The region served by Mountain View School Division has a great many organizations and agencies working to better their communities and the lives of the people living in them. MVSD values the relationships we have built with many of these groups, including the Rotary Club of Dauphin. With a long history of supporting literacy initiatives, it is not hard to see why the contributions of the Rotary Club would be so meaningful to the school division.
Twice a year, in April and November, the Rotary Club of Dauphin hosts their used book sales. The club receives a wide array of book donations for readers of all ages. For a community without a bookstore, these events provide an opportunity to shop for books locally. If you stop by one of Rotary’s book sales after school hours, you are likely to run into many teachers, educational assistants, and librarians looking for items for their classrooms and libraries.
Additionally, the club uses the funds from the book sales to benefit the community. In the past they have contributed funds to Dauphin Public Library’s beautiful outdoor artwork created by local Indigenous artist Patrick Paul and to Whitmore School for the purchase of diverse reading materials, among other projects. Most recently, the Rotary Club of Dauphin donated funds to support the purchase of books for high school students with an emphasis on supporting student mental health. Collections of 15 books – 11 fiction and 4 nonfiction –were purchased for each of the 6 high schools in Mountain View School Division. Fiction books include Louder Than Hunger (eating disorder), Rez Ball (grief), and Challenger Deep (mental illness), while nonfiction titles include The Resilient Teen and Killing the Wittigo.
You might ask how does reading a novel help with mental health. Societies have long used storytelling to teach lessons or morals, develop empathy, and explore emotions. Today, many scholars recognize the value of using literature to understand and process our world. Penny Kittle (Book Love, 2013, p.22) says “Students must read literature that names what they themselves struggle to understand... Life lessons live in fiction. Reading a book takes us inside a time, a place or an idea.
"Donalyn Miller (The Book Whisperer, 2009, p.173) points out that sometimes teachers or librarians connect individual students with specific books as part of supporting the needs of that child: “This is how I show my students I love them – by putting books in their hands, by noticing what they are about, and finding books that tell them ‘I know. I know. I know how it is. I know who you are.’” However, there are also times when our students keep their struggles to themselves. As John Schu writes, there may be students “struggling on a personal level because often it’s such a private thing that we may never know what they’re really working through on their own.... We create the conditions for the right book to reach the right reader at just the right time” (The Gift of Story, 2022, p.21).
So, this is our hope. By providing the MVSD high school libraries with this collection of books that address a variety of mental health issues in the safe and comforting format of a novel, we hope the right book will reach the right reader when they need it most.
Photo Caption: Victoria Carter, Mila Heschuk, Taylor Schmidt, and Lori Hupalo of the DRCSS receive a donation of books from members of the Rotary Club of Dauphin.