Beyond the Library with Ms. Bartbell

Malia Kabwe, Staff Writer

Dana Bartbell, Samo’s librarian of 22 years, gave some insight into the work she does for education inside and outside of Samo. Bartbell has increased her involvement in environmentalism by aiming to make Samo Library a green library. In addition, Bartbell participated in building libraries for the African Library Project and has started the Samohi Reads Road Trip Program.

Malia Kabwe: Hi! I’m Malia Kabwe. Thank you for meeting with me for this interview. To begin, tell me a bit about yourself and how you came to be a librarian.

Dana Bartbell: I was born and raised in LA and went to Saint Monica’s. I went to college at the University of San Diego. I changed majors a few times. I was a first generation college student trying to figure it out. After I graduated I had gotten married and was living in Pennsylvania. I had started teaching in New Jersey. I worked as a substitute teacher for about half a year. Then I receive an emergency teaching credential to teach English at a Central High School in Newark, New Jersey. I loved it, but I realized that I thought students needed the ability to evaluate information and the ability to critically assess the information sources that were coming at them. So that convinced me that I wanted to be a librarian. I started working at a college library, but I ultimately missed working with younger students. We moved back home to be around family and I was hired as the Samo librarian. I’ve been here for about 22 years.

MK: What were your majors before you chose English?

DB: I started out as a Biology major at the University of San Diego. I made the mistake that a lot of science majors do when they don’t have a particularly clear path. I got a really bad grade, as did many of my peers. But, when you are successful in high school that may prevent you from wanting to go forward. In reality, science is hard and there are many people who have to take classes two or three times. But, after Bio, I was undeclared for a while. I didn’t know what I wanted to be so I dropped out and worked. Eventually, I thought, well I love English. I didn’t know what I would want to do with it but I had a lot of English credits so I stuck with it.

MK: I’ve heard you are a part of the African Library Project (ALP) could you tell me a little bit about that?

DB: A student here who graduated nine or ten years ago had created a library for the African Library Project. So, that’s how it first came on my radar. I’m also a big fan of the organization Project Drawdown, which seeks to help the environment and climate change by looking at things you can do worldwide to help support change. One of those things is raising literacy rates. So, I started by joining the African Library Project and did a book drive last fall. My first one was at a high school in Uganda. Then, I did a second one at a high school in Lesotho, a small country surrounded by South Africa. Right now I’m doing a Primary library in South Africa, The secondary librarians like the project as well so we decided to do another school in Uganda. So, this will be the fourth project I’ve been a part of.

MK: How has working on the ALP affected the way you see working with more privileged students at Samo?

DB: It’s so radically different because there are so many resources around that students may not always take advantage of. Whereas kids in other countries may not have the resources that we do and would love to have access to those resources. So seeing the gap between students who have these amazing resources to be successful and other students who are successful because they are working
very hard despite not having a lot. I think it maybe influences me to help open students’ eyes up to what they have and why they should take advantage of those resources.

MK: How did you get interested in climate change and climate training?

DB: Growing up my parents took us camping and did a lot in the outdoors so that’s part of it. I remember going to Hawaii years ago and seeing a marine protected area. I went back years later and saw the lack of vibrancy because a lot of the coral had been bleached. I was shocked at how a protected area was so impacted by climate realities. Another thing is that growing up we didn’t have a lot of money and my father was a carpenter. So, we used to go to thrift stores and get furniture from different sorts of places so we didn’t have this new perfect home. When you’re a kid you don’t see that as a positive thing. But then you get older and you recognize the positive aspect is that you are around people who really make use of their resources and don’t throw things away to get the newest thing available. So, given all that, I went to get trained to be a climate reality leader with the Climate Reality Project run by Al Gore.

MK: How do you apply that training to Samo and the library?

DB: I just reached out last year to an organization that works to get libraries certified as green libraries. They didn’t have anything set up for high schoolers yet but I’ve been in communication with them to try to make Samo Library a green library. I’m also helping them shape the program for high schools to help schools think more about incorporating green practices. Another thing is Citizen Scientist. There are a lot of fascinating programs to help kids get involved in helping save wildlife, save the bees, and identify fires in African grasslands. There are so many amazing programs and during flex time and sometimes during lunch I’ll open the computer and get students interested. But, I might need to rebrand it and not call it Citizen Scientist to get more students involved. We also have a “Got Sneakers?” bag for students to fill with tennis shoes that they’re not using to be recycled. I just got a box to recycle candy wrappers for Halloween. A lot of the stuff we get for the library is from Buy Nothing, or I buy from thrift stores. And there’s the freecycle box where I and other people bring in stuff that we think kids might want that’s in good usable condition.

MK: What are your top three book recommendations?

DB: What Stands in A Storm by Kim Cross. This is a “right now” book recommendation that I’m incorporating into the Samohi. Reads Program. It’s a book that talks about a three-day period in April 2011 when there were an insane amount of tornadoes that touched down in Mississippi and Alabama. It’s horrifyingly frightful what the people had to endure and at the same time, there are these phenomenal stories of people reaching out and helping each other. Let’s see, I really
loved the Inheritance Games, that was a fun book. There’s another book called The Other Black Girl, Im finding people either love it or hate it. That was a really interesting read about what you think is the dynamics of an office relationship, but it turns out to be so much more than that with a little sci-fi twist at the end.

MK: Okay, thank you so much for meeting with me.