Photo by Nick Hagen

Each Tuesday morning, in the lower level of downtown Farmington’s public library, an unabashedly joyful, hug-filled reunion happens in the children’s department.

For that’s when a group of young adult students from Visions Unlimited – Farmington Public Schools’ post-secondary school for students (ages 18 to 26) with physical and/or developmental disabilities – arrive to not just attend, but be an active part of, the library’s weekly preschool storytime.

“(Max) tells everybody about his Tuesday library job,” says VU parent Colleen Van Camp. “He reads to preschoolers and often helps with puppets and other toys that incorporate the children’s story. It has given him confidence, purpose, social skills, responsibility, and pure joy.”

The community partnership between the library and VU began about seven years ago, when a para-pro brought her own children to storytime and asked children’s librarian Maria Showich-Gallup about possibly, in the future, bringing a couple of VU students to help out.

“In the back of my head, this voice was saying, ‘Don’t say no, don’t say no, don’t say no,’” says Showich-Gallup, who’s worked at Farmington’s downtown library for 19 years. “So then I told her, ‘Let’s start off with students doing the nursery rhyme,’ … and it just grew from there. … I was never so happy in my life to have not said ‘no.’ … It became such a win-win. The library staff and families that come to storytime probably get even more out of it than the (VU) students do.”

“We see the same kids each week, so we learn kids’ names, and they say ‘hi’ to us, and the parents are always happy to see us, too,” says VU teacher Lisa Wiltrakis. READ THE REST HERE