Staff Report

Scores of students, parents and Elm Grove Elementary School staff members converged on their newly-renovated and equipped library in a pre-opening of school celebration of the project’s completion. Librarian Craig McCarthy, Library Technician Karan Ratliff and EGES Principal Kathy Faulks presided over the gathering that brought together the campus PTA with many of the donors who gave and helped raise all of the funds to bring the project to fruition. Faulks recognized and thanked McCarthy and Ratliff before announcing that the PTA’s immediate past president, Suzy Robbins, would be permanently recognized – with the dedication to her of the “Elm Grove Maker Space” – for her devoted personal efforts and organizational drive to make the library make-over possible.  

The library includes new mobile furniture, innovative technology, and a back office that is being converted into that student “maker space” (which will be called the “imaginarium,” where McCarthy says kids “will have access to the major building materials and tools to create big stuff”). The philosophy of maker spaces (dovetailing creativity, imaginations, and innovations), he adds, “is what our whole school is adopting.”

Attendees at the gathering got to experience robot racing, a 3D-printer, catapult building, literacy connections, a sewing station, with the promise of more amenities to come.