A few weeks ago I held a belated Book Week in my high school. It was my first time running a week-long celebration of reading and I’m pleased to report that it was a huge success!
I had a variety of activities planned throughout the week, but the two big highlights were the Door Decorating Competition and the Staff vs Students Cosplay Competition. Our faculties went all out to decorate their doors with their favourite books and it was a great way to spark conversations with our students about reading. I took a team of student volunteers with me to judge the winners based on three criteria: 1) creativity; 2) adherence to the theme ‘Reading is Magic’; and 3) overall visual impact. The level of detail on some of these doors was astounding! However, my student judges ultimately decided that the winners were our lovely office staff, who may have got the win by bribing them with fairy bread to match their ‘Fairy Magic’ display. They also wrote a fantastic poem to go along with it, and their display was a delightfuly prominent representation of our school’s positive reading culture for all students and caregivers to see. Sadly, my photography skills don’t do it justice!
I was a bit nervous running the Staff vs Students Cosplay Competition and didn’t really know what to expect. I started a conversation on one of our professional networks to see if anyone had done something similar and got some excellent advice from my colleagues, especially around the logistics of timing, prizes, and associated paperwork. The Head Teacher of the PDHPE faculty, who normally runs a mufti fundraiser for our local AECG, allowed me to piggyback off her event so that all students could dress up in either regular mufti or as a character from their favourite book. This worked brilliantly, as it allowed kids not interested in participating in the competition to still dress up while giving some of our more shy students a chance to dress up without standing out too much. It also removed the logistical difficulty of getting students to change into their costumes at the start of lunch.
I definitely underestimated how keen our school community was to dress up. I was expecting only a few students and staff to participate in the competition, but boy was I wrong! I initially printed only 15 permission notes thinking I’d have plenty of spares but quickly had to print more. In the we had 34 competitors with plenty more dressed up just for fun. I gave staff and students an opportunity to have a photo taken in the library during our first break and had a line up almost the entire length of the library! I was surprised that some of our more disruptive, reticent readers got in on the fun, which goes to show that we never can judge a book by its cover. Even our school executive got in on the fun! At lunch we held the actual competition and we only just made it through everyone in the half-hour break.
Overall I feel like this was such a wonderful experience for our school community. It took a lot of planning and paperwork on my end but it was so much fun and definitely worth the effort. I’ve learned some important lessons and will make some adjustments next year to hopefully help things run more smoothly. The feedback from both staff and students was overwhelmingly positive, and having the visuals through the costumes and door decorations was a fantastic way to promote reading for pleasure. It allowed me to showcase the library as a crucial part of the school community, promote its resources, and to advocate for my work and its continuing importance in a fun way. Most importantly, it was a great opportunity for students to connect with each other in a way that they might not otherwise been able, and it gave some of our shy students a chance to develop a bit more confidence in a safe way. For anyone trying to build a whole-school culture of reading in their own community, I’d highly recommend running similar events!