About a year and a half ago, Chief Evan Bray of the Regina Police Service was my branch’s celebrity reader for Family Literacy Day.
At the end of the event, he said he’d enjoyed it and hoped the police and library could work together more in the future.
I mentioned his comment to a couple managers who’d come from Calgary Public Library and they said they had an idea – trying our own version of a successful program Calgary had run called “It’s A Crime Not To Read“.
We had a few meetings, drew up a few plans, made a few phone calls and put everything in place to hold a trial version of RPL’s own “Cops & Readers” (note the less punitive title!) in partnership between two library branches, the grade three classes at two of their nearby community schools and members of Regina Police Service’s Community Engagement Unit.
Representatives from each organization met in June 2018 to pick monthly dates through the 2019 school year where either the grade three classes would walk to the library or would be visited at their school by library and police staff.
Then, in September, we were off to the races!
We prepared an info package for the students at the start of the school year then walked with them to the library later that month for their first visit where we had either created or updated their existing cards.
Then, every month after that, we basically followed the same template where they’d visit us (if it was a warm weather month) or we’d visit them (if it was a cold weather month). One of the two grade three classes would have stories read to them by a library staff member and a constable from the RPS Community Engagement Unit for 20-30 minutes while the other class would pick out books, do an activity and have a healthy snack for a similar amount of time.
When we visited the school, we would either hold back our newly arrived children’s books and/or pick newer books from our shelves which the library’s delivery trucks would take to the school in the morning and retrieve later in the day.
Halfway through the program, we had a Family Literacy Night and pizza party and today, we had a similar wrap-up event though this one was at noon and featured dignitaries including the Chief of Police and Library Director who presented certificates to each participant plus the opportunity for each child to pick out not one but two books they could keep!
That’s the super quick and dirty overview and there was lots of work, organizing and learning as we went to make it all work as smoothly as it did.
I haven’t heard yet what the decision is but hopefully we can find a way to run it again next year, possibly even in more schools!
