When I first became a Media Specialist, I heard about other schools having authors come to their schools for a visit. My immediate thoughts were that it would be awesome to do that but...
1. How do you know these authors/get in touch with these authors?
2. How do you pay for a visit like that?
Some schools or districts may work differently, but in my school in my district, I am given funds from the state to purchase materials that circulate (books, maker space materials, etc.) but I can't spend it on anything else. Any other funding needed for things such as basic supplies, processing materials, prizes, promotional materials, events, etc must be fund-raised.
My first year in the Media Center I connected with a local author named Jaimie Engle and we brought her in for Literacy Week. We paid for her to come for the day and we ran four sessions of kids through the Media Center. We worked with our Culinary Department to feed her a nice lunch and used our Young Author's Club to work the event for us. It was a great event and the kids enjoyed the visit a lot but I think they would have enjoyed it a lot more if they had read her books before the visit. It was still a really awesome day and a great way to get my feet wet.
Last year, my second year in the Media Center, I met Christina Diaz Gonzalez at our annual FAME conference. She has several books out that are amazing but her book Moving Target was one of our SSYRA books for last year. It is SUCH a great book and my students loved the series so very much. When I started planning our 20 Book Challenge celebration day, I reached out to her to possibly schedule a visit. She lives in Florida so that definitely helped with the cost. Christina was so gracious and incredible with us. We got to have a special author lunch with Christina and all of our finishers and then we did an author session where I brought in other students as well. Even better, I was able to share her with another local school and we were able to split the cost. The students absolutely loved her and it was so much fun!
This week, in my third year as a Media Specialist, we were able to host Newberry winner Kwame Alexander, the DAY his new book Swing launched. If you've read this blog at all, you know how much our students LOVE his books so this was a really big deal.
Kwame and I met years ago when he was the Keynote speaker at a small conference I helped with. He had just published Acoustic Rooster and His Barnyard Band and He Said, She Said was about to come out. P.S. He was just as dynamic then as he is now. We met again at my first FAME conference and he remembered me. The Crossover was an SSYRA book that year and as my students fell in love with it, I began to share that with him on social media. We continued to run into each other at conferences and I continued to share with him on social media. I was able to get on the launch teams for Solo, Rebound, and Swing. Kwame is such an awesome guy and he truly loves kids and wants to make the world a better place. When the opportunity came up to start the tour at our school, I knew I had to make it happen. He has been so gracious with me and so good to our students.
In just two days I was able to find enough support and raise enough money to fund the visit. TWO. That is how much our staff believed in this and wanted to make it happen for our kids. This is the biggest thing I've ever tried to pull off. Ever. I was so nervous and so worried about all the details and not letting anyone down.
We decided the visit would be in the Media Center and we'd put 200 students in there. We've never tried to put 200 kids in there but my Head Custodian is amazing and said he'd help me move all the furniture out and we'd make it happen and that's what we did. We announced to the staff he was coming and Follett and our awesome rep, Sherri Smith Dodgson, donated 100 copies of Kwame's books to our school. I handed them out to teachers like they were Halloween candy. Then, we announced to the students that he was coming. I told them that the first 200 students who successfully logged one of his books in our 20 Book Challenge would get to be in the Media Center. The rest of the school would get to watch through a live camera feed.
His books stay checked out anyway but we had kids coming in every day looking for them. We had two teachers do read-alouds with it and gave their students the opportunity to log the book. My team and I scored these responses until we were blue in the face. I did lessons with the classes on how to answer a prompt, what a response that wouldn't be accepted looked like, what a good one looked like, and how to fix their response if they didn't actually tell me anything about the book. I was up until 1 in the morning many nights scoring responses and giving these kids individual feedback so they'd know if they got in or not. Monday morning we published the list and the visit happened Tuesday.
I decorated the Media Center to reflect the themes of the new book. We got copies of the book for all 200 kids. Our Art students made incredible banners to welcome Kwame and Randy to the school. Our Show Choir kids created a routine and performed "Be a Star" at the start of the event. We got the Mayor there, lots of important District people there, and District Communications came. I had more volunteers than I've ever seen before and it was THE BEST DAY EVER!
Days later, our whole school is still taking abut it. The kids loved it. Every single student I asked said it was way better than everything I said it would be. It was also such an incredible learning experience for me. I got to work closely with his booking agent, Carmen, who is awesome and I also got to work directly with his publishing company to make sure our books would be there in time. I got to meet the marketing person for a local independent bookstore and she is amazing. I planned and coordinated with another Media Specialist, Ana Woodbrey, who went in on the visit with me. I got to bounce ideas off so many people. The greatest thing I learned is how much support I truly have from the entire community and how much our staff believes in me to do good things for our kids.
The photos and videos from the event are so incredible. Rachel Horst, one of our District Communications people, did an amazing job capturing the pure joy on the faces of these kids. It will be something I will always remember.
While I've only been through three author visits, I feel like I've experienced and learned a lot. If you are looking to host an author visit for the first time here are a few tips:
- Don't be scared to try!
- Reach out to authors. They are AMAZING! Really. They love kids and they want to come to your school.
- If you can plan well in advance, do it.
- Do all the fundraisers all the time so you have money in your account for times like this when a crazy opportunity comes up.
- Believe in yourself and your abilities to organize and run an event.
- ASK FOR HELP!
Y'all. It took a village to make this visit happen and I'm so very thankful for everyone who helped. It makes everything better when we all work together.
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