Submitted
The Connie Acton Award of Merit recipient for 2021 is Mrs. Sherry Landry of Holy Family School in North Battleford. The award recognizes individuals who have made a significant contribution to school library service in Saskatchewan.
The Saskatchewan School Library Association has the following purposes in presenting this award:
1. To recognize those individuals who have made a significant contribution to school library programs to benefit students.
2. To recognize the responsible and influential role that individuals may perform in developing school and division libraries.
3. To recognize the contribution and effort of those individuals who have worked toward making the association an effective agency for the promotion of sound school library development and practice.
4. To stimulate interest in planning, implementing, and supporting school library services which are essential to an effective educational program.
Mrs. Landry has been the Library Assistant at Holy Family School for the last 12 years. She is well known for her famous Accelerated Reader contests, her entertaining storytelling, and her library club. It has been said that Mrs. Landy is “magical.” Her most important goal is to help kids find a love of reading. She starts this task when our students are young. She goes into the classrooms and introduces the students to many kinds of rich literature. Students are instantly hooked and beg for more as she tells the stories using expression and voices for characters. As students become independent readers, she guides them to choose “just right” books that pique their interest. Students in Grades 6 and 7 always look forward to becoming part of the Holy Family School library club where they learn to organize and shelve books during recesses. Past students still talk about how much they enjoyed working in the library with Mrs. Landry.
Even when faced with COVID restrictions, she has found safe ways for students to still have books in their classroom and changes them out weekly. Most recently, Mrs. Landry put on a “Battle of the Books” contest, where she read different books to each class and they got to vote on which books moved to the next round. We were all excited when she announced that winner last week!
