Librarian wants boy to....

[AmbrosiaWriter]

I think perhaps the only way a "random drawing" kind of thing would work is that each child would get one entry per book they read.

But I wouldn't have it be "FOR THE BE ALL WINNRAR" of the contest. It'd probably just be like a raffle drawing. You read more books, you get better chances.

But I'd prefer the way MY library did it.

They had a different theme every year and on the children's floor they'd have a kind of board design (think like candy land only all over the wall) where you'd put your name on a little card you drew on and then as you read more books they moved you along on the board. When you reached certain goals you got prizes and good job's and the feeling of accomplishment.

Being the FIRST to finish the board got you the exact same thing as being the LAST to finish the board (before the summer reading event ended.)

Really, it was just a way to try to encourage kids to keep reading even if they weren't in school during the time.

[Andara Bledin]

My middle school had the raffle draw based on pages read metric.

At the end of each week the readathon went on, they'd pull a handful of names out of a bin with the strips submitted by all the readers.

It was consistently me and one other kid every week for three years straight. I never saw another kid at the drawing. What you got for having your name pulled was the chance to pull a handful of coins out of a jar.

I never understood why more kids didn't enter.

[Jester]

Remember all those sales contests in school, where you'd sell candy, magazine subscriptions, or whatever, as a way to raise money for this or that club or function? Yeah? Do you also remember that annoying little shit who walked off with the top prize Every Single Time?

Hi. That was me.

Now, was I a better salesman than most of the other kids? Honestly, probably...I'm the son of a salesman, and I've always been very good at it. But that is not why I always won. I always won those contests because I wanted to win them more than anyone else, and I put more energy into selling the candy and magazines than anyone else. And so I not only won, I won going away. This is not immodest, this is simply fact.

I do not know if any other student ever complained about me in these contests. Since we moved a lot, my domination wasn't as obvious as it might have been had we only ever lived in one place. But I imagine at least a few people did complain. And I imagine, since I never heard a word of it, that the teacher they complained told them that if they didn't like me winning all the time, maybe they should just get out there and sell more than me.

And while I certainly had an advantage due to my background and my drive, I was the same age and had the same product the other kids had. So if they didn't like it, as far as I was concerned, they could suck it.

And honestly, if some parent or teacher had suggested that I be disallowed to win, to let someone else win, I would have told them to suck it, too. I was not a very good athlete. I was smart, but not the smartest or the best student. And I'm gonna go out on a limb and imagine that this nine year old kid is not dominating other areas of his school, either. And they want to take this away from him? Fuck that, and fuck this moronic librarian for his underhanded and despicable treatment of this.

So if they had come to me and suggest that I sit one out, and give other kids a chance, I would ask if they were also going to have Perry sit out kickball, and Steve sit out baseball, and Dave not get as many dates, and Kathy not ruin for nature scoring curve for everyone. No? Not gonna do that? Then fuck you. Get the hell out of my way. I've got some damn candy to sell.

If I were advising this kid, I'd say not only should he not sit out the next readathon, he should make it his personal mission to dominate it even more, to shatter his previous record and make it clear to everyone that this, THIS is his domain, and he'll be DAMNED if anyone's gonna tread on it without a fight! Read, Forrest, read!

Congratulations, Ms. Librarian. You are officially The Worst Educator in America!

Not to mention that the dialogue with said article has a number of people AGREEING with the librarian, using the analogy of Michael Phelps competing in a local swim club meet or Tiger Woods competing in an amateur golf tournament. Sorry, but sports =/= read-a-thons.

Michael Phelps and Tiger Woods are adult, professional, elite athletes in their respective sports, and have been honing their skills for YEARS to get to the level they are at.

To compare a nine year old boy who loves to read to them is beyond ludicrous. The analogy here is flawed at its very root.

