- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund and by viewers like you, thank you.

- A look at libraries, literacy and much more tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with the Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Sam O'Bryant, Executive Director from Literacy Mid-South.

Thanks for being here.

- I'm glad to be here, Eric.

- Along with Keenon McCloy, Director of Memphis Public Libraries.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- I'll start, we'll talk through all the things that your organizations do, some of which I think people know, some they think they know and we'll just talk about literacy, we'll talk about books, we'll talk about libraries and all those sorts of things.

And I know you both and have talked to you about these things, but it's been a show that we wanted to do to talk about the important work you do, some of the fun work you do and again, some of the unexpected work you do.

But at a very basic level, and I'll start with you, Sam, literacy, the folks watching this show on WKNO, the folks who read the Daily Memphian, they are exposed to literacy.

They are probably reading books, they're reading magazines, they're reading newspapers.

You all work with both adult literacy, with childhood literacy, with exposing people to books, but for people who...

I don't know how to say this question in a way that isn't goofy, but... People who haven't been exposed to literacy, particularly maybe the older learners whether that's teenagers or that's adults or that's even seniors, that profound change in their life, it means what to them when they become literate and this whole part of the world that we all take for granted is suddenly open to them?

- Well, one, we love the goofy questions.

- Good, good, we'll 26 minutes of them.

- So I wanna come back to our beginnings at Literacy Mid-South.

We've been around since 1974 and we began as an adult learning program.

And to your point, those things that open up, those things that they see, we work with adults who I'll say identify a unique challenge.

I'm always, specifically I always wanted to say that we are not a GED-granting organization.

We do not grant any sort of high school equivalency or anything of the sort.

This is typically when an adult will say, "Hey, I'm a grandfather and I want to be able "to read to my grandchild.

"They're in second grade or so.

And I wanna be able to keep up."

And so then we pair them with a tutor that can help them reach that goal.

And there have been cases where an adult will approach us and they'll say, "I run a small landscaping business, "mostly residential, but I want to get "into commercial spaces and I don't know how to navigate an RFQ."

And so when we work with those sorts of adults that come in with those unique sort of challenges, their world opens up because in many ways, it gets them to the next station, it gets them to the next opportunity.

It just creates a whole new sort of thing that they've never experienced before.

- There's gotta be a level of...

In full disclosure, years ago, I was on the board, many years ago, of one of the predecessor organizations to Literacy Mid-South and maybe it was Mid-South Literacy.

I can't remember.

- Mid-South Reads.

Mid-South Reads, yeah.

So I kind of knew some of this and was exposed to it, but for lack of a better word, the bravery it must take for someone like a grandfather to come forward and say that, and ask for that help.

And then the reverse of that is the sadness of people who don't ask for the help.

- Right, and so it is a courageous thing because again the thinking is, and a lot of these thinkings are associated with just the negative stigma that comes with adult literacy.

A lot of people are thinking you should've have gotten it in high school or you should've learned it in the primary grades, but that doesn't always happen.

But it does take a considerable amount of courage for an adult to say, "Yes, I want to get to this point.

"It's not over for me.

"There are some things that I need to know, some things "that I need to even be able to teach at some point to those that live with me, those that look up to me."

And we're proud to be able to offer those sorts of services.

- Let me bring you in, Keenon, staying with books and literacy, you all are working with everything.

I was looking at your event calendar and you have programming from little children to adults across a wide range of things, but we'll just stick with the traditional books and reading thing.

That for you in terms of exposing people to books, the core mission of the library, means what to you and means what to the library system?

- Well, to me, it means that people have incredible opportunities that without literacy they would not ever be able to accomplish or achieve.

So it's also a thing for tremendous joy and satisfaction and growth and engagement.

And a lot of people who come to the libraries might not be able to read themselves, but we program for cradle to rocker around making everything be engaging and exciting and interesting.

And we do a lot of things like Every Child Ready to Read and just trying to make sure that we can spark curiosity for lifelong learning and we've been really successful.

