Nancy Clark sits in the Media Center of Fairview Elementary School.
BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Although retiring Fairview Elementary School media specialist Nancy Clark would be quick to point out that she is not a librarian, at least not since the school combined the computer lab and the library, she does believe she had it in her to be a librarian long before computers even reached the schools.
“I remember teaching my little brother to read,” she said last week in the media room. “I enjoyed that, getting someone to recognize words and getting meaning from a story.”
Clark is retiring after 18 years of service in the district. She received her teaching certification from Lebanon Valley College, in 1972, and her master’s as an education media specialist from Kean University in 2003.
But she married a few years after getting her teaching certificate and it was not until the early ‘80s that she began teaching pre-kindergarten children in the Fanwood-Scotch Plains School District. This was followed by substitute teaching in the Westfield district in the early ‘90s. But then Clark left education and opened a new and used book store in Westfield. She operated this store for five years.
“It takes a long time to get a business started,” she said. “Then they started opening Barnes and Noble stores and we became a Barnes and Noble sandwich between the one in Springfield and the one in Clark.’
As a consequence, she closed her store and went back to school in 1999 to become a librarian.
“I decided to upgrade my education,” she said. “I had made a lot of friends as a substitute teacher and I decided to become a librarian. Kean had just started its program and friends said I should try it because I understood books.”
She tried one media specialist course during the summer of 1999 to see if she could handle going back to school while working.
“I took a reference librarian course and said that I could do this,” she said.
But the Kean program was not for public libraries, it was for school district libraries. This was just right for Clark.
“I liked working with children,” she said, “and you needed a certification as a teacher.”
She already knew a little about being a media specialist because while working in Westfield, the school libraries were already automated. Automation did not come to Bloomfield until the 2008-09 school year.
Clark was hired in 2000 by the Fairview principal at the time, Sal DeSimone, someone she knew from the Westfield district. DeSimone retired from Fairview last year.
In the changing fields of library and media, Clark, a children’s book wonk who also teaches computer skills, has seen her share. But the changes she mentioned had nothing to do with books or computers, but with schedules
She said when she was first hired, student library time was not used as prep time for their teacher as it is now. When she began as a media specialist, she said the teachers would work with her and the children. No more. Now the teachers spend their students’ library time off preparing for their own classwork. Clark also said that this year, the fourth, fifth and sixth grades did not even have to come to the library.
“You can only teach children if they are in the room,” she said. “I still teach it, I’m introducing it, but I can’t give them a follow-up. I don’t see them enough.”
According to Clark, the popular books among children are the graphic novels. These are an offshoot of comic books. She said that children also like fantasy and realistic fiction, but so much science fiction.
“To be a media specialist, you need a lot of experience with children and books,” she said. “What I’ve always done is read. You have to read a lot and be familiar with a lot of things. You need to know the clerical things, but a lot of it is knowing what is popular and knowing the curriculum. I think the state is getting away from it, but I think you need experience as a teacher to better help them in the time they spend with you.”
For Clark, becoming a librarian had to be in the tea leaves. As a little girl, when anyone wanted to borrow a book from her, she would cut out paper to make library cards and pockets in her books.
“If my friends wanted to borrow a book,” they had to sign for it,” she said.
She is retiring now because she would like to spend more time with her husband.
“I have been working for 26 years,” she said. “My husband has been retired for 15 of those years.”
She also has a grandson and her father is 94 years old. She would like more time for them, too.
“This year was OK for my father,” she said. “But last year he went through a difficult time. His health is so much improved and I would like to leave while I’m still healthy.”
Clark said her father is now in assisted living. His possessions have to be sorted out, she said, as do some of her own things.
“I would like to move into a place where they don’t have to shovel snow,” she said.
Clark would also like to visit Williamsburg, Va., at Christmas, and friends have given her a pile of books to read. Up until now, she has been reading mostly children’s books.
Of course, she will miss her colleagues and the children. She said with all the changes among teachers, the media specialist is the one constant and something of an anchor in a school.
For her retirement, two classes made books for her. In them, the children wrote a remembrance.
They remembered that she made reading fun, and the different voices she used when reading a story, and the puppets she gave them to take home to help explain the story to parents.
Clark said she will be meeting with an informal group of retired Bloomfield teachers in September.
“I’m so busy all the time here,” she said. “It always seems funny to me in June.”
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