MAVA Colleagues,
We are very pleased to share this terrific story of the efforts of students and staff at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical in Haverhill!!
David
Whittier Tech Students Build Little Free Libraries for All Sending Communities
By Caroline Louise Cole |
Logan Pickering touches up the paint on the prototype Little Free Library book box he is building at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School as Skylar Cyr, left, Sofia Deiulis and Hailey Rocker, look on. Cyr, Deiulis and Rocker are members of the school’s Rotary Interact Club which kicked of the Little Free Library project by suggesting a community book drive. (WHAV News photograph.)
(Additional photographs below.)
Haverhill and its neighboring communities are getting custom Little Free Libraries filled with donated books courtesy of Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School students.
What started as a community book drive to collect and redistribute their own childhood books has turned into students across several shops designing, building and installing 11 unique Little Free Libraries in each of the communities in the Whittier Tech district. Students in Mike Sandlin’s senior carpentry class are currently thinking through the designs and building the book boxes while the students in the school’s Rotary Interact service club are collecting the books to fill them. Students in the metal fabrication shop are helping with metal accents and other students have designed a stamp that will mark each book as a Whittier Tech donation.
Along the way the students have researched their town histories to come up with design ideas and are learning about civic engagement. This winter students will contact each of the chief executives in the Whittier Tech communities, offer them a little free library and ask where theirs should be located. Crews of students will then install them.
Under the able hands of Jeffrey Wilson, the Groveland Little Free Library book box takes shape. Wilson incorporated a replica of the Paul Revere bell, which hangs in the Groveland Congregational Church, into his design. (WHAV News Photograph.)
Logan Pickering, a senior from Merrimac, built the prototype book box and is in the process of designing the unique library box for his town.
“We did research on each of the towns. So, like Merrimac has the Town Hall so I am going to build the town hall. Or, like Amesbury is known for carriages, so we are going to try to incorporate a carriage. It just like incorporating that historic feeling into that box to make that town special,” Pickering said.
Jeffrey Wilson, a senior from Groveland, has taken inspiration from the Paul Revere bell which hangs in the steeple of the Groveland Congregational Church. While he is building the box from plywood and pine, he has asked his friends in the metal fabrication shop to make a small replica steeple bell.
“I like the fact that I can use my mind. I like the fact that I can design it myself and build the project with my hands. So, it’s something I appreciate,” Wilson said.
Sandlin, the carpentry teacher, said his students eagerly signed on to the project when the Interact Club approached them.
“It gives them a chance to showcase their experience in carpentry. It’s a fun project because now they are going to be out in the community so maybe when they drive by they can say “Hey, I did that. I created that,” Sandlin said.
Hailey Rocker, a senior from Haverhill who is the president of the school’s SkillsUSA chapter and is a member of the Interact service club, said collecting books has been a breeze. So far, they have more than 300.
“Everyone who came to our open house a little while ago was asked to bring a book and all of those books will be stamped with our special label and placed into the book boxes through all the towns. And we hope to fill all the book boxes entirely,” Rocker said.
In another collaboration, students in the school’s National Technical Honor Society designed the stamp that will be used to label the books that fill the libraries initially. The stamp has a line drawing of five books and reads “This book was donated by Whittier Tech.”
The late Todd Bol is credited with kicking off the international Little Free Library book sharing craze in 2009 when he fashioned an old wooden door into a two-foot square replica of a school house, installed it on a pole outside his house in Hudson, Wisc., loaded it with his mother’s books and hung a sign that said “Free Books” in a tribute to her teaching career. Today, more than 200,000 Little Free Libraries are located in all 50 states and 128 countries, according to the Little Free Library Foundation Bol established prior to his death of pancreatic cancer in 2018.
Jane Moskevitz, the advisor to the SkillsUSA chapter at Whitter, said she cannot wait to enter the project into the state’s community service project competition in March. SkillsUSA is a national non-profit that promotes career technical education and workforce development through competitions and leadership training events.
“This was a student-driven project. They designed it. They’re implemented it. They’re going to actually go out into the community and place these book boxes in their communities and if you could see them, you could see that every box is a little different and there is some design aspect that represents a specific unique feature of a community,” Moskevitz said.
In addition to Haverhill, Groveland and Merrimac, other Whittier communities which will be receiving a unique Little Free Library book sharing boxes are Amesbury, Georgetown, Ipswich, Newbury, Newburyport, Rowley, Salisbury and West Newbury.
Skylar Cyr, vice president of Whitter Tech’s Rotary Interact Club, stamps a book that will go into one of the Little Free Libraries carpentry students are building for each of the 11 Whittier Tech communities. The stamp, which has a line drawing of a stack of five books reads, “This book was donated by Whittier Tech.” (Courtesy photograph by Nancy Calverley.)
Chapter 74 Vocational Technical & Agricultural Education
LEARNING THAT WORKS FOR MASSACHUSETTS
David J. Ferreira
MAVA Communications Coordinator
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