After almost 30 years as a school librarian, Betty Story says nothing really significant has changed in the experience of a child first meeting a book.
There is nothing more important or rewarding, she says, than when "you see that spark, firing the life of the mind when they make a connection with a book." She continues, "Reading a book is part of coming of age."
The librarian of the V.I. Montessori School and International Academy has worked with youngsters from halfway around the globe, but she says the experience is the same.
Story is a reader: She reads stories, she writes stories, she surrounds herself with stories all day long. The Montessori library currently has 10,728 books, and is always adding more.
After moving from Florida to her first job as Joseph Gomez Elementary School librarian early in the 1980s, Story began her globe-trotting career, which has kept her within the confines of library walls, but those walls are scattered across Asia, Africa and Europe.
Happy to be once again on St. Thomas, which like a magnetic needle on a compass keeps calling her back, Story took over Montessori library a year and a half ago. In April, the International Baccalaureate Organization in Geneva authorized Montessori as an IB World School, which offers an IB diploma program of rigorous study. Story has her work cut out for her, and she embraces it.
She has compiled a quick-reference website which she has meticulously edited. It includes an exhaustive list of just about everything under the sun, starting with BBC religion and ethics through biography, genealogy, geography, creative quotations to inspire creative thinking, statistics and baseball. And what would the national pastime be without statistics?
Story quickly determined the needs of the students — about 250 altogether, with 50 in the upper school.
"Right now,"she says, "there’s so much information out there."
She has developed lessons on how to be a savvy Web searcher, incorporating a bit of humor. One lesson is succinctly illustrated by a Steiner cartoon of a dog at a computer advising a canine playmate, "On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog."
She advises the students to be cautious: "If you want to use the Internet for serious research, you need to cultivate the habit of healthy skepticism, of questioning everything you find with critical thinking."
That’s the challenge of the IB program, Story says.
"Its emphasis is on independent thinking with what they are researching," she says. "The school assignments are open-ended — figure it out, put the information together, inquire. The students can get lost if they are not selective."
At the moment the students are studying banned books. Story lures them to spend their lunch hour on the program with pizza, she says — that and the opportunity do discuss their own ideas.
"These kids are such readers," she says. "I want to know what they think. They want to know why Harry Potter, for instance, would be banned."
Of course, books are rarely banned these days, but they may be challenged.
Story has punctuated her career with a few teaching stints along the way, teaching English at the University of the Virgin Islands on St. Croix after leaving Gomez, followed by six years as librarian at Arthur Richards Junior High School on the island, after which she took off for parts exotic at international schools.
Story spent the bulk of the next 10 years overseas — working in Jakarta, Indonesia; Nagoya, Japan; and Antananarivio, Madagascar — before returning to the local confines of Charlotte Amalie High School for three years. Then she left for Zurich, Switzerland, where for the next four years she developed the school’s library, worked on funding proposals and initiated yoga classes, something she has continued at Montessori.
"It’s hard to say which I liked best," Story says of her travels. "I have to say Japan, because of the layers of culture, the art, and they are so very civil."
She is, however, perfectly happy back on St. Thomas.
"I saw a woman at Brewers this morning," she says. "She was standing in the water, reading. I was charmed by that. I never go anywhere without a book."
Story is an American Library Association-accredited librarian, with a bachelor’s degree in media/library from the University of Central Florida, a master’s degree from Nova University in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), and a master’s in library and information science from the University of South Florida.
Story is relaxed and comfortable, except when she is running. Even then, at Magens, she always has time for a quick smile.
"I’m easy to please," she says with a laugh. "Just give me book and a plate of food; I’ll lie on my back and be happy."
Now, about that name.
"The other day the child of a friend came home to her mother and said, ‘Miss Story read me a story,’" Story says. "She was so excited. Kids do that all the time. They ask me, ‘Do you know your name goes with your job, Miss Story?’ I tell them, ‘No, I hadn’t realized.’ They think they just discovered it, and in fact, for them, they did."
