Maryland's Monthly Amazing School Librarians

Nominate yourself! Nominate a friend! Help us to celebrate the amazing school librarians around our state each month: Click Here for the Nomination Form 

March 2022

Libby (Elizabeth) Gorman
School Librarian
Edgewood Middle School
Hartford County Public Schools

Libby does an amazing job of promoting literacy not only at her school, through creative lessons, book clubs, and maker events but also helps to write curriculum, curate book titles for SORA, and organize events including a successful virtual author event last spring.

“This year, I am really enjoying our “Maker Mondays” once a month, during which students can come to the library during their lunch period after eating and work on a Makerspace-related activity. We have made duct-tape pencil pouches, origami turkeys and fancy folded napkins for Thanksgiving, sock snow-people, and Valentines, and next week, we will be doing Lego activities. Scheduling a special event to feature the Maker activities has let me be fully present with the kids and have fun making alongside them and helping as they need it.”

April Wathen excels at relationships with her students. Throughout the COVID pandemic and beyond, students know they are loved as she greets each of the 400+ by name in the morning and throughout the day in the hallway and the library. April teaches SEL, unity, community, diversity and inclusion in her lessons each week in either an overt or covert fashion. Student voice is always elevated. April has collaborated with classroom teachers to make sure all students feel a sense of belonging. She is hosting small groups through the week to work on social skills and belonging with students in K-5th grade. April is not a stranger to the playground with students, early checkout chats or voluntary recess groups.

January 2022

This is my first year as a librarian after 15 years as a classroom teacher. As a social studies teacher, I always engaged students with relevant research topics and technology. I was also a huge advocate for the importance of life-long learning and being an engaged citizen. Now as a library/ media specialist, I can amplify all of those values. In my marking period long classes, I have taught ethical fair use of online material while researching and I have incorporated technology almost every day. Receiving a second master’s degree at 48 has proven that when it comes to life-long learning, I practice what I preach!

My favorite lesson to date involved teaching students how to use one of our county's purchased databases, World Book Online. The reason that this was my favorite lesson is not because of what happened in class that day, but due to two events that happened the following week. First, a teacher reached out to me amazed that multiple students were using a vetted source to conduct research instead of just searching Google. Second, another teacher reached out telling me how one of my students provided an impromptu lesson to her and her class on how to use the database that she was not aware of. Appropriate use of vetted technology for academic gains across content areas. What an amazing day that was!

December 2021

Pamela Rubisch

This is my 30th year as an elementary library media specialist, and I am always learning new educational techniques to implement with my students. Robotics, coding, and engineering are some of my passions that I pass on to my students through Spheros, Ozobots, VEX Robotics, code.org, WeDo Lego kits, and a variety of building challenges. In our media center we build catapults, launchers, towers, bridges, things to hold up basketballs, and a blow up some stuff on occasion. Those are the days I love the best! Research is a key element to all that we build and do and we use databases like World Book Online, Pebble Go, and our Capstone library to dig deeper into everything we do. Also, sharing my passion for literature is never left out of our lessons, we always have a story that has to do with computational thinking, building mental fortitude, or just learning that failure is completely an option as long as we learn from our mistakes. Teaching has been my passion my whole career and I am blessed to say I was Washington County's first library media specialist who was a Teacher of the Year (2001) and was also honored by MICCA as and Outstanding Educator Using Technology (2007). And on the weekends I can be found out dancing with my dance group, Hub City Lindy Hop, sharing my passion for swing dancing with military veterans, businesses, and senior centers.