And a lot of people, our staff really know how to get people who don't actually know how to read to be able to communicate in a way that they actually get a jumpstart through the programming.

And so we have all sorts of things besides books.

Of course, I love books, but we have tons of different types of media that we can share as well.

So whatever format you receive is the one that we wanna serve you with.

- And I heard you talk recently, it was an event that Daily Memphian put on that you were nice enough to be a part of, and you talked about when there was a...

I'mma say this my way and you can say it the right way.

Libraries can be very intimidating to people, I mean, to people who can read.

As a little kid, it's a place where you gotta be quiet, it's very formal, you need to behave.

And you talked about the shushing of teenagers and you really wanted to end that as I remember the story.

It was like, let's stop shushing people.

It's not a circus, but it's also not a place to be shushed.

- Yeah, there's no reason.

I mean, there's no shame for enjoying the moment that you have at the library.

I mean, it's a gift really.

But no, we do not shush.

Now, I grew up in a library here in Memphis that did like to shush.

So that was a good inspiration for me not to repeat the same mistake.

- Yeah, we talked about the adult learning.

You all do a ton of stuff with early childhood, with reaching parents who've had children.

You wanna talk about some of those programs you do as well?

- Sure, so our approach that we think of is we call it literacy across the lifespan.

And so if we were to start at the earlier stages, we do have a program in partnership with Methodist South and Regional One that we call Bluff City Baby.

And this is where we provide a backpack full of early literacy and early learning materials to new and expectant mothers across those two health systems.

And of course, we're talking about a book that focuses on the baby's first 100 words, a sign-up card for Books From Birth which is the Shelby County affiliate for the Dolly Parton Imagination Library.

And we probably distribute somewhere upwards of 300 backpacks per month across those 2 health systems, getting it to again new and expectant mothers.

Next program we focus in on is actually we're starting to ramp up for it now is our out of school time programming which focusing on mitigating learning loss and reading loss during the summer.

And we do that in partnership with about 25-plus organizations, which allows us to reach over 90 different locations across the city and the county throughout the summer.

And this is focused primarily with kindergarten through fifth grade children and again dispersing different levels of again literacy engagement materials, books that are at their grade level, things that they can use at home or during the day in those summer programs to help mitigate their learning loss.

We also like to function as a thought leader and convener around the space.

We all understand that literacy in many ways it is an economic development growth engine.

A literate city in many ways is an empowered community, it's a community that moves forward.

So we like to bring individuals around the table to really think about how can we form different community strategies that pair or align well with the strategies of public education, so that literacy doesn't stop.

Literacy is not an 8 AM to 3 PM sort of function.

It happens at home, it happens in after school spaces, it happens during the summer.

So we're always having those conversations as well.

- Yeah, and you're gonna be, I know you told me before the show, something like 90 sites around the city through the summer and you're in 14 elementary schools right now doing after school tutoring or in school?

- During the day tutoring.

And so that's somewhat of an inside-outside strategy.

So because of a generous investment from the Tennessee Department of Education last year, we're able to develop what is called high dosage tutoring across 14 schools.

And to paint a picture about high dosage tutoring, it is a research-proven method that really works well post-pandemic.

We know that during the pandemic, there was a lot of learning loss and a lot of loss just associated with literacy scores and end of the year assessments.

So the ways that we counter that is to have in-school tutoring that really reinforces what was probably previously learned during just an immediate class period.

So a child may receive ELA instruction, core instruction from their teacher right there that morning and then we follow up with the high dosage tutoring maybe an hour or so later to just reinforce what was learned in the classroom.

So we're again it's an inside-outside strategy.

It really speaks to the ways that we wish to make sure that we're helping public education reach their goals around particularly third grade reading proficiency.

And this just a bunch of the different places that we show up with the work.

- Third grade is where I was gonna go with that.

So the third grade reading cliff, we've written about it.

If people aren't paying attention to it, they should.

