Chantal Kelleher, SLA School Librarian of the Year Honour List

Chantal Kelleher is the LRC Manager at Herne Bay High School, a popular, oversubscribed school that prides itself on its culture of high expectations and values. Here we find out more about what made her work stand out.

The Learning Resource Centre is at the heart of Herne Bay High School and runs a lively calendar of events throughout the year. The LRC is open throughout the school day and offers an excellent collection of factual texts and story books, magazines, ICT area, lecture theatre, mezzanine and an informal seating area. The extensive and regularly updated fiction collection is organised by genre. The non-fiction collection has a shelf on every bay dedicated to face-out display. At break, lunchtimes and after school pupils are welcome to come and relax over books, magazines, play games or complete homework. There are popular lunch time clubs including the Scrabble, Chess, Games and Homework Clubs. Pop up lunch time craft activities have included crafting Mother's Day cards and creating origami fish for an art project. Keen readers have the opportunity to join the Carnegie Reading Group which shadows the national book award in the summer term. Last year the school won the video competition to attend the award ceremony at the British Library and were the South East shadowing Champions two years in a row. Author visits have included Alan Gibbons, Dan Freedman, Sophia Bennett, Cathy Hopkins and Lucy Strange is visiting in June. The yearly Reading Festival is a week-long celebration with books, competitions and games culminating in the raffle draw to raise money for Bookaid International. First prize is an exclusive pizza party in the LRC. There are regular breakfast meetings for LRC pupil assistants and celebration lessons for hard working reading classes. One particularly successful activity which Chantal uses in reading lessons is short story bingo based on The Shortest Horror Story Ever by Anthony Horowitz, which introduces the idea of publishing as a business, contains a hidden message to be decoded and is a glorious horror story with a sinister twist. When Chantal was informed of her inclusion on the Honour List for School Librarian of the Year 2019, the SLA asked her some questions about her job and here are her responses: Q: Which aspect of your job do you most enjoy? A: The best part of my job is working with the young people in my school. I appreciate their sense of justice, lively interest and good manners. I run a lunch time Games Club and have taught many students to play chess, scrabble, Perudo, Yahtzee, Articulate, cards and Cranium over the years. It is a pleasure to promote informal learning in a supportive environment. Successfully matching a student to a book they really enjoy, especially if they would not previously have considered themselves a reader, is a delight that never palls. Q: Where do you get ideas from for developing what your library offers and how it works? A: The starting point for my improvement plan is always the School's strategic plan which helps me to focus attention on the areas that the School is aiming to develop. Librarians are a very generous profession and many of the best ideas I've gleaned have come from listening to what has worked for others and sharing their good practice. Suggestions from students and staff also help to improve what the library offers. Periodically, I trawl the internet keeping my search terms broad to see what is happening in the rest of the library world. I am fortunate to have an excellent, very experienced part time assistant, Lisa Ives, and we regularly discuss, develop and adapt ideas to suit our situation. Q: What are your favourite library CPD resources (websites, twitter feeds, conferences etc)? A: My favourite CPD always involves attending a course or conference in person as it is a treat to focus solely on new ideas. I often find meeting the other participants as informative as the courses themselves. I am very lucky to be on the committee of the Kent SLA which has an active training programme. The training programme is frequently free or minimal cost to members and is mostly delivered through twilight sessions. I am a member of CILIP and have attended a number of training days organised by the Kent CILIP group. In the past I used to find the School Libraries Group London and SouthEast Libmeets absolutely brilliant, they took place on Saturdays and the cost was minimal and so many different aspects of school librarianship were covered. I have attended two SLA weekend courses over the years and found them very inspiring. Q: What other tools help you most in your job and why? A: Our Library Management System is a hosted version of Oliver provided by Softlink and we use the circulation and the cataloguing modules. Reading lessons are supported by Accelerated Reader which helps to motivate students and identify those who might benefit from more support. The School's interactive whiteboards are brilliant for lively, engaging information skills lessons that fully involve the students. The School Twitter and Facebook accounts really help to improve our communication with parents and carers. Within the School the LRC makes full use of the big screen sited in the covered courtyard where students eat at break and lunch. Inside the LRC a large digital photoframe helps to promote new books, publicise student book reviews and advertise current LRC events. Q: What have you learned on the job which you never learned about at library school? A: The most important thing about library resources is that they are well used. Q: Why do you think the Great School Libraries Campaign is important and how would you complete this sentence: "School libraries matter because..." A: School libraries matter because they stimulate aspiration and promote a sense of community to the benefit of everyone in a school, from the last minute completer of homework to the studious regular; from the avid reader looking for something new, to the struggling reader developing their functional skills; from the skilled fake news detector to those who take things more at face value. Q: What's the last book you read which you have since been pressing into people's hands and what makes it so special? A: Murder in midwinter by Fleur Hitchcock which I read when it was included as a Bookbuzz book in 2017. This is a gripping murder mystery, very fast paced and a proper page turner with a strong wintery theme running throughout. Travelling on a bus in the middle of London, Maya sees a couple arguing and the man has a gun. As she takes a photo with her phone the flash goes off and the couple look directly at her. This might not usually matter but Maya has an unusual appearance with a very distinctive white streak through her black hair. When a body looking much like the man is retrieved from the river the next day Maya appears to have become an identifiable witness to a serious crime. Can she stay safe and unravel the mystery? It has proved very popular with students looking for a thrilling read. Find out more about Herne Bay High School: Website: https://www.hernebayhigh.org/ Twitter: @hernebayhigh facebook.com/hernebayhigh youtube.com/user/hernebayhighschool