Responsible to Head of Libraries

Job Purpose:

• The Reading Specialist works closely with students to ensure they have a sustained interest in reading and that they begin to make informed choices about their reading which aids their critical thinking.
• The role of Reading Specialist at PYP and Senior School at Neev Academy is to grow readers for life, who read for pleasure, personal growth, and to explore their passions.

Main Functions:

• Working at the PYP library and interacting with students from Grades 1-5 (or) the Senior School library from Grades 6-12 on a daily basis.
• Use of updated research and implementation of best practices to create choice.
• Help students arrive at their individualised reading goals and goals of the reading program; as well as personalise reading session.
• Conducting effective reading sessions using age-appropriate books/articles, utilising various reading strategies, activities, to a pre-approved framework/structure.
• Building a rich and diverse book collection at the library containing award-winning, critically acclaimed, and newly released titles for the relevant age and interest-groups.
• Collaborate with teaching teams to act upon how the Library may support academic work by finding appropriate resources; coordinating expert visits linked to literature; strengthen research practices.
• Moulding the library as a hub of learning by drawing the community together through purposeful displays, activities, and engagements.
• Actively participate and contribute to community-reading endeavours such as World Read-Aloud Week, the Neev Literature Festival (NLF), the NLF Reading Challenge, and the R K Narayan Reading Growth Award, including providing logistical support; small group coordination; curating book lists; devising author interactions; and fulfilling any other requirements that may come up in this regard.
• Contributing to administrative processes at the library such as dynamic shelving; active weeding of outdated and irrelevant resources.

Specific Skills and Dispositions:

• Be a voracious reader oneself, who reads across genres and age-groups.
• Have an active interest in children's literature, both Indian and global.
• Be deeply interested in how children grow as readers; have strong communication, interpersonal, and research skills, to convey one’s enthusiasm for reading to teachers and parents.
• Be positive, energetic, open-minded, flexible to trying out new approaches to inculcate a love for reading in children and young adults.
• Be process-oriented, to understand and better implement library cataloguing and shelving systems.
• Be an active participant during meetings on school policies, documenting your work as well as students' reading journeys, and paying attention to detail.
• Training or prior experience with reading or storytelling is an added bonus.

This may be reviewed as per the need of the organisation after discussion, from time to time.