[AccountingDrone]

When I started live in the call center for State Farm, I blew the metrics away. They considered 30 calls a busy day. I was used to ADT/Wells Fargo where when you hung up another call rolled in immediately. It was not unknown to roll through 150 calls in a shift [when a frequent call was Hi, my name is X, my address is Y and my password is Z you can crank through a lot of calls!] To me, 30 calls was being on break. At one point in my first week I was the top name on the list in every category - so my sup decided to give me a gift card to a nice restaurant and roll all the different smaller goodies to the people *second* on the list. I told him to not bother putting me on the metric board for prizes after that [the most common prizes tended to be Dunkin Donuts, or Whole Donut sort of gift cards and I make better donuts than most donut places around]

I really miss working there, we had sensible sups, and reasonable metrics. One of the nicest bunch of people I ever worked with. In retrospect, when they closed it I was given the option to move to the call center in Texas for the same wage which was almost $10 an hour more than was the equivalent - I would probably still be there if I had. I would have only needed to be apart from Rob for a year, he got out of the Navy a year after I left State Farm.

[hinakiba777]

We are having an event to get children to read more. Except this kid. He reads too much. Stop reading kid! That was the basic thing I got from the article. I read an attached article about the same thing, and one of the volunteers goes on to talk about how most kids only do the base amount. Plus she had to call many to make sure they finished their summer reading. The whole thing is just not fair to the boy who is doing the reading. Now, I am personally quite a slow reader. Sometimes i read a book in a day, other times it takes a few weeks, it all depends on my mood. But i'm not going to begrudge someone else for finishing more books than i can. That's just silly.


The call center I was at had drawings for prizes based on sales. Reaching a certain sale goal got your name in the draw. HOWEVER, there was only one person who could put your name in the draw and she worked until 4pm on weekdays. I worked 3pm-12am. Which meant that if I was LUCKY I could catch her before my shift to get my name in for the day before. You had to go put your name in personally, but she had to verify you. So despite being consistently in the top 5, I never won anything because my name was never in.

[DGoddess]

They would have hated me as a child. I cleaned out the fiction/SciFi sections of three or 4 different library branches. I used to walk out with a stack of books under my arm. and YES I did read all of them and returned for more. And the books I was checking out were not of the "See Jack run, Run Jack run" variety.

Neither were mine. I was reading adult length novels by the time I was in the 4th grade. Was starting to write my own stories in the 9th.

See Jack Run my ass . . .that was way too babyish for me even as a 1st grader. Hell, I was on a 6th grade reading vocabulary then.

[Nekojin]

I read Lord of the Rings before I was 8 (mostly because I'd had the audio disc of the Hobbit animated movie, and loved it). At the age of 9 or so, I spotted the Dragonriders of Pern series on my dad's shelf, and asked to read them. He said no, they were too adult for me. So I read them at the library, and wondered what the big deal was.

Heck, before my third birthday, one of my favorite activities was sitting in my grandfather's lap and having him read a story to me. He'd deliberately get things wrong and I'd correct him, or ask me how to say something and I'd tell him. And on my third birthday, I read him the story.

[protege]

I used to walk out with a stack of books under my arm. and YES I did read all of them and returned for more. And the books I was checking out were not of the "See Jack run, Run Jack run" variety.

I did the same thing. I'd taught myself to read...and *hated* the Dick and Jane books. *Yawn* I didn't care what Spot had done, nor did I enjoy plodding along while the teacher read. No, I was more into reading about sports cars, space ships, and other things above my grade level.

Also annoying, was the "speed reading" crap I had to sit through in 7th grade. The teacher would set up a movie screen, and words would pop up, about one per minute, IIRC. Seriously? At that point...I could handle about 250-300

[Mytical]

Heh I wasn't much of a reader until High School. By the end of the first quarter of High School I knew the dewey decimal system. Became the unoffical librarian helper. Reading was fun.

As for the OP, the librarian needs a vacation. I can understand the reasoning, but it is going about it the wrong way. Recruit the kid to start reading the stories..get him involved and interested. As somebody suggested make him something equivalent of a Hall of Fame member. Get kids to want to follow the example.

[bainsidhe]

Update: http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/clo...185514741.html

Library has fired the 28-yr veteran aide who spoke out in support of the 9yr old. No reason given for her firing, yet people are obviously speculating it's because of the attention this situation has drawn.

A lot of companies have rules that you can't speak to the media or post on social media about your place of employment. I may not agree with it, but I could understand if they gave that as the reason for her firing. But instead, the library refuses to give a reason. Talk about bad publicity.