By MATT PIKE
St. Joseph Post
A librarian that has been serving students in the St. Joseph School District for 15 years has been honored at the national level.
Melissa Corey was one of 10 winners for the I Love my Librarian Award, presented by the American Library Association.
Corey, a librarian at Robidoux Middle School, says winning the award is unbelievable.
"I had a few colleagues here at Robidoux that are super supportive, well more than just a few our whole staff is very, very supportive of our library, but i have a few colleagues that want to nominate me for just about any library honor that's out there," Corey tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
She adds that winning a national award is also a bit overwhelming
"But I think it's a great thing for our school district," Corey points out. "We have really strong library programs here in St. Joe and I really do feel that any of our school librarians here are in honor of being top 10 in the country."
It was just last year Corey was a finalist for Librarian of the Year. She says to be honored two years in a row for her work feels validating
"It can be really isolating to be a school librarian, we're one person in our building versus if you're a math teacher there's other math teachers to rely on," Corey says. "And so, we rely a lot on one another for support, for encouragement."
Corey says one program that she felt made the committee find her deserving of the honor, is the free book fairs offered at Robidoux.
"It's a concept that was actually started by our family involvement coordinator here," Corey explains. "So, for the past three years we have offered each student three books free of charge in a traditional book fair setting, with prizes and games and different promotions, but no money is exchanged for those books."
Corey says by the end of this school year they'll have given out more than 6,000 books to students at the middle school.
For winning the award Corey received a $5,000 cash prize as well as a trip to Baltimore, where she was honored at the American Library Association's LibLearnX Conference