Di­rec­tor of Stu­dent Teach­ing Gives Away Thou­sands of Books

MISHAWAKA—Dr. Michelle Fish, as­sis­tant pro­fes­sor of ed­u­ca­tion and di­rec­tor of stu­dent teach­ing, is also cur­rently the re­gional co­or­di­na­tor for Chil­dren’s Choices, a pro­ject of the In­ter­na­tional Lit­er­acy As­so­ci­a­tion.

Fish strug­gled with de­cid­ing if she should ap­ply for the job. 

“I de­bated for months,” said Fish. “It’s a com­pletely vol­un­teer po­si­tion, and I knew it would re­quire a ton of work... it seemed a lit­tle daunt­ing and over­whelm­ing, think­ing ‘how would I add this huge pro­ject on top of  every­thing else?’”

Ul­ti­mately, Fish chose to ap­ply, and re­ceived an email in mid-March 2018 let­ting her know she’d been se­lected. 

“I was so ex­cited,” said Fish. “I was ab­solutely thrilled, re­ally de­lighted.” 

Fish ex­plained the ba­sics of the pro­ject. 

“In 1974, the In­ter­na­tional Lit­er­acy As­so­ci­a­tion and the Chil­dren’s Book Coun­cil de­cided to col­lab­o­rate to try and cre­ate an award solely cho­sen by chil­dren that might help other kids be mo­ti­vated to read,” said  Fish. 

Fish said that pub­lish­ers send their lat­est books to the re­gional co­or­di­na­tors.

“There are five re­gions within the United States,” said Fish. “We re­ceive hun­dreds and hun­dreds of books.” 

The re­gional co­or­di­na­tors re­ceive mul­ti­ple copies of sev­eral books to dis­trib­ute to schools. Orig­i­nally, Fish thought there would be 300 to 400 unique ti­tles; later, she found out that she would be re­ceiv­ing about 1200 unique ti­tles.

“Thou­sands of books, com­ing to my home,” said Fish. “I felt a lit­tle bit over­whelmed... that’s a lot more than I thought I was sign­ing up for. The books started ar­riv­ing in Au­gust and con­tin­ued to ar­rive un­til No­vem­ber.”

Be­cause the pub­lish­ers chose not to send some of the books, Fish ended up with a to­tal of about 1000 unique ti­tles. As the books ar­rived, it was Fish’s re­spon­si­bil­ity to dis­trib­ute the books to schools and cre­ate a vot­ing sys­tem.

“The vot­ing started on Sep­tem­ber 4, and the vot­ing con­tin­ued through Jan­u­ary 18,” said Fish. “It’s about a four-month win­dow that chil­dren have to vote on all the books.”

Fish said that at the con­clu­sion of the vot­ing, she is given the abil­ity to do­nate the books. 

“My biggest pri­or­ity was do­nat­ing the books to the par­tic­i­pat­ing schools,” said Fish. “Some­times pub­lish­ers sent too many books, and... did­n’t want the books shipped back, so that af­forded me the op­por­tu­nity to do­nate even more books to schools that did­n’t even par­tic­i­pate.”

Fish has also do­nated books to lo­cal book pro­jects, Bethel’s Ed­u­ca­tion Re­source Cen­ter, and Bethel’s Kinder­garten Lab. 

“It’s ex­cit­ing,” said Fish. “To be able to give so freely feels pretty awe­some.” 

A list of the chil­dren’s top choices will be pub­lished in May; to learn more about the In­ter­na­tional Lit­er­acy As­so­ci­a­tion, or to read about past fi­nal­ists in the Chil­dren’s Choices pro­ject, visit lit­er­a­cy­world­wide.org.