April 4, 2024
By MEALAND RAGLAND-HUDGINS
Rutherford County Schools
While teaching in Georgia, Katie Capshaw was asked to assist with writing a grant for her school.
By doing so, the path of her career changed.
A native of Cookeville, Capshaw is the library media specialist at Siegel Middle School. She’s been an educator for 16 years and started out as a middle school English Language Arts teacher.
Capshaw is in her 10th year as a librarian and her second year at Siegel Middle. She also worked at Christiana Middle, with Murfreesboro City Schools and in North Carolina.
This summer, Capshaw and her family will head to Laos on an outreach effort to build a library for an underserved community.
National School Library Month kicked off Monday. Capshaw shared how libraries have played a major role in her life and how the community in Laos will benefit from having one of its own.
How did you make the shift from the classroom to the library?
Capshaw: In Georgia I had been asked to write a grant with the instructional coach for some technology stuff, and I found out that the librarian was supposed to be not only the keeper of the books and helping the students but was supposed to help with technology and also help the teachers with resources. Our librarian at the time was older, so she wasn't really on top of that. But I thought that's really great because as a classroom teacher, I struggled to stay on top of everything -- new technology, find resources for all my lessons. I love to read. I always was a library user. To be able to encourage kids to read and find good books, but also to help teachers find resources, stay on top of technology, I thought this would be the best of both worlds, being a resource to both the students and the teachers.
Tell me about your upcoming trip to Laos this summer and the outreach you’ll be doing there.
Capshaw: We have some really good friends who opened a school in Laos — a school and life center. It's in a very poor rural area in the mountains. It's about nine hours from the biggest city, so like nine hours from a grocery store, a (full service) one. What they do is kind of twofold. They have a language school at night and mostly middle school age kids come and they learn English or Chinese. They have Americans and Chinese expatriates who come and teach the language. That helps them either come to America to go to college or helps them get jobs in tourism. Being able to have another language helps.
Kids in Laos don’t go to school all day every day. They may not have enough teachers or enough classrooms. A first-grader may go to school Monday morning, Wednesday afternoon and Friday morning. During the time they're not in school, they can come to the life center. The staff feeds them, they do activities, help them with their homework. Keeping them off the streets and keeping them from being trafficked. It’s a little harder for them to be trafficked when they have a skill.One of our friends was a mechanic in the Army, so he teaches some welding, basic mechanical repair. They teach them sewing, cooking. They just opened a coffee shop and so they have people that work there and then they also do like language hour where people come and just practice English and conversation and things like. The people are underserviced, so they really help those kids a lot with nutrition and education.
Have you ever done any foreign outreach like this before?
Capshaw: We've never done this before. Myself, my husband and my 14-year-old son are all going. He’s good friends with the son in the family we’ll be working with. They like to game together online whenever it's the right time, like his morning/our night, kind of thing.
I kept telling our friend I wish I had a skill that would help. So the next thing I know, she's sending me a message and there is a video. And she’s like, “Look where we are. We're in this room at our school and we're cleaning it up for you.” You hear her telling her son “Tell them why.” He said, “We want you to put in a library.” She said they didn’t have any books but that they’d love to have (a library). I've never started a library from the ground up. But I've been a librarian for 10 years, so I think I can do it.
What will it take to get everything started?
Capshaw: So we want to start with about 500 books. We're doing mostly English books and then when we get there in the country, we're going to buy books in Chinese and books in their language. They don't have a ton of books in the Lao language, but there are some. We've researched some bookstores in the capital city where we can purchase some books when we get there so that they have books in their native language. But because they do a lot of English teaching, most of our books will be English.
That’s our first priority plus supplies to catalog them. Trying to get a good software program that is sustainable for them that they can use and that sort of thing. And then when we get there, we have to build shelves and all that kind of stuff. Our budget is about $14,000 but shipping anything there is really expensive.
How can the community help?
Capshaw: I have a PayPal fundraiser. If anyone wants to contribute $15 or $20 for the cost of a book, that would be amazing. (Donate here: http://katiecapshaw.weebly.com/laos-library-project.html)
If you weren’t teaching, what do you think you’d be doing?
Capshaw: I'd love to be a stay-at-home mom and take care of my three kids. If not that, I think I would do something community or foreign outreach type of thing. I think I would always be involved with bettering the community, helping people. I don't know exactly what that would look like.
You said earlier you were always a library user. What comfort did that give you or how did it help you growing up?
Capshaw: I think as a kid, I became a reader after my fourth-grade teacher read “Ramona the Brave” (by Beverly Cleary) to our class. I always liked to read before that. My dad's a big reader, but that was really what hooked me. After that, I wanted to go to the library and get all those books or make my mom take me to the bookstore. And I think as I've grown up, especially as a teacher, I didn't have a ton of time to read. Every summer I would just go to the library and (check out) stacks of books. The library is a place where you can go and be safe, but also use your imagination and escape to another world. You also learn about other people.
I feel like reading and being a reader has really built my empathy to understand other people's stories. I haven't lived in your shoes, but if I've read or heard your story, then I can be more empathetic and really begin to understand where you're coming from. And everywhere we've moved — and we've moved a lot — the first place we try to find is the library and get a library card. We can find community resources there but books, too. It's a place that we know is safe, where I can take my kids for story time or whatever. My kids can always find something they enjoy at the library.