SWAMPSCOTT — Swampscott Middle School Library Media Specialist Jessica Bombardier has been awarded the Massachusetts School Library Association’s Audrey Friend Scholarship for her work at the school.
Bombardier teaches literacy and started the Tech Ninja program at the middle school level. She started at the school in the fall, switching roles after 15 years in higher education as an English professor.
“It’s really exciting to be hitting the ground running at such a fast pace in a new field,” Bombardier said.
Bombardier is taking courses at Salem State University and the University of Rhode Island to get a master’s degree in library science.
“I’m going through and understanding the different facets of the library role, which is so different from when I was a kid, or even as an adult,” she said.
That couldn’t be more true than it is this year, as school programs have been held largely online due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A huge part of a school library is programming, but it’s really difficult to program when we’re not in the building all the time,” she said.
Soon after settling into her new role, Bombardier thought about what needs she saw among students. She realized that with the district’s new one-to-one device program, spurred by the need for remote learning, a lot of students and families were experiencing technical issues, and proposed bringing the high school’s existing Tech Ninja program down to the middle school level.
The program lets interested students serve as technical support to their peers and teachers, giving them an opportunity to work on both technical and leadership skills, Bombardier said. Some of her ninjas help with fixing broken devices, others produce how-to videos and still others act as ambassadors, reaching out to peers who are having technical trouble.
“You just never know what someone needs to have a chance to really show what they’re capable of or be a leader,” Bombardier said. “It’s very exciting, because they get to feel good, and then they’re helping in our school community, which is obviously fostering a community bond, and that’s really hard to do right now.”
The goal of the MSLA scholarship is to make it easier for school librarians to get certified, in order to increase the number of certified librarians in Massachusetts schools.
Bombardier will be honored alongside other award recipients at the MSLA’s virtual annual conference March 21 and 22.