This Tennessee state law changed some years ago.

Where's Bill Dries when I need him?

But a few years ago to say, hey, if you're not at certain levels on the TCAP scores or whatever the score system is called now, you're gonna get held back or you could potentially get held back.

It could impact tens of thousands of third graders across the state and many, many in Memphis and Shelby County.

Are you all hyper aware of that?

I mean, it's not your mission to educate every third grader.

I'm not trying to put that on you, but it's how aware are you of that in terms of the tutoring programs you guys have been doing?

And are there parents coming to you and saying, "Oh my gosh, I am so scared my son or daughter's gonna get held back," or what?

- I haven't heard that much directly from parents.

I know that everyone is concerned about it.

We all know what the future looks like if you can't master the third grade reading levels.

So we do have tutors, we do have people who volunteer and so we have staff who are happy to help in any way they can.

And we do have, after we get the infants and the toddlers, we go on to the school-age children and we just try to do everything that we possibly can to support them because a lot of their parents can't read for that matter, so they're a few steps behind here.

And so I know that the computers during the pandemic were pretty difficult for a lot of people to navigate as well because parents didn't have any knowledge of digital literacy.

But we aren't fundamentally a school, but there are a lot of people who would say that we taught them more than they can learn at school.

So it's a complementary thing.

We wanna support the schools.

We partner with the Memphis and Shelby County Schools on a significant basis and we have staff assigned to coordinating with them and collaborating with them.

I mean, pretty much everything we do at the library, we want other collaborators, we want other organizations, we want to become stronger through greater, deeper partnerships.

- Yeah, and does that get to, again I talked about the traditional library being an intimidating place and also a place that you maybe stereotypically think I'm only gonna go there if I can read and if I can't read, that's not a place for me, but you all do a lot of outreach.

And I say the library, I shouldn't.

There are many libraries all over the county and we'll talk about some of the newer ones and newer programs you've got, like Cossitt and things in Frayser and Melrose.

But that outreach, is that about just saying, hey, this is a safe space for you, even if you can't read?

Even if you're not coming here for reading, we're trying to get you here for these other things we do, is that fair?

- Absolutely, one of the things that we do, we do have a team called the Connect Crew and they go outside of our four walls.

So all they do is outreach to the community because a lot of people lack transportation, they don't have the ability to leave their houses.

They might not know exactly where to start and there a lot of people who speak Spanish who we are serving these days.

And so we're just trying to diversify our offerings every place we can and get away from just the four walls.

- Yeah, we talked a little bit before we started again that notion of outreach, you talked about being in the hospitals, you talked about the 90 sites this summer in the elementary schools.

You've also got the vending machines that you're starting, which is interesting and cool.

- Yeah, so we have four book vending machines.

And again it's one way we wanna get kids excited about reading.

Everyone loves a vending machine, right?

[Eric laughs] We're not there yet, but I think there's somewhat of the pull when we see the places where we place them.

So there are four of them.

We have one in the ER waiting room at Le Bonheur Children's Hospital.

One is at Junior Achievement where they just opened their new site on Cooper, Tillman and Sam Cooper.

We have one at For the Kingdom, which is one of our anchor sites for one of our literacy zone projects.

And the fourth one is at the Memphis-Shelby County Board of Education.

And it's an excitable thing.

The first time we unveiled one was at Scenic Hills Elementary School last year.

And it was just, we put wrapping paper all around it and everything and kids came in the hallway.

And we let one kid just go crazy tearing it off.

And kids, their eyes got real big.

And everybody got a book that day.

The other thing that was surprising about it was that again focusing on across the lifespan we had cookbooks in there.

We had a Patti LaBelle cookbook in there.

And there were parents that were in and out that day.

I think the Patti LaBelle cookbook went faster than any of the other books that were in there.

Patti LaBelle outdid the Super Mario books.

But it really just reinforces how it's a tool that can be used across different spaces.

To that point, we've seen it where there's some elementary schools where they do not have a library or their library is not fully up-to-date with all the latest books or the latest materials and whatnot.

