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FWISD Educator Featured on Kelly Clarkson Show
(Tuesday, May 18, 2021) -- A Fort Worth ISD educator is being surprised with a big announcement on the Kelly Clarkson Show this week.
Emily Ryan, librarian at Fort Worth ISD’s M.L. Phillips Elementary School, is receiving a Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries grant for her campus library. The announcement is being made during a taping of The Kelly Clarkson Show, Tuesday, May 18. View photos from the surprise announcement here.
“It didn’t feel real. They said it so fast, and I thought ‘just no way,’” Ms. Ryan said. “Once it sunk in, I was over the moon for the kiddos. It still doesn’t seem real.”
Former first lady Laura Bush delivered the news virtually to Ms. Ryan -- who appears on the show from the M.L. Phillips library -- and more than 20 other educators across the country during a taping of Kelly Clarkson’s Best In Class 2021 segment earlier this month. The announcement is slated to officially air on the show at 2 p.m. Tuesday, May 18 on KXAS-TV (Channel 5).
The grant includes $6,600 per educator provided by H-E-B and $5,000 in books provided from Scholastic, Ms. Ryan said.
A couple thousand people applied for the grant, and to be selected, she said, is “a huge honor.”
The first-year librarian applied for the grant last fall. Upon her arrival to the school and nearly half a year into the COVID-19 pandemic, she learned that a lot of the library’s books had either gone missing, were outdated – some with publication dates of 2000 -- were limited in bilingual titles or limited books that bridged the gaps for students struggling with reading. She said she applied for the grant with three areas in mind: diversity, bilingual titles and fiction and nonfiction books that are high in interest and low in reading difficulty that could boost students’ reading abilities.
This grant will allow the school to add equitable titles and offer students books that support them across grade levels and reading abilities.
“It’s incredible. I feel like it’s a fresh start,” Ms. Ryan said. “To give students the best of the best feels so good.”
This is Ms. Ryan’s first year at M.L. Phillips, and prior to that so taught seventh grade at McLean Middle School.
Since joining the M.L. Phillips staff as the campus librarian, Principal L. Nicole Hill said Ms. Ryan been an asset. In a short amount of time, she’s created a vision for the library that provides high-quality, modern and diverse titles that interest students, she said. Ms. Hill said that she’s incredibly proud of Ms. Ryan being awarded this grant because it’s well deserved of her hard work and dedication, and it offers students a library collection of high-quality books that they’re deserving of.
“It’s a real blessing for our kids,” Ms. Hill said. “It’s just going to build a love of learning for our students.”
Since 2002, the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries has awarded more than 2,800 schools in all 50 states, Washington D.C., Puerto Rico, U.S. territories and military bases with more than $16.5 million to fund the purchase of an estimated 724,000 books and printed materials for campus libraries, according to the foundation website. The grant funds allow America’s neediest schools to “extend, update, and diversify the book and print collections in their libraries with the goal of encouraging students to develop a love of reading and learning,” the foundation website states. For more information about the foundation, visit laurabushfoundation.com.
M.L. Phillips is the first Fort Worth ISD school since 2014 to be awarded a grant from the Laura Bush Foundation for America’s Libraries. Former FWISD recipients of the grant since 2006 are David K. Sellars Elementary, the Leadership Academy at Maude I. Logan Elementary, Harlean Beal Elementary, Sunrise-McMillan Elementary, Carter Park Elementary, Oakhurst Elementary, Sam Rosen Elementary, M.H. Moore Elementary, Washington Heights Elementary, Meacham Middle, Rufino Mendoza Elementary, Kirkpatrick Elementary, George C. Clarke Elementary and Van Zandt-Guinn Elementary.
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