Dover Elementary  School Library

Overview

School Overview

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Dover Elementary School is a public school with very limited resources in the Hillsborough County School District. It serves grades Kindergarten through fifth grade. There are around 745 students. The demographics are predominantly Latinx migrant students. School projects include a yearly science fair, a morning show, chorus performances and family nights.

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Dover Elementary School's motto is The World's Best School.

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Goals of Dover include:

• creative teaching techniques

• caring atmosphere

• setting high expectations

• Promoting risk-taking

• building self-worth

• and nourishing confidence

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Many students are from migrant families who pick crops and travel where farm labor is needed. 

Collection Overview

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Due to lack of funding, the library materials collection is old. Books and other materials are kept for many years and repaired over and over. There are computers available for the students to use, but the media specialist is the only person who is available to repair the computers, the teachers' computers, and run the library, so they get repaired when the media specialist can find the time. The position of Library Secretary was cut two years ago across the entire county, and now there is no one to help her except for volunteers, but the parents of the students have to work and cannot volunteer in the media center.

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• Computer use is mandatory for all students: they must reach I-Ready goals.

• There are more fiction books than nonfiction. Within the fiction section, there are more easy-reader and picture books than chapter books. The nonfiction section is organized by the dewey decimal system.

• Dover Elementary is subscribed to I-Ready, Axis360, myOn, Elementary Virtual Library, and Cyber Cat.

• There are Spanish-language materials in the media center, but because the Spanish language is not on the tests that the children must pass to determine the school grade and school funding, the children's native languages are not celebrated or taught, in favor of English, which is on the tests.

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