And then that book vending machine becomes in many ways a stop gap because it's a newer selection of titles and at the same time, these are books that children can take home and have.

All the books that we distribute are free.

So it does a lot.

It creates that excitement, it gets parents excited, it gets kids excited, it helps build individual libraries that a kid may have at home.

And again, to your point, I think the draw is like, oh, it's a snack machine, but oh no, it's a book vending machine, but I still like what I see here and it creates the same options and choices that you would if you were looking at a snack machine.

- Yeah, we talked about young kids, we talked about adult learners, but teenagers.

You've done a lot I think from the beginning of your getting to the library of reaching out to teenagers, creating programming for teenagers, not shushing teenagers.

And I think it's fair to say the libraries tend to be a safe space for a lot of people.

Maybe they need an after school safe space, they need a safe space generally.

But talk about beyond books, you can talk about books, too, things with music, things with computers, all kinds of things that you've done to reach out to teenagers.

- So I went to a conference early on when I had been appointed the Director in 2008 and everybody said, "We have a major problem here."

And I said, well, what's the biggest problem we have?

And they said, "Teenagers, they're lazy, "they wanna play video games on the computers, that's not productive."

And they had all sorts of things to tell me about it.

So I went to Chicago and there was a thing called New Media there.

And it was in the Harold Washington Library, which is their main library.

And it was neat and it was dedicated for teens, but I just looked back and I said, we are gonna one up Chicago, period.

We're gonna go with the Memphis brand.

We're gonna get music, we're gonna get entrepreneurialism, we're gonna get more creative things than are gonna come from any other city, I bet.

And we did, and that became CLOUD901.

So we have an audio engineer who runs our recording studio, audio production lab.

And we have the ability to make videos and we have a maker space.

We have so many things, we have robotics.

We're a competitive robotics team, the teens are.

We've had a lot of people make videos and have been even award-winning.

One of the things that I was hoping, we were hoping was that teens could make $20 an hour based on the skills that they develop at CLOUD901.

And they can and they do.

And so we've had a wonderful experience.

We also have a messy art space, so not everything is technology.

It was important for us to be hands-on.

A lot of people don't know how to make orange, if you're painting.

There are just some fundamentals that we thought were important to include as well.

So the kids, not the kids, the teens come.

We are right next door to a STEM academy that's the old East High School.

And so every day, we're packed with teens, especially from STEM but from throughout the city.

And we have people from public schools and private schools.

And I think it's great that they mix so well together.

So it's been really inspirational.

I think that it's about almost 10,000 square feet.

And at first, it was quite controversial because that's where the bestsellers were located.

So when we cut a hole in the second floor and built it out, everything just changed.

So it's been a tremendous success.

- I will say a personal note on video games.

I fought with my son about video games for years as one does.

He's now 24, he's a programmer working at a startup, so he was right and I was wrong.

I lost that fight, too.

But not to put the weight of the world on you, how much do you all do trying to reach teens?

'Cause there's a lot of data, teens period, teenage boys will stop reading in the best of circumstances.

There's a wall they tend to hit in their teenage years and engaging them with reading is really important to keep them reading whatever it is arguably, but obviously you also want them to read their school work.

- So I think for us, it really makes us stretch what this definition of literacy is.

Keenon gave some really good examples.

When we think about a traditional library, oftentimes we think about just stacks of books and shelves and books everywhere, but to really expand the definition to include STEM activities, to include creative art activities is one thing that we're working on.

One of the things that we did last year during spring break, we partnered again with For the Kingdom and we created, and they had this summer camp, but we partnered with DeMoir Books and Things and created this...

The kids put on a play.

And so everything that they did from the play from the drafting of the lines to creating the story to building the stage, all of that was connected toward a literacy activity that was engaging toward that age group.

And so that makes us again think what are the ways that we engage different age groups and how does literacy look different for age groups?

Again, in the elementary space, it is that foundational thing, those things that they need to learn.

But when you get into the middle school, high school, it's what's gonna capture their attention and how do we turn it into a learning opportunity.

And then of course for adults, it's more likely how do we navigate spaces around work or home or things of that sort.

So we have to identify what literacy looks like for each age group and then build out something that works for them.

But for what we've done, our space, again, we're building it out, is really thinking about how do we engage middle schoolers around the things that interest them and then build literacy-specific or literacy-rich activities around those things.

- We have about four or five minutes left here, right now, and I don't know how much y'all deal with this, but you'll let me know.

There's lots of debates, there are off and on, there have been for decades about what is appropriate for kids to be reading.

There's arguments at the Tennessee State Legislature, at the national level and various school districts in this area and around the country, the Roald Dahl controversy where the publisher put out, wanted to put up editions of the book that changed some of the words that were not considered appropriate by today's standards.

How much do you engage in that debate or you got enough on your plate and you steer clear of it?

- You can try to steer clear of it, but when you're a literacy organization and you distribute a lot of books to families and community partners, there's really no way to stay out of it.

The way that we tend to stay away from it is because of a lot of those rulings come down on what schools can do.

So a school, and I can't remember the correct framing for it, but we refer to it as the critical race theory law, and that tells a school what books can be in a school library or what books can be in a classroom.

So we tend to not mess with school libraries and classrooms.

That's a direct point, again, that's something that a school district has to handle.

But going back to the point around the 90 sites that we work with during the summer, the after school components, the families that we engage and whatnot, that's how we do our book distribution.

And at that point, you let the parents decide if this is something they want to read with their child, this is something that they want their child to learn.

But it's again when you're distributing books, getting books to just thousands of people, you're gonna be in that conversation, you're gonna be in that whatever you wanna call it.

And it's hard to stay out of it, but you still have to find a way to do the work that you do without running afoul of those laws.

- Yeah, how much do you get impacted by all that?

- Well, first off, we don't ban books.

It is a personal decision and it's not one that we're gonna make.

So we haven't had really any issues or challenges at this point.

I can't say they won't come, but we haven't had any issue at all.

We try to get whatever the customer it is says they want or need or would help them.

- Yeah, with just a couple minutes left, couple updates, Cossitt Library downtown looks as if a person drives by particularly like it's nearly gonna open.

Where does that stand?

Break some news.

Come on, Keenon, break some news!

- February 28th was the date, I need to check on it today, but long and short, it should be open in the next couple or few weeks, I'll just put few weeks out.

But yeah, it's definitely been a long time coming.

It's over four years, but the space is amazing, it looks beautiful.

We've redeveloped the 1958 portion, the mid-century modern part of the building.

There's a lot of technology in there and there will be a cafe in there.

So it's gonna be really pleasant and people ask every day, "When is it gonna open?"

- I can only imagine.

- Yeah, so either supply chain or it's... - And I'm sorry, I don't think I gave you enough time.

Melrose High School, what you're doing there.

- We are developing the main floor of Melrose High School.

And it'll be two-sided, I mean, half and half.

One is just a traditional library because we know people will be living upstairs and we know that there will probably be multiple generations that would be interested in being there.

Then the other side'll be an African-American genealogy center.

So it'll be a part of the history department as is in Ben Hooks, but it'll be at Melrose.

- And then Frayser, you have a lot going on.

- Yeah, I know, Frayser is gonna be in... Melrose will be finished in mid-2024 and Frayser, which'll be 20,000 square feet and lead certified.

So it should be, it's 2220 James Road, but it'll be mid-2024 as well.

So we're thrilled about that.

And it's right along the Wolf River Trail, so it's gonna be perfect.

Yeah, we're thrilled.

- Thank you, sorry to cut you off, sorry.

But thank you so much for being here, I really appreciate it.

Thank you for being here as well, Sam.

And thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of this show, you can get the full episode at WKNO.org or you can download the full podcast of the episode wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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