The Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science has won a $10,000 dollar award called the Library Legends grant. This award will allow the school library to have more updated books. This Award would not be possible without the award winning project which is the Hidden Black Voices exhibit for Black History Month by AMS Juniors Hajabintou Jawara, Maryam Juwara, and Razak Rashid.
Through their hard work and dedication, these juniors were able to help the school win a prestigious award for their library. This award has helped the library to a great extent because students would now be able to read and recommend books that have given them great interest. They have also impacted their library community because now the school library is able to have more resourceful and entertaining books. The Library Legends award is a reward where the winners are recognized for their contributions to libraries.
The person who gave this ward to our school is Melissa Jacobs who is the director of the New York City public schools library systems. When asked why the Library Legends picked our school, Melissa Jacobs said “The Hidden Black Voices exhibit exemplified everything the Librarian Legends program stands for—including collaboration, school community, reading, student involvement, and the vital role of school libraries and librarians.” When asked how she felt when she won the award, Helen Leshinsky, the school librarian said, “I was so excited. I started receiving texts saying ‘Congratulations’ when I didn’t know yet what it was for. Also, when I applied for the grant, I thought it was $5,000. And then looking at the spreadsheet, I saw that it was actually $10,000. So it was pretty unbelievable.”
AMS junior Bintou, co-creator of the winning project said, “Honestly, the most challenges that we faced was just collecting information about each and every person because since these are hidden voices, most stories won’t be accurate to the date. But to overcome this challenge, we kept digging and digging further to get each piece of information correct, to date of birth, to date of death.” Because of this award to the library, campus students are now able to find more books to read for pleasure.
