A library revitalization at Maple Leaf Public School in Newmarket has made a big difference in making students feel worthy, according to staff.
The school is 60 years old and the library was 40 years old. Its mission is making students feel welcome, worthy and safe — and the old library was not doing that, according to Robyn Zimmerman, who has been a teacher at the school for 17 years.
"We believe our kids are worthy of having this kind of library and they didn’t (have it),” she said.
However, she said it seemed like such an ambitious dream that for years they just accepted the outdated space.
Then in December 2021, she reached out to Mayor John Taylor to explain the need for a new library.
"What was a passing thought really quickly turned into action,” she said.
Taylor organized a committee made up of councillors, community members and local business owners to raise the money needed for the revitalization project.
The committee started in February 2022 and by June of that year, $40,000 had been raised and the work was beginning.
It was an easy project for the mayor to get behind for many reasons.
"I will admit I have quite a bit of passion for Maple Leaf and this community. I think it’s a community that’s in need of a little support of the town, the region, and the broader community. And, of course, I’m an alumni. I went to Maple Leaf School and I’m excited to see this happen,” Taylor said.
He said the previous library was "frankly, lousy."
“It’s not acceptable in Newmarket, or really anywhere in Canada, to have one school on one side of town with a beautiful library and a school on another side of town with one that looks not really good,” he said. "These kids need to know that they’re valued and equally important as anybody in any other school in Newmarket.”
While work was being done on the library, Zimmerman said the students did projects designing their dream library. A lot of them involved items like hot tubs, slides, or a big tree right in the middle of the space.
“Their ideas of what this space could be were very grandiose and once it existed and it was here now, I was worried that kids would be like ‘where’s my slide and where’s that hot tub I told you we needed in this library’ and that wasn’t it. It was like, ‘wow, they did it’ and that was incredible,”
The new library, which opened in January, features modern modular tables, a maker space for innovative learning, a ceiling-mounted projector and brand new screen, alternative seating, a large rug with an Indigenous art design, high top tables for older students, and lots of shelves to house all the resources for students.
Zimmerman said now it's a "more modern space that reflects the time in which they’re coming to school, not a time that happened 40 years ago.”
On top of that, she added that now when students and even staff see it, they feel like they are worthy of having this and that's the most important part of it all.
“There’s just the feeling of feeling worthy of all this wonderful space and that’s priceless for our kids,” she said.
