, but now, since their modules are good, I have learned about different types of strategies. I have seen that they have used companions which I am also already applying. So I have seen that they are ways for the child to remain active and dynamic in each session. So this contribution seems very important to me, because in some sense it's out of the ordinary, some of the strategies are new, and you're able to see in the way that they work that the students are engaged in each session.
Living Libraries teacher, Sandra Chambi:
The Living Libraries program, is one of the most interesting and most challenging programs I’ve had the chance to be a part of.
Thanks to this program, my students have not only improved in their reading comprehension but also now I see that they enjoy much more of everything that I read personally. This program has helped me a lot to improve my pedagogical practice and the model ing sessions that have been given to us have helped me above all Thanks to these classes, now I have acquired new strategies that I use not only in the area of communication but also in all other areas and in all the other activities that my students carry out.
My students have improved a lot in their academic performance since reading comprehension was one of our weak points, and by improving their reading comprehension they have obviously improved their academic performance. Now they recognize, and not only recognize strategies, but also apply them in the different activities we carry out and in all the areas that we teach
Living Libraries student:
I have learned from a variety of questions that I had never seen in class and also many things that we do.