DHARAMSHALA: The Department of Education, Central Tibetan Administration has started a four-day cluster level Intervention Workshop for school librarians at Upper TCV school, Dharamshala from 2 January.

The workshop aims to directly engage the school librarians with tasks to have a hands-on experience to empower the librarians to replicate the process when they go back to their schools.

” The workshop will broadly cover interactive sessions on library activities including book audit and homework reading, planning library layout, organising and labelling, data management of a library and discussions and planning for the way forward,” said Mr. Tsering Phuntsok, Education Officer of the education department.

The first two days of the workshop is being held at the Upper TCV Library and the last two-dayswill be held at the Lower TCV School. Eighteen participants from 8 schools including 5 from TCV, 2 from Sambhota and Sherab Gatsel Lobling are attending the workshop.

The education department of the CTA had also organized various activities in the last year, starting with a visit to the World Book Fair event. Field visits to school libraries by experts like MS. Usha Mukunda, Ms. Sujata Noronha, and Ms. Yashodara Kundaji & Ms Karuna Jaithirtha were also organised by the education department. The experts submitted their recommendations, which greatly helped the school administrations and librarians to improve their libraries and reading culture.

” With guidance from the experts, an Online Google group was also created last year to share learning experiences among the librarians and thereby help students improve their reading skills,” Mr. Tsering Phuntsok said.  “This initiative will be further strengthened through online mentoring coordinators with constant guidance from Ms. Usha Mukunda & Sujata Noronha for an interactive mode mentoring for school librarians all through the year.”

Sujata Noronha is the main resource person for the workshop with her team from Bookworm, Goa. She is an independent Consultant on Library and Literacy. Ms. Sujata is a consultant with Early Literacy projects and Library grants for the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and is a doctoral scholar with the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

These workshop were funded by the USAID through The Tibet Fund under the Early Grade Reading